E-TIPS

The Federal government has begun conducting a closed consultation regarding legislation it will propose to compel Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to surrender personal information about their customers to the police. Privacy and civil-liberties groups were concerned that the government sought to expand police powers without seeking contrary viewpoints.

Concern is growing in Europe that US decisions regarding net neutrality will affect Europe because of the high percentage of Internet content originating in the United States.

An Ontario court recently issued an interesting decision in an ongoing copyright battle between Canadian company Research in Motion Limited (RIM) and two US companies, Atari Inc and its affiliate Atari Interactive Inc (collectively, Atari). The case involves claims by Atari that the BrickBreaker and Meteor Crusher games available on RIM's Blackberry devices infringe copyright in Atari's Breakout and Asteroids games.

Canada's Privacy Commissioner has raised concerns over street level photography which is publicly available through Google Street View. Google Street View is an application within Google Maps, an online mapping program, which provides street level panoramas of several US cities. These street level images are captured from high-resolution video cameras mounted on vehicles which drive through city streets. These images are collected, stored and sold by Immersive Media Corporation (Immersive), a company located in Alberta.

The European Communities Court of First Instance (Court) has upheld a 2004 decision of the EU Commission (Commission) holding that Microsoft Corp (Microsoft) had abused its market dominance by leveraging its near monopoly in the PC operating systems market to the work group server operating system and media player markets (For a discussion of the 2004 ruling, see the earlier article in E-TIPS®, "Europeans Impose Record Fine on Microsoft for Anti-Competitive Practices", Vol 2, No 21, March 31, 2004). The Court affirmed the fine (€497m) ordered by the Commission, as well as the Commission's orders that Microsoft disclose interoperability information and offer a version of its PC operating system without Windows Media Player.

The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, has ordered the Ottawa Police Services (Ottawa Police) and City of Ottawa to stop collecting personal information on individuals selling goods at used-goods stores and to destroy all personal information collected. The Commissioner launched an investigation into the collection practices of the Ottawa Police after receiving a complaint.

The Canadian Special Access Program (PDF) By Janet N. Chong

According to a recent newspaper report, a doctor from the Hospital for Sick Children (Hospital), one of Canada’s leading hospitals located in Toronto, while traveling to a medical conference via Toronto’s Pearson International airport, lost an external hard drive containing the personal health information of 3,300 patients.

A US District Court has held that portions of the revised USA Patriot Act (Patriot Act) are unconstitutional. In Doe v Gonzales (Gonzales, 04 Civ 2614), US District Judge Victor Marrero ruled that the provisions of the Patriot Act which deal with the non-disclosure of National Security Letters (NSL) violate First Amendment rights, while the standard of review of these non-disclosure requirements offends the constitutional separation of powers. Judge Marrero commented that these provisions put citizens in danger of "far-reaching invasions of liberty".

Even though the Chinese government strictly monitors Internet usage and bans content that it finds to be politically or morally offensive, it appears that nudity, profanity, illegal gambling, and pirated copies of music, books, and movies are spreading throughout China-based web servers.

After much contentious debate both inside and outside Congress, by a vote of 220-175 the lower chamber has passed a Patent Reform Bill, HR 2795. The debate leading up to the vote was marked by shifting alliances between a variety of groups and industry sectors. Overall, the two camps that seemed most identified with a single position were the giant software providers such as Microsoft on one side (generally favouring the Bill) and drug and biotech companies on the other (generally opposing many of the Bill's provisions).

The US Federal Circuit established a standard for evaluating willful patent infringement in its 1983 decision Underwater Devices Inc v Morrison-Knudsen Co (Underwater Devices, 717 F2d 1380). The standard created an affirmative duty for potential infringers who had actual notice of another's patent rights, to exercise due care to determine whether their own actions infringed those rights. This requirement to exercise due care includes a duty to obtain competent legal advice before initiating any possibly infringing activities.

The European Commission (EC) recently issued a consolidated jurisdictional notice (Notice) under Council Regulation (EC) No. 139/2004 (Merger Regulation), which includes guidance on the regulation of outsourcing and "full-function joint ventures". The Merger Regulation is applicable when there is a concentration of control or a change in control among two or more undertakings on a lasting basis.

In the August 14, 2007 edition of the Canadian Patent Office Record, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) stated its position that electromagnetic and acoustic signals are not themselves patentable subject matter because they are forms of energy, which CIPO considers to be distinct from matter. CIPO relies on its position that an “art” or a “process” must produce a result or effect by a physical or chemical action. CIPO similarly rejects the possibility that such signals per se could be a “machine”, a “composition of matter” or a “manufacture”, each of which CIPO asserts requires a physical embodiment which it claims signals lack. (This position has no impact on the patentability of process or apparatus inventions where signals are generated, transmitted, received or processed).

In a recent UK case in the Court of Queen's Bench, it was held that where contact lists on Outlook or other e-mail programs are stored on an employer's e-mail system and backed up by the employer, the contact list belongs to the employer. This applies even where no express limitation has been provided by the employer.

Earlier this month the High Court of Chennai rejected Swiss drug manufacturer Novartis's claim that section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act was non-compliant with the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. The Chennai Patent Office had previously rejected a patent on the crystalline form of Novartis's cancer drug imatinib mesylate (Gleevec), based on section 3(d).

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published significant changes to the rules of practice for patent applications on August 21, 2007. The new rules, which take effect on November 1, 2007, will restrict the number of times applications can be examined and make it more expensive to prepare applications with more than 25 claims. The USPTO justifies the rule changes as necessary to deal with increasing volumes of patent applications by improving examination efficiency.

Within just 30 years, the Chinese city of Shenzhen has grown from a village into the most developed city in China with a population of 12.4 million people. Although it is one of the most prosperous cities in China, Shenzhen apparently suffers from widespread crime and prostitution. To combat illegal activities, 180,000 closed circuit TV (CCTV) cameras have already been installed throughout the city.

Symantec Corporation (Symantec), an Internet security firm, discovered a security breach on the job recruitment web site Monster.com after noting phishing e-mails were being sent to Monster.com users containing personal information of the users.

The question of so-called “grey marketing” or parallel imports continues to bedevil Canadian case law, having the potential to bring into play a challenging mixture of the law of contract, competition, trade-mark and copyright.