E-TIPS

A recent spate of US litigation has explored property rights in the arrangement of human cadavers, posed in life-like positions. The bodies are partially stripped of skin and muscle tissue to reveal layers below, and are shown skateboarding, dancing and in other poses. The cadavers have been preserved through a process of polymerization called "plastination".

According to news reports, amendments to the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are being crafted with the support of the Bush Administration and will shortly appear before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Advance comments from politicians from both sides indicate that a battle is shaping up over this next round of copyright reform.

A watershed Canadian copyright case recently settled, leaving open the question whether jewellery is a work of art protected by the Copyright Act, as are paintings, music and works of literature, or whether it is merely a "useful article" with a utilitarian function. In the United States, the issue has been resolved "” jewellery is an artistic work and therefore entitled to copyright protection. In both Canada and the US, copyright has a significantly longer term than design protection.

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York has dismissed trade-mark infringement allegations made by Merck & Co Inc (Merck) against several Canadian online pharmacies. The pharmacies purchased "Zocor", the name of Merck's cholesterol reduction drug, as a keyword to trigger the display of links to the online pharmacies' web sites on search result web pages.

In a recent case, the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit applied a federal anti-hacker law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), to an employee's use of trace remover tools to delete data from a laptop provided to him by his employer, a real estate business, International Airport Centers LLC (IAC).

In a remarkable affirmation of the centrality of electronic media to a citizen's life in the 21st Century, the Dutch government will encourage the use by every citizen of a personalized web site. The aim is to give citizens quick access to their records at public institutions and to remind them when to renew important documents, such as a passport or driver's licence, and to make citizens better informed about their tax and social security data.

The English High Court, in its Chancery Division, has rejected a copyright infringement suit brought by plaintiffs Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, against the British publishers of Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code.

"Net Neutrality" refers to the concept that a network should be blind to the content it carries, in order to encourage efficient and innovative use of the network. The Internet has historically been largely neutral to the content it carries, but broadband providers have recently begun exploring methods to offer different levels of network performance based on the type of content being transmitted.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, like so many other industry sectors that are dependent on the Internet, online pharmacies that sprung up in Canada over the past several years to serve international markets are now being pressed to adapt to fast-changing conditions.

In order to update the Canadian Parliament and the public generally on the federal strategy regarding privacy concerns about the transborder and extraterritorial implications of the USA Patriot Act (Act) and the possibility that foreign legislation could affect the protection of Canadians' personal information, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat issued a report (Report) on March 28, 2006.

The convergence of the newly-released Report from the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel (Panel) and recent comments of the Minister of Industry make it likely that the Canadian telecommunications sector will soon undergo fundamental changes, including relaxation of foreign ownership restrictions.

On March 13, 2006, in Biovail Corporation v Canada (Minister of National Health and Welfare) 2006 FCA 105, the Federal Court of Appeal affirmed a decision of the Federal Court dismissing an application by Biovail Corporation (Biovail) for judicial review of the Minister of Health's (Minister) refusal to list a patent on the Patent Register.

On March 21st, French lawmakers approved legislation that would force Apple Computer Inc (Apple), Sony Corp, and other digital content providers to share copy-protection technologies with their rivals. The bill is designed to prevent the control of the online music market by any single music-playing technology.

On March 3, in Canadian Private Copying Collective v 9087-0718 Québec Inc, the Federal Court of Canada held that 9087-0718 Québec Inc (Numbered Company) was subject to penalty under section 88(2) of the Copyright Act (Act) for failing to pay the private copying levy under Part VIII of the Act in the amount of $900,123.77.

E-TIPS® recently reported (Vol 4, No 15, February 1, 2006) that the US Department of Justice (DOJ), in an effort to collect data to defend the Child Online Protection Act, had filed a motion to compel Google Inc (Google) to turn over information on millions of its users' search queries.

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has commissioned an Independent Review (Review) of the country's intellectual property regime to determine whether it is effectively encouraging innovation. Appointed to lead the Review is Andrew Gowers, the former editor of the London-based financial newspaper, Financial Times.

Research in Motion Inc (RIM) has settled its long-running patent dispute with NTP with a US$ 613 million licencing deal. The case has prompted some commentators to question the viability of certain aspects of the current US patent system.

Recently, Justice Roger Hughes of the Federal Court signaled that in considering whether to grant an extraordinary pre-trial inspection order (Anton Piller Order), such an Order should be granted "only in the most exceptional circumstances".

The new Spanish electronic National Identity Card aims to provide secure identification and authentication for a variety of online transactions, from e-government services to e-commerce and Internet banking. The card, about the size of a credit card, contains a microchip which will store an electronic certificate to authenticate the identity of the cardholder, as well as a digital signature, a digitized fingerprint and a photograph of the cardholder. The current cost estimate of the card rollout is nearly 150 million euros.

Recently, on February 21, the European Union's Working Party on the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data (Working Party) adopted an Opinion on privacy issues related to the provision of e-mail screening services.