Travel On Your Sofa

For millions of Americans, summer trips have become a thing of the non-COVID past. Even a day at the beach might be off-limits. International travel is even more of a pipedream, as currently only nine nations are open without restriction to US visitors.

Americans can work from home, shop from home, even go out on a date from home or adopt a pet over Zoom, so why not explore the world through the screen of a laptop?

GeoGuessr is a free, fun series of geography-based challenge games. Its basic premise is simple: you are dropped into a GoogleMaps StreetView, and then drop a pin on a conventional map at your best guess of the geographical location. Sounds simple, but it can be addictive, and you will become an expert on the differences between South African dirt roads and the Australian outback faster than you think.

From the comfort of your home, find yourself transported to Japanese fishing villages, and Scadinavian city squares. Check out GeoGuessr!

World Emoji Day

Photo: Pixabay

Welcome to World Emoji Day! July 17 is the day set aside to celebrate those little pictures that capture our feelings and render words unnecessary. Why July 17? That particular date is the one that appears on the calendar emoji and is also the date when Apple unveiled iCal for Mac at the MacWorld Expo back in 2002. Once limited to the technology realm, emoji have proliferated and have materialized practically everywhere. They appear on merchandise, such as tee shirts, hats, and backpacks and bakeware such as cookie stamps and cutters, candy molds, and cupcake baking pans and cups. When you are unsure of the meaning of a particular emoji or are looking for the right icon to convey your thoughts and feelings, you can consult the Emojipedia. And just when you thought that emoji could travel no farther, The Emoji Movie was released in 2017 with a sequel coming right around the corner.

Photo: OpenMoji

Emoji have even made an appearance in the courts. Back in 2018, we reported that, in an historic first, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals included in its published opinion a poop emoji that had been submitted as evidence in an employment discrimination case. But what are some of the legal issues that might arise involving emoji? The two primary categories appear to be misunderstandings that require judicial interpretation and intervention and the protection afforded emoji under intellectual property laws. One emoji may have multiple meanings or a meaning that is not readily apparent or may depict images that are specific to particular culture, thus forcing parties to rely upon the courts to determine their meaning. Cases that required judicial interpretation of emoji ranged from whether the use of a emoticon with the tongue sticking out meant that the prior statement was a joke or a prank [(See Elonis v. U.S., 135 S. Ct. 2001 (2015)], whether the use of a thumbs-up emoji demonstrated acquiescence to a custody arrangement [(See Nunez Bardales v. Lamothe, 459 F. Supp. 3d 459 (M.D. Tenn, 2019)], whether a smiley face in a death threat transformed the message into a joke (See In re L.F., 2015 WL 3500616), whether the use of a smiling emoji in connection with a teen’s text message that she wanted to kill her mother constituted harassment (See State v. D.R.C., 2020 WL 3968198), and whether communications between employees could be interpreted as harassment or discrimination in the workplace [(See Murdoch v. Medjet Assistance, LLC, 294 F. Supp. 3d 1242 (N.D. Ala., 2018)]. In addition to the types of cases just mentioned, emoji can play an important role in cases addressing claims of or challenges to free speech. Many of these First Amendment cases involve an analysis of whether, taken within context, the speech at issue constitutes a true threat, therefore forfeiting its First Amendment protection.

The second category of legal issues facing emoji concerns the role intellectual property plays in these misunderstandings of interpretation. Because there is copyright and trademark protection afforded individual emoji and emoji sets, the resulting depiction variations and lack of standardization leads to confusion and misconception. Unicode, an organization attempting to standardize emoji, only standardizes the codes, not the depictions, thus leading to more diversity and an increased possibility of greater misunderstandings in interpretation. Additionally, some emoji are not Unicode-coded emoji, thus leading to more occasions for variation.

There are so many excellent articles devoted to this newly emerging topic. For further reading about emojis and the roles they are playing in the law today, check out some of these articles:

Jonathan Geneus, Emoji: The Caricatured Lawsuit, 16 Colo. Tech. L.J. 431 (2018)

Eric Goldman, Emojis and the Law, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 1227 (2018)

Stephen Harrison, How Emojis Have Invaded the Courtroom , Slate, (November 26, 2019)

Erin Janssen, Hearsay in the Smiley Face: Analyzing the Use of Emojis as Evidence, 49 St. Mary’s L.J. 699 (2018)

Patrick M. Milott, :-P Emojis and Emoticons in Court, 44 Reporter 61 (2017)

Elie Mystal, Is Emoji Law Going to Be a Thing? , Above the Law, (February 25, 2019)

National Don't Step on a Bee Day

Today, July 10, is National Don’t Step on a Bee Day, a day to promote awareness of the small, yet precious bee and its importance to the ecosystem. According to the United States Geologic Survey, the science agency for the Department of the Interior, of the 20,000 bees known worldwide, about 4,000 are native to the United States. (Sadly, the honeybee is not one of them.) These native bees are responsible for the pollination of approximately 75% of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States. Despite the importance of bees to the ecosystem, there are a lack of federal rules and regulations protecting these small creatures. The Honeybee Act, 7 U.S.C. §§ 281 - 286, governs the importation of honeybees. Its goal is “to prevent the introduction and spread of diseases and parasites that are harmful to the bee population, the introduction of genetically undesirable germ plasm of honeybees, or the introduction and spread of undesirable species of subspecies of honeybees and the semen of honeybees.” Violations can result in a fine, imprisonment, or both.

