Laws4245/8445 Information Technology Law Semester 1, 2025

Instructions: 1. Time allocated: 90 Minutes 2. Permitted Materials: Any 3. Please answer both Questions 1 and 2. Within each question, only answer either Part (a) or Part (b). 4. Submission: In a single Word Document via Turnitin on Wattle. 5. Exams will be marked against the Exam Rubric available on the Course Home Page on Wattle. 6. Weighting of the exam: 40% 7. Format: Online take-home exam 8. Start and finish times: 7 June 2021, 14:50 – 16:20 (unless you have an exception) 9. Citation requirements/expectations: Formal citations not required, simply state legislation section numbers and case names 10. Word limit: none Semester 1 - End of Semester, 2021 Laws 4245 and 8445 IT Law QUESTION 1. Intellectual Property Answer EITHER Part (a) OR Part (b) of this question. Do not answer both parts. Part (a) (20 marks) Tiger Solutions (Tiger) is an AI startup based in Canberra, with around $3million in Angel and Venture Capital investment backing. They have developed an AI Workbench called AISimple, that makes it very easy for end users to choose and train Open Source AI models, without needing to be well versed in data science. Major customers to date include the Department of Defence, Services Australia and the Department of Home Affairs. There are several modules within AISimple that are sold separately: 1. SimpleImage which is well suited to image recognition. It has key use cases in the battlefield, identifying a large number of objects in a broad space, which can then be used by the Defence forces to make decisions. 2. SimpleVoice which can quickly identify with a high level of accuracy whether or not a specific individual is speaking, and translate the voice into multiple languages. 3. SimpleFraudDetect which can be run against a set of financial transactions and evaluate whether they look fraudulent or not. Tiger has confidentiality provisions in its employee contracts as well as any end user licenses. The source code for all of its modules is stored in an encrypted source code control system hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform. Tiger is working on a new way of ingesting the data required for the AI training and usage. It involves the use of a new compression algorithm they have invented which uses one tenth the memory and is 1,000 times faster than anything commercially available on the market. They have lodged a patent application for the new algorithm with IP Australia. Vtech incorporated (Vtech) is an emerging competitor for Tiger, with significant US funding. They have been aggressively recruiting developers and have recently managed to lure Alberto Alfonso away from the Tiger development team. He was one of the key inventors of the compression algorithm. Vtech comes out with AIMagic an alternative workbench to AISimple. It can do the following: 1. Any AISimple model can be run in AIMagic. To achieve this interoperability Alberto used his knowledge of the AISimple platform to create a converter that can take models across to AIMagic. 2. AIMagic uses a new version of the compression algorithm developed by Tiger that is twice as fast. Alberto took the code for each of the modules for Image, Voice and Fraud with him when he left, and used these as the basis for AIMagic. AIMagic is starting to take customers away from AISimple, on the basis that it is faster and slightly cheaper. Ben Barden is the CEO of Tiger, and he comes seeking your advice, in relation to: 1. Whether Tiger has any potential causes of action against Vtech and/or Alberto; and 2. If so, what remedies are available to Tiger.