National Litigation Hotline

The Eighth Circuit has held that the University of Nebraska's warrantless search of an employee's computer did not violate the employee's Fourth Amendment Right to privacy where the search was conducted to uncover e-mails relating to a lawsuit and pending arbitration against a third party. Biby v. Board of Regents, of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, 2005 WL 2000925 (8th Cir. Aug. 22).

Gerald Biby, a technology transfer coordinator at the University of Nebraska's Industrial Agricultural Products Center (IPAC), worked with companies in the private sector to formulate research and marketing opportunities for new technologies. After developing one such new technology, a product called Soft Touch II, Biby and his colleagues secured a provisional patent application in the University's name and entered into a licensing agreement with a company called Corn Card International. The agreement gave Corn Card the exclusive right to develop, market, and sell printable plastic phone cards, which used the Soft Touch II technology, in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Biby then worked with the owner of Corn Card to begin establishing a business relationship with Gemplus, a card manufacturer interested in marketing phone cards with the Soft Touch II technology in Europe. It was hoped that the University would ultimately assign Corn Card's licensing rights to Gemplus so that Soft Touch II could be marketed worldwide.