Despite the relative lack of laws and regulations protecting the bee, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken steps to safeguard bees and other pollinators. In January 2020, the EPA released proposed interim decisions for certain chemical insecticides. Additional steps taken by the EPA include: implementing a policy protecting bees from agricultural pesticide spray and dust application while bees are under contract to provide pollination services, prohibiting the use of certain chemicals when bees are present, issuing guidance for assessing the risks and effects a proposed pesticide may have on bees, and developing a Pollinator Protection Initiative.

On the state level, the Texas Apiary Inspection Service (TAIS) is the agency tasked with safeguarding the apiary industry of Texas. The TAIS operates under the authority of Chapter 131 of the Texas Agriculture Code. Under the Texas Agriculture Code, the Director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station shall appoint a qualified entomologist to serve as chief apiary inspector. Tex. Agric. Code § 131.021 delineates the powers and duties of the inspector. Such powers include adopting rules to control, eradicate, or prevent the spread or dissemination of contagious diseases and seizing and ordering the destruction, treatment, or sale of products equipment that is determined to be diseased. The inspector also has the authority under Tex. Agric. Code § 131.022 to declare a quarantine should the need arise. The movement of bees (other than using their own wings) is also regulated by the chief apiary inspector. Permits for importation and intrastate shipment are required. However, the statute does not specify a similar requirement for exportation. Nevertheless, persons exporting bees may apply for a permit from the inspector.

Additional regulations governing bees can be found in Chapter 71 of the Texas Administrative Code. There, you will find rules regarding European honey bee certification, apiary quarantine, and complaints concerning the disease status of an apiary.

On this National Don’t Step on a Bee Day, please protect these little pollinators. Doing so helps our flowers flourish and our gardens grow. To learn more about native Texas bees, check out this article from the Native Plant Society of Texas.

Love One Another

National Loving Day could not have come at a better time this year. With the nation fatigued by a global pandemic and suffering from the effects of racial injustice, our country needs a time to heal. National Loving Day, celebrated each June 12, commemorates the anniversary of the landmark 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia. In that case, the Court struck down Virginia statutes that criminalized and otherwise prevented marriages between persons solely on the basis of race. The Court held:

Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man', fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967) (Case citations omitted).

In Loving v. Virginia, Virginia residents Mildred Jeter and Richard P. Loving were legally married in the District of Columbia. Shortly after returning to Virginia, the Lovings were charged with violating the state’s ban on interracial marriage. The couple pleaded guilty, and their jail sentence was suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together for 25 years. The Lovings filed an action in the District of Columbia to vacate the judgment. Eventually, the case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, whose decision recognized the fundamental right to marry regardless of race. The Loving decision became instrumental in another landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the same right to marry as every other couple and recognized the validity of those marriages already existing.

Loving Day began initially as a graduate thesis project at Parsons School of Design in New York City after its founder, he himself a person of interracial and intercultural heritage, accidentally discovered the Loving case. Loving Day has since expanded into a global network of Loving Day celebrations seeking to fight racial prejudice through education, build a multicultural community, and promote multicultural awareness. So on this National Loving Day 2020, let’s keep that mission alive and learn to respect and love one another.

Cheers!

Pop a cork! No, it’s not New Year’s Day already, but who would know as all of the days seem to run together, don’t they? Tomorrow, June 6, is National Bubbly Day, a day set aside on the first Saturday of June to celebrate all there is to love about that glass of effervescent goodness. Bubbly can come in the form of sparkling wine from the United States, Prosecco from Italy, Sekt from Germany and Austria, or Cava from Spain. Today, however, we are going to focus on the self-styled king of sparklers, Champagne from France.

History

Wine making can trace its roots back to Mesopotamia to a period as early as 6000 - 4000 B.C.E. While ancient Egyptians were the first to document wine making processes, the interest in wine making soon spread to Greece and throughout Europe. In France, wine making dates back to the earliest days of Christianity where it was used in the celebration of the Eucharist. Since that time, the methods of pruning vines; improved techniques with respect to irrigation, fertilization, and harvesting; and a clearer understanding of how the terroir, or complete natural environment or location of the vines, affects the quality of the grape, and in the end, the wine itself.

