E-TIPS

On Sunday September 7, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved to dissolve Parliament and called a federal general election. As a result, all bills which were not enacted by Parliament have "˜died on the order paper', including the proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs Act (Bill C-51), the proposed Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (Bill C-52) and proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (Bill C-61).

A new Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (Centre) is set to open in Hamilton, Ontario and is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. Having links with McMaster University and the McMaster Nuclear Reactor, the Centre's goal is to develop commercial applications for molecular imaging technology.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently considered the issue of open source software copyright infringement in the case of Robert Jacobsen v Matthew Katzer and Kamind Associates Inc., (doing business as KAM Industries) (No 2008 – 1001, August 13, 2008).

In Eli Lilly Company v Human Genome Sciences Inc, [2008] EWHC 1903 (Pat), the English High Court of Justice recently clarified the law relating to the industrial application requirement, a case which addressed the patentability of nucleotide sequences discovered through bioinformatics. It involved an attack by Eli Lilly Company (Lilly) on the validity of European Patent No 0,938,804 (the "˜804 Patent) owned by Human Genome Sciences Inc (HGS), which disclosed the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the cytokine Neutrokine-alpha. Lilly alleged that the "˜804 Patent lacked industrial applicability as required by Section 1 of the UK Patents Act 1977.

In the preceding issue ("VoIP Call Centre Sends Ambulance to Wrong Address and CRTC Requests Remedial Legislation", Vol 7, No 4, August 13, 2008), E-TIPS® reported on Canadian regulations as they apply to 911 services by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers.

A British woman, Isabella Barwinska, has been ordered by London's Patents County Court to pay £6,087 plus costs of £10,000 for placing a copyright-protected computer game, Dream Pinball 3D, on a peer-to-peer file sharing network.

The University of Toronto (U of T) and its SciNet Consortium of 10 affiliated research hospitals, together with IBM Canada, have announced that they will create Canada's most powerful and energy-efficient supercomputer. It will be the second-most powerful computer owned by a university anywhere and among the 20 most powerful in the world. Another perspective is that it will be 30 times more powerful than the country's current champion, the system used for Environment Canada's weather forecasting.

Three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students planned to give a presentation on their research into the vulnerabilities of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) subway payment system. The presentation was scheduled for the long-running DefCon annual hacker conference in Las Vegas and, it was claimed, it would demonstrate a relatively weak RFID encryption system. A fast-paced series of litigation steps ensued.

Proposed Legislation for the Regulation of Food, Health and Consumer Products in Canada (PDF) Gordon S. Jepson and Lauren R. Lodenquai

The technical barriers to delivering assured emergency 911 services to voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) users have been known since at least 2005 (see E-TIPS ®, “Canadian VoIP Provider Announces Service in Uncertain Regulatory Climate”, Vol 3, No 21 April 13, 2005 and “Emergency Services and VoIP Callers”, Vol 4, No 4, August 17, 2005). Also in 2005, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) required service providers to notify customers of the technical limitations of VoIP.

In a previous issue of E-TIPS®, "US Appeals Court Approves Customs Officer's Search of Laptop Computer" (Vol 6, No 22, May 7, 2008), we reported that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that US customs officers do not need reasonable suspicion to search the files on a person's computer or personal electronic storage device at the border.

Canada's Information Commissioner (Commissioner) has appealed a decision of the Federal Court that, in the Commissioners' view, substantially restricts the application of the Access to Information Act (Act) to records held by officials within the offices of federal Cabinet Ministers.

In a previous issue of E-TIPS®, ("Unauthorized Online Scrabble and the Changing Face of Board Games", Vol 6, No 19, March 26, 2008Vol 6 No 19, March 26, 2008), we reported that Hasbro and Mattel had threatened legal action against the developers of "Scrabulous", an online game resembling "SCRABBLE", and that, in addition, they had asked Facebook to shut down the version appearing on its web site.

On August 11, 2008, a massive, three-volume, 2700-page report, Report ALRC 108 (Privacy Report), was delivered by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) to the Australian federal government on the topic of privacy laws. Entitled For Your Information: Australian Privacy Law and Practice, the Privacy Report is a comprehensive survey recommending 295 separate changes to be made to laws and practices for government agencies, businesses and the private sector, including the introduction of a statutory cause of action to individuals for invasion of privacy.

On August 1, 2008, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that Comcast Corp (Comcast) had illegally inhibited users of its high-speed Internet service from using file-sharing software such as BitTorrent, a software commonly used for downloading movies, television shows, music and software.

The Supreme Court of Canada (Court) has denied an attempt by the federal Privacy Commissioner (Commissioner) to review documents for which solicitor-client privilege has been claimed.

On July 9, 2008, the Quebec Superior Court issued a permanent injunction shutting down , a file-sharing site specializing in Quebec content. The action was brought by ADISQ and APFTQ, organizations representing the Quebec recording and film industries, as well as other interested national media organizations, including the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

In the past few months, there have been a number of significant transactions between innovative and generic drug companies, including deals between GlaxoSmithKline Inc and Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Limited, and between Daiichi Sankyo Company, Limited and Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited.

Earlier this year, leaders of the G8 countries convened in Japan, in part, to discuss the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). On July 8, 2008, the G8 Intellectual Property Experts' Group released its Report of Discussions: G8 Intellectual Property Experts' Group Meeting G8 Intellectual Property Experts' Group Meeting, which recommended "concrete measures towards realizing a well functioning and efficient intellectual property (IP) system and for combating counterfeiting and piracy."

An Australian plaintiff, Robert Griffin, has been awarded damages by the British Columbia Supreme Court (Court) for libel and breach of privacy for comments published on web sites by the defendant, Patrick Michael Sullivan, between 2003 and 2008. The comments were part of a series of conflicting personal assertions by the parties against each other regarding statements made on an Internet user group for suicide support.