E-TIPS

The Canadian Patent Office has clarified the rules regarding a "small entity", that is, an entity with less than 50 employees, which has not licensed or given as security its rights to the patent in question. The Patent Office is confirming the entity status of all patentees and applicants by requiring that any fees paid at a small entity rate after June 2, 2007 be accompanied by a small entity declaration, if one is not already on file. A failure to submit a small entity declaration in this circumstance may lead to abandonment.

In November 2006, the Minister of National Revenue (MNR) applied for and obtained an order (Order) from the Federal Court of Canada (Court), without notice to the respondents, against two affiliated companies, eBay Canada Limited and eBay CS Vancouver (collectively, eBay), owned ultimately by an offshore corporation, eBay Inc.

Two recent decisions in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Court), In re Stephen Comiskey and In re Petrus Nuijten, have restricted the availability of patents for processes by requiring that the processes be tied to otherwise patentable subject matter. Stephen Comiskey appealed the rejection of his claims related to an arbitration method.

The US House of Representatives has passed the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (Act), which was signed into law by the President on September 27, 2007 (for a discussion of the version of the bill previously passed by the US Senate, see the earlier article in E-TIPS®, "US Congress Moves to Expand FDA Powers in Monitoring Drug Safety" Vol 5, No 24, June 6, 2007).

New Zealand's Police Act was enacted in 1958 and the government realized that it needed to be updated to meet contemporary policing challenges. As a result, the New Zealand government launched an 18-month long review of the Police Act (statute) and sought public consultation as part of the review.

On October 4, 2007, a US federal jury ordered Ms Jammie Thomas to pay $222,000 to copyright owners for making copyrighted music available online, the first such suit to result in a verdict.

On September 19, 2007, the Commissioner of Patents granted a Canadian generic pharmaceutical company, Apotex Inc (Apotex), an authorization to manufacture certain anti-retroviral pharmaceuticals for the treatment of HIV/AIDS for export to Rwanda. The companies holding patents in respect of these pharmaceuticals consented to Apotex's application. This is the first authorization under Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR).

Europe's top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), has clarified that the shape of a product cannot constitute a trade-mark. G-Star International BV (G-Star) had successfully registered two trade-marks on the shape, stitching and cuts of some of its jeans. Benetton Group SpA (Benetton) allegedly sold jeans that infringed G-Star's marks. When G-Star sued for infringement, Benetton counter-claimed to have the trade-marks cancelled. The dispute made its way through local courts to the Dutch Supreme Court, which then requested the ECJ to clarify the law regarding shape marks.

© 2007, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Amy-Lynne Williams INTRODUCTION If you have ever downloaded a 99¢ song from iTunes.com or used a transit payment card to take the subway to work, you are player in the new world of electronic micropayments. The term "micropayments" usually refers to small payments, of a few cents to about $10.00.

Part One © 2007, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Amy-Lynne Williams Outsourcing is not new – it used to be variously called data processing management, facilities management and service bureau processing. Regardless of what it is called, basically it involves a customer giving responsibility to an outsourcer for the operation and maintenance of all or part of the customer's IT operations or the operation of a business unit.

© 2007, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Amy-Lynne Williams and Michael Erdle INTRODUCTION Today, when we speak about outsourcing, we could be talking about domestic outsourcing, near-shore outsourcing, off-shore outsourcing or global outsourcing. Global outsourcing is different from offshore outsourcing.

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".