Like it or not, legal issues permeate every aspect of our working lives. Design engineers sitting in their cubicles are no exception. They face IP protection, patent disputes, product liability, damage to the environment, and other serious challenges.
Designers are no longer uninterested bystanders when it comes to these issues. Cases like these, and others, have become part of the job. But where do designers fit into the equation? What is their role, and their liability, if any, in the legal issues that often beset their companies and the industry?
PRODUCT LIABILITY
Industry designers got a big lesson in product liability about 30 years ago when TV set manufacturers decided they needed a competitive edge, something new that would attract consumers to their latest models. They came up with "instant-on." You simply touched the set's "on" button and you had a picture instantly.
To make this work, however, the set's circuitry had to get at least five watts all the time. In other words, these TV sets were never really "off." That worked fine for a while, until a few of them caught fire. One actually burned down a house in the middle of the night, killing its inhabitants. The lawsuit that followed resulted in the manufacturer settling out of court.
Today, more than 10 years after the safety of cellular phones was questioned when a Florida woman died from brain cancer, wireless handsets still represent what may be the biggest product liability issue in the world in terms of their impact on both manufacturers and consumers.
Research in this smoldering subject has accumulated for years. One University of Washington bioengineering professor found 172 studies of cell-phone-generated RF radiation, with about half finding some potential for health risk. Now, the federal government has finally decided to step in with its own multimillion-dollar investigation into the potential toxic and cancer-causing effects of wireless phones. The study could have immediate and certainly long-range impact on designers and their employers.
Several federal agencies will be involved in determining what will be studied, including the National Toxicology Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, along with input from the Federal Drug Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The study follows the 1994 and 2001 government agency reports on cell-phone safety, both generated by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Each report recommended additional research.
Calls for more research have also spread to the newest "next big thing," IEEE 802.11-based wireless local-area networks. This follows on the heels of the publicity created by the parents of a Chicago-area girl who claim that the school board has failed to address their concerns about the potentially hazardous effects of the school's Wi-Fi system.
Perhaps the newest wrinkle in product liability involves digital cell phones with integrated still and video cameras. It's a personal privacy issue that's getting lots of attention. In fact, it has reached the point where Korea's Ministry of Information and Communications says it will require the country's cell-phone manufacturers to design all camera and camcorder-equipped mobile handsets so that they make a loud beeping or buzzing sound when they're used to take pictures. (Ironically, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have banned visitors to their facilities from carrying camera-equipped phones to prevent corporate espionage.)
On a much broader scale, with more people depending on wireless rather than wireline communications, leaders in Congress are threatening to force—by legislation, if necessary—wireless carriers to spend more billions of dollars to upgrade their networks. Their concern follows the cell-phone failures during the power blackout in August throughout much of the U.S. northeast and parts of the midwest. From the consumers' point of view, the problem was twofold: The system simply couldn't handle all of the traffic during the power outage, and people couldn't recharge their phones during the blackout.
The industry also is feeling pressure to get more active with the Bush Administration's National Strategy for Secure Cyberspace. Introduced in 2002, top U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials recently threatened industry companies and trade associations with new legislation if they did not voluntarily comply with their national cyberspace plan.
Security is another design issue fraught with legal aspects. Information-technology (IT) executives have been reviewing the security threat created by employees connecting their personal wireless handheld devices to corporate networks. Mobile-equipment manufacturers may not be directly liable for security breaches. However, there's some heat on these companies to fix the problem by eliminating unsecured, employee-owned handheld devices that leave corporate networks vulnerable to data theft, code attacks, and unauthorized access.
On a smaller scale, designers now must respond to a new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirement calling for wireless-phone manufacturers and service providers to make digital wireless phones accessible to people who use hearing aids.
Reprints
