Clarifying Trinko as Precedent in EHR and AI Memory Duty to Deal Cases: A New Institutional Economics Approach

TL;DR

This paper clarifies the legal precedent set by Trinko in the context of electronic health records and AI memory cases, aiming to reduce misapplication errors and promote consistent legal reasoning in future regulations.

Contribution

It introduces a new institutional economics approach to interpret Trinko as a relevant precedent in EHR and AI memory duty cases, addressing common citation errors.

Findings

Identifies prevalent Trinko citation errors in legal cases.

Proposes a framework to correctly apply Trinko in EHR and AI contexts.

Highlights the growing importance of Trinko in future legal decisions.

Abstract

By clarifying the bases for the Verizon Communications Inc. v. Law Offices of Curtis V. Trinko, LLP, 2004 opinion, we hope to reduce two distinct errors. The false positive error is citing Trinko as precedent when it is not. This error is so prevalent it has earned the nickname of Trinko Creep. The false negative error is not citing Trinko when it should be. We argue that this error will be growing in the future as Trinko should be precedent in cases involving regulated access rights to sensitive consumer data in electronic health records and Agentic AI Long Term Memory.