The '1920 law' aka 'Jones Act' is not limited to natural gas. It deals with transport of goods where both the source and destination are American ports.
How do you avoid the chilling effects of patents existing then without getting into patent pools or cross-licensing arrangements? People will be hesitant to put any time into R&D if they don't have assurances their work won't be quashed by lawyers.
To a degree. This only applies for being tried in NJ for the same crime. They're free to charge him in other states and try him without double jeopardy applying:
"But if a single act violates the law of two states, the law treats the act as separate offenses and thus not in conflict with the Double Jeopardy Clause. A second state with a case against a defendant may decide that a conviction in the first state is sufficient, so it does not necessarily mean more than one state will bring charges. Therefore, it is up to the discretion of the particular prosecutor, as with other criminal cases."
This is known as the Dual Sovereignty Doctrine. This is also what makes hacking such a perilous crime. If you're hacking a large corporation in one state, you may have victims in multiple states. Thus, you can be tried separately for essentially the same crime in multiple states regardless of being acquitted in other states.
> To a degree. This only applies for being tried in NJ for the same crime.
No, because this wasn't a prosecution under NJ law, it was a prosecution under federal law, in which the violation of NJ was an element of the offense. So double jeopardy prevents any further federal prosecution for the same offense, but doesn't prevent prosecution under state law of NJ or other states (even though the court here found NJ law did not apply, federal circuit court precedent on state law questions is not binding on state courts.)
Yes, double jeopardy only applies if a criminal trial concluded with an acquittal. In that case the defendant can't be charged a second time. But with cases that basically didn't conclude either way, non-convictions that are also non-acquittals, such as mistrials, vacated convictions, cases thrown out for procedural reasons, etc., the government is free to bring the charges again, on the theory that the first "jeopardy" hasn't really concluded properly, with either an acquittal or a conviction. For example, a case that ends in a hung jury can be re-tried with a new jury; a case thrown out for improper venue can be re-charged in proper venue; a conviction thrown out for ineffective assistance of counsel can be re-tried with better counsel; etc.
I wondered why they couldn't use the (relatively small amount of) drugs they found when they raided him in Arkansas to, under Arkansas state law, fuck him somehow.
