E-TIPS

Trade-mark counsel for Google recently sent "wordspy.com" ("Wordspy") a letter asking it to "make sure that when people use "˜Google,' they are referring to the services our company provides and not to Internet searching in general." Wordspy is an online dictionary that references newly coined words used in the media. It had defined "google" as a verb meaning "to search information on the Web, particularly using the Google search engine." In response, Wordspy added a trademark designation so that the term now appears as "Google™" to satisfy the company.

The Ontario Privacy Commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, has urged companies to review their policies and procedures for the handling and destruction of personal information records. This recommendation comes in the wake of the unintentional release of the highly sensitive health information of an Ontario woman.

Mrs. Fields Cookies and the Hershey Food Corporation have settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the alleged violation of a Rule enacted by the FTC pursuant to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (Rule). This Rule prohibits operators of commercial websites from collecting personal information from children under 13 without having first obtained the verifiable consent of a parent or guardian first.

Last month, the Canadian-based Zi Corporation was granted a Chinese patent for its Chinese text input system. The patent covers a method of offering Chinese characters or partial Chinese characters, and word associations by inputting Chinese stroke or phonetic elements. This technology allows Chinese characters to be inputted into a cellular phone for instant messaging more easily.

Following David M. Rocci's guilty plea for conspiring to import, market and sell circumvention devices in December 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice recently seized the website, www.iSONEWS.com, which was a website dedicated to online copyright piracy. In particular, Mr. Rocci was involved in the marketing and sale of the "mod" chips, which were designed to circumvent copyright protections built into games consoles.

In Connecticut Department of Public Safety et al. v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Second Circuit's decision that online sex offender registries violate the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The respondent, a sex offender subject to this law, argued that under procedural due process, he and those similarly situated were denied a liberty interest where the state refused to grant them an opportunity to contest the fact that they are "currently dangerous".

Recently, Google was granted a United States Patent for a method of determining the relevance ranking of web pages found as a result of entering search queries. The grant of US Patent 6,529,903 to Google may affect other companies that are in the process of developing technology to search web pages and intelligently rank the results in relation to the queries.

A working group comprised of industry trade groups, consumer rights advocates and the governments of Canada, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec have announced the development of a voluntary Canadian Code of Practise for Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce ("Code").

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office ("CIPO") will no longer publish a paper copy version of the Canadian Patent Office Record ("CPOR"). The CPOR will now be distributed exclusively online at CIPO's website.

In the first patent of its kind to be granted in the European Community, New York-based online claims mediation company, Cybersettle, Inc., has received a UK patent on its method for settling disputes. Cybersettle provides confidential claim settlements by matching offers and demands via a secure website. The company is also the assignee of U.S. Patent No. 6,330,551 for the "Computerized Dispute Resolution System and Method".

The United States Court of Appeal for the Sixth Circuit reversed a decision of the District Court and dissolved both preliminary injunctions preventing the defendant-appellant, Henry Mishkoff, from using a series of domain names including domain names that criticized the plaintiff-appellee, the Taubman Company.

In an attempt to stop doctors and pharmacies from issuing prescriptions over the Internet without actually performing physical exams, California state regulators have revoked the license of a California doctor and levied $48 million in fines against six out-of-state online doctors. Regulators cited concerns over the lack of consistent screening between online pharmacies and stated that patients who are not examined thoroughly may be more susceptible to reactions or complications.

The Canadian Competition Bureau ("the Bureau"), which is responsible for administration and enforcement of the Competition Act ("the Act"), recently released a Bulletin on its approach to enforcing the Act concerning misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices on the Internet. The primary focus of the Bulletin is on commercial web sites and marketing strategies using e-mail. Other channels of communications such as chat rooms or newsgroups may also come within the Act.

The United States Court of Appeal for the 2nd Circuit has reversed a lower court's finding that laws prohibiting the sale of cigarettes over the Internet are unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Federal Court of Appeal recently affirmed a lower court's decision in a patent infringement dispute between Intel Corporation ("Intel") and Via Technologies, Inc. ("Via"). Intel had brought an action against Via alleging infringement of its U.S. Patent No. 6,006,291 ("the 291 patent"). In response, Via counterclaimed against Intel alleging that the 291 patent was invalid for indefiniteness. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held that Via did not infringe the patent on the basis that it was licensed to use it. The court also dismissed Via's counterclaim.

In the recent case of Schmidheiny v. Weber, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was faced with the issue of whether the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") could be applied to a domain name registered before the Act was enacted. At issue was the defendant's registration and attempted sale of the domain "schmidheiny.com" to the plaintiff, Mr. Schmidheiny.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled in Remsberg v. Docusearch, Inc. that online investigation companies (and all those dealing in third party information) may be liable for harm resulting from the release of third party information to clients. Specifically, the Court held that the foreseeable risk of criminal harm caused by stalking and identity theft outweigh the normal presumption that a private actor will not be liable for the criminal attacks of third parties.

Filtering the Internet by blocking IP addresses is imprecise and overbroad, says a recent study from Harvard University. The study, conducted by Benjamin Edelman of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, found that over 87% of active websites resided on servers with two or more domain names. Almost 70% of active websites resided on servers with 50 or more domains.

On February 2, 2003, many online retailers in the U.S., including Amazon.com and retailers hosted by Amazon.com, began collecting sales taxes in the state where the consumer made the order. For some of these companies, this new practice is part of an amnesty agreement with 38 states and the District of Columbia which agreed not to charge for back taxes owed, if the companies began voluntarily collecting the taxes.

In the recent case of Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a lower court's finding for the plaintiff's copyright infringement and breach of contract claims and rejected the defendant's patent invalidity claim.