E-TIPS

Where do you sue when the damages were incurred over the Internet? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has recently put its mind to the thorny issue of forum in the unpublished case of Northwest Healthcare Alliance Inc. v. Healthgrades.com Inc.

The government of the United Kingdom has given Open Source Software (OSS) a boost with the release of a new policy endorsing its use alongside traditional proprietary software. Open Source software is not free. It makes source code publicly available under a licence defined by the Open Source Initiative. The license allows the software to be freely modified and improved, so long as it is redistributed under the same open source licence terms. The Linux operating system is perhaps the most successful and best-known OSS product.

On October 11, 2002, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Intel's 64-bit Itanium and Itanium 2 processors infringed two of Intergraph's U.S. patents for Parallel Instruction Computing technology ("PIC"). In his decision, Judge T. John Ward found both of Intergraph's patents to be "valid and enforceable" and held that Intergraph was entitled to an injunction on the sale of Itanium processors.

On September 26, 2002, the Minister of Consumer and Business Services introduced Bill 180, to provide a more comprehensive legislative regime for consumer protection in Ontario. Bill 180 will consolidate and update six existing consumer protection laws to provide efficient consumer protection to meet the realities of the digital economy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Cir.) recently considered whether Netscape customers were bound by the arbitration clause in an end-user license agreement. In Specht v. Netscape, Netscape customers sued the company alleging that AOL's plug-in software, Smart Download, invaded their privacy by transmitting personal information back to the software provider when the plug-in was used to browse the Internet.

The World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") recently released the first decision pursuant to the new policy on .name generic top level domains ("TLDs"). The Eligibility Requirements Dispute Resolution Policy for .name ("ERDRP") was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN") on August 1, 2001 and governs the .name generic TLDs and related disputes.

Recently, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner released his findings on a complaint by two individuals that a courier company had improperly collected and posted their electronic signatures on the company's website without their consent. The Commissioner found that the courier company had breached the Personal Information and Electric Documents Act (PIPEDA) when it collected electronic signatures by requiring recipients to sign electronically as a condition for receiving their parcels.

A blind man, Robert Gumson, and a Florida based disability rights group, Access Now, have filed lawsuits against Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. Gumson and Access Now are claiming that the airline companies' websites do not comply with the Americans With Disability Act (ADA). The airlines' websites are incompatible with the screen reader software program that blind individuals use to convert website contents into speech.

The U.S. Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) recently vacated an injunction against Ruth Perryman, which prohibited her from using the term "BEANIE" or "BEANIES" or any colorable imitation. Ty Inc., the manufacturer of Beanie Babies brought the suit for trademark infringement against Perryman who sells second-hand beanbag stuffed animals - including Ty's Beanie Babies – on her Web site (http://www.bargainbeanies.com).

Recently, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario released a report entitled: Privacy and the Digital Rights Management (DRM): An Oxymoron? The report details the advent of DRM and discusses how DRM has evolved.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sued Sharman Networks Ltd. (Sharman), for contributory copyright infringement for distributing its popular Kazaa file exchange software. This case presents two unique aspects which were not present in the Napster case. First, KaZaa does not control users through a central registry of all files on all computers, a fact which could provide Sharman with a defense to the U.S. action and distinguish it from Napster and other such cases.

On October 3rd, 2002, the Canadian Ministry of Industry released its much anticipated report on the Copyright Act. The comprehensive report assesses the operation of the Act and identifies outstanding and emerging issues that need to be addressed.

In a meeting held last week, the Patent Policy Working Group ("PPWG") of the Internet standards body, World Wide Web Consortium ("W3C"), voted to recommend to W3C a royalty-free policy. The policy takes the position that W3C will not approve a Recommendation (effectively, a standard) on a web-related technology if it is aware that a patent exists covering the technology, which patent is not available for licensing on royalty-free terms.

As the popularity of online pharmacies grows, so do the concerns surrounding them. Poor customer service is often cited by consumers when using online stores. A larger concern to regulators, however, is the ease with which one can order drugs online without a prescription.

Court officials in Yakima, Washington have turned to technology in an effort to reduce court backlog. The Yakima County District Court, whose local court rules allow for the submission of a written statement instead of appearing at a hearing, has implemented a program which allows people to respond to public infraction tickets (such as traffic tickets) by emailing their explanations and excuses to a judge.

Effective July 1, 2003, non-EU companies delivering electronic services over the Internet will have to collect value added tax (VAT) from their EU customers. Under European Council Directive 2002/38/EC, suppliers of electronic services will have to register with a Member State of their choice through a simplified registration scheme. Tax collected from EU customers will then be remitted to the Member State, who will re-allocate the VAT revenue to the country of the customer. The measures are designed to level the playing field between EU and non-EU suppliers.

The Ontario government is considering legislation to strengthen online consumer protection. The Minister of Consumer and Business Services ("Ministry") announced the government's intentions at a recent public forum on Internet fraud. The Minister said new legislation would require disclosure of a physical address and would strengthen enforcement and penalties for Internet scams. The Minister said tougher disclosure rules would let consumers know exactly whom they are dealing with.

In a case involving the video footage depicting the beating of Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently overturned the decision of the Federal District Court and ruled that the Los Angeles News Service, Inc. (LANS), the owners of the copyright in the footage, were permitted to sue CBS Broadcasting, Inc. for copyright infringement. The District Court's ruling in favour of Courtroom Television Network (Court TV) was upheld.

RIM of Waterloo (Ontario) has continued its practice of aggressively enforcing its intellectual property rights by commencing proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware against Handspring of Mountain View, California, for allegedly infringing a US patent RIM owns. In an announcement made on September 19, 2002, RIM said that it is seeking a declaration of infringement, an injunction against further infringement and damages.

In Dan Zuckerman v. Vincent Peeris, a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel has held that a complaint brought by Complainant, Dan Zuckerman, is an attempt at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking of the domain name shoes.biz. Disputes regarding .biz domain names are governed by the Start-up Trademark Opposition Policy for .BIZ (STOP), which defines reverse domain name hijacking as "using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name."