The hallmark of champagne or what distinguishes it from other wines is the effervescence. When the sugar found in the grapes is combined with yeast, fermentation occurs, whereby the yeast breaks down the sugars in the grapes and converts it to alcohol and carbon dioxide. In the making of champagne, however, the wine is fermented a second time - this time in the bottle. The carbon dioxide becomes trapped, thus creating the effervescence or bubbles for which champagne is known. (Another popular method of fermentation known as the Charmat method differs from the méthode champenoise in that the wine is fermented in pressurized steel tanks.) For more information about the making of champagne, its history, and its terroir and appellation, visit the website of Comité Champagne.

Regulations

The production and sale of sparkling wines, especially champagne is regulated here in the United States as well as overseas in France. Let’s have a brief look at some of the important rules governing the creation of this luscious libation.

France

France, not surprisingly, treats its food and wine very seriously. Following the demands of wine-growing associations throughout France, the principles of Appellation of Controlled Origin (AOC) and the Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) were created in July 1935. (The INAO has since been renamed the Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité.) On June 29, 1936, champagne was declared an AOC.

With this designation comes responsibility and regulation. Specifically for the Champagne AOC, there are regulations enumerating approved grape varieties; citing specific methods of pruning; establishing the maximum permitted yields per hectare, the maximum permitted press yield, and minimum potential alcohol content of newly harvested grapes; secondary fermentation in the bottle, and minimum periods of maturation. Thus, for a wine to rightly be designated as champagne, it must adhere to these specific rules and regulations and come from grapes traditionally grown in the Champagne region of northeastern France. (Apparently, though, there is a loophole that permits sparkling wines from California to be called California Champagne.)

To ensure the continued quality of wines with the Champagne AOC and to protect consumers from misleading claims, the Comité Champagne or Comité Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC), a professional organization of wine growers, reports any misuse of the champagne name and prosecutes any party that misappropriates the reputation that the wine growers in the Champagne region worked so hard to establish. Their authority to prosecute these cases is authorized by Article 13 of the Revised Law of 12 April 1941 (France). The CVIC is active in ensuring that consumers are not duped by products claiming to be champagne. Its website cites significant victories it has achieved in combating counterfeiting and misuse.

United States

In the United States , regulations governing of “champagne” can be found in several sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Most of the regulations involving champagne address designations and labeling.

27 C.F.R. § 4.21 (2019) - This section addresses the standards of identity for several classes and types of wine. Champagne is a Class 2 , sparkling grape wine, which “derives its effervescence from the secondary fermentation of the wine within glass containers of not greater than one gallon capacity, and which possesses the taste, aroma, and other characteristics attributed to champagne as made in the champagne district of France.” Wines not conforming to the “champagne” standard may, in addition to sparkling wine, be designated as “Champagne style” or “Champagne type.” Furthermore, 27 C.F.R. § 4.21(b)(3)(ii) (2019) discusses the labeling of sparkling wines that do not conform to the champagne standard or use the “charmat method” instead.

27 C.F.R. § 4.34 (2019) - This section further addresses the class and type of wine and indicates that in the case of champagne, the type designation may appear in lieu of the class designation of sparkling wine.

27 C.F.R. § 4.24 (2019) - Geography also plays an important role in wine regulations. This particular section of the CFR regulates generic, semi-generic, and non-generic designations of geographic significance. Champagne, like Burgundy and Sherry, is an example of a semi-generic name that is also a type designation for a grape wine. The semi-generic designation is generally used for wines that have an origin that differs from that which the name indicates. For instance, using the example we have given above, wines designated as Champagne, Burgundy, or Sherry are typically more closely associated with the regions in which they originated.

27 C.F.R. § 24.257 - The last significant regulation governing champagne in the United States involves the labeling of wine containers. In general, the volume of the bottle determines the minimum type size that must be used on the wine container’s label. The label must also show the name and address of the location at which the wine was bottled and packed, the brand name, the alcohol content as percent by volume or in accordance with 27 C.F.R. Part 4, an appropriate designation of the kind of wine, and the net content of the container. With respect to champagne, the use of its semi-generic designation may appear on the label if there also appears an appropriate appellation of origin and the wine conforms to the standard of identity set forth elsewhere in 27 C.F.R. Part 4.

We hope you have enjoyed our little trip into the history and governance of champagne production as we celebrate National Bubbly Day. Wine making is a highly regulated field, indeed, but these regulations ensure that consumers are not being misled and are being treated to a sparkling wine or champagne of the highest quality. So, no matter what your bubbly of choice is, be it prosecco, cava, or Champagne, simply relax and enjoy this sunshine in a glass.

Cheers!

À votre santé!