E-TIPS

Earlier this month, Privacy Commissioners from 40 countries – including Canada – met in Switzerland for the 27th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC).

On September 1, 2005, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled (Blizzard Entertainment Inc v Jung et al, No 04-3654) on the "fair use" right to reverse engineer software and create programs that are interoperable with older ones.

Dr Kai-Fu Lee (Lee) had been a Vice-President of Microsoft since August, 2000 and was a party to a non-competition agreement. While still on a sabbatical, in July 2005, Lee was contacted and hired by Google as Vice-President of Engineering and as President of Google China.

Along with just about every product, now it appears that phone records are being sold online. Recently, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging it to establish more stringent security standards for telecommunication carriers in order to protect its customers' personal information. In its petition, EPIC argues that the provisions of the current US Telecommunications Act do not adequately protect consumers from unauthorized third parties obtaining access to records and exploiting such data for personal and financial gain.

In Symbol Technologies Inc et al v Lemelson Medical Educational & Research Foundation, 04-1451, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision that prevents patent holders from exercising their rights if they have taken an excessively long time to complete the filing process.

Google has launched a new specialty search engine that will enable Internet users to sift through millions of personal journals that are posted online as web logs or "blogs". Google's Blog Search focuses exclusively on material contained in the journals and will allow for searches in a number of languages other than English, including French, Italian, German and Korean.

The Supreme Court of Canada has granted leave to appeal to hear two cases relating to the protection of "famous marks". These are expected to be heard this fall.

A recent US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision has reaffirmed the pre-eminence of the specification over dictionary definitions when construing the meaning of terms of patent claims. The court also clarified when dictionary definitions can be used for patent claim construction. US patent claims are to be interpreted in light of the knowledge of a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing. Such a person is deemed to have read the claims in light of the intrinsic evidence of the inventors lexicography – the patent specification, and file history.

Since July 26, 2004, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office has been able to search and examine PCT applications filed on behalf of Canadian applicants. CIPO has recently released a practice notice to applicants clarifying its treatment of international applications claiming methods of medical treatment. Under the practice notice, CIPO indicates that it will not search:

On September 5, 2005, Australian Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox ruled that Kazaa's popular file-sharing service violated Australia's copyright law by authorizing users to infringe music companies' copyright in sound recordings.

As recently reported by Associated Press, none of five US federal agencies that employ electronic data mining (including the FBI and the IRS) complied with all existing rules for the gathering and retention of information from citizens.

=Preliminary findings of a survey released by the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) show that Canadian companies are investing significantly less than US counterparts in information and communications technology (ICT). If these findings prove to be valid, they could be linked to the widening labour productivity gap between the two countries.

The federal government will soon table a bill granting police greater powers to pry in cyberspace. On August 19, 2005, in a speech to the Canadian Association of Police Boards, the Minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, confirmed that "lawful access" legislation will shortly be presented to Cabinet for final approval before being tabled in the House of Commons.

Although it has recently hit some potholes, Google Print, the Internet-based library developed by search engine giant Google, continues to move ahead with its goal of making the text of thousands of books available and searchable on the Internet.

Because of privacy concerns with third countries, in early July the European Parliament rejected an agreement (Canada/EU Agreement) between the EU and Canadian authorities for sharing airline passenger data in the interests of national security. Previously, the Parliament opposed a similar accord between the EU and the United States.

Florida-based Snipermail.com, an email marketing contractor, and its owner Scott Levine, were convicted of stealing 1.6 billion customer records from data management company Acxiom Corp. It is the largest such theft the U.S. government has prosecuted to date.

On August 19, a Texas jury opened what may be an entirely new chapter in pharmaceutical litigation. In the first civil trial against Merck & Co Inc (Merck) relating to the painkiller Vioxx (Ernst et al v Merck & Co Inc), the jury found Merck to have been negligent in designing and marketing the drug and that its negligence was the proximate cause of Ernst's death in 2001.

Telus Inc (Telus), one of Canada's largest ISPs, in the course of a labour dispute with the Telecommunications Workers Union (Union), blocked two web sites associated with the Union. In doing so, however, Telus also unintentionally blocked at least 766 other web sites, including one for an engineering company and one for breast cancer fundraising. The filtering affected almost one million Telus subscribers.

As Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services move into the consumer mainstream, emergency service providers are becoming more vocal about the potential difficulties in delivering emergency services to VoIP users.

A US court recently found that search engine company Google is partially liable in a closely-watched trade-mark infringement suit. The August 8, 2005 written opinion of the Justice Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, expanding on an oral opinion from the Court last December, found that Google's practice of including trade-marks in the text of sponsored links could cause consumer confusion.