E-TIPS

eBay Inc (eBay), the online auction house, has petitioned the US Supreme Court to decide whether eBay and other companies held liable for patent infringement at trial should be routinely subject to injunctions while their cases are under appeal. With the petition, eBay is attempting to reverse an injunction granted by a US District Court, when the Court found eBay had infringed a patent owned by MercExchange LLC. Later, the decision was upheld in part by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In a decision released on July 29, Her Majesty The Queen v Hamilton, the Supreme Court of Canada wrestled with the degree of intention required to convict a person of counselling others over the Internet to commit credit card fraud.

Microsoft's new policy of scanning computers for illegal software when they contact the site for upgrades or downloads has upset privacy advocates. The policy is intended to fight software piracy, which the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft says accounts for 36% of all software applications in use in Canada. Microsoft says that 35% of the software in use worldwide is counterfeit, at a cost to the software industry last year of $1 billion.

The Alberta Privacy Commissioner has ruled that a library which had installed keystroke logging software on an employee's computer without his knowledge should not have done so. The library argued that the information collected was necessary to monitor the productivity of the employee but the Commissioner found that the library could have used less intrusive means to monitor the employee's work and had made no effort to do so.

Industry Canada publishes a Telecommunications Service Industry Reference Tool (Reference Tool), a frequently amended reference guide with an overview of economic activity in this industry sector in Canada. Recently, the section on the wireless sub-sector has been updated to reflect the rapid changes in that field.

Recently a man was arrested in Florida on a third-degree felony charge of unauthorized access to a computer network for the relatively common practice of using someone else's wireless network. Benjamin Smith III admitted to using the signal from Richard Dinon's wireless network from Smith's laptop while parked outside Dinon's house.

The Alberta Privacy Commissioner (Commissioner) has found two law firms engaged to advise on an M&A transaction to be in breach of Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) when data was posted by the law firms to SEDAR, the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval.

In the past six months, media headlines across North America have clamoured about privacy breaches at companies such as ChoicePoint, the San Jose Medical Group, Boston College and LexisNexis, to name a few. To the uninitiated, the timing and frequency of these breaches may suggest a sudden rash of poor information security practices, increasing sophistication of cyber-criminals, or both. In fact, these types of breaches are not so much new events, as they are the subject of new legal requirements for companies to report them.

Canada recently became the first non-European country to sign a protocol against racism and xenophobic material on the Internet.

The recent decision by Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on satellite radio has received mixed reviews. Although criticized as being a reversal in Canadian broadcasting policy, it is also being praised as striking a difficult compromise.

In a nine-judge unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court has reversed the decision of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc v Grokster

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international, 30-county organization that promotes democracy and free trade, recently released a report (OECD Report) on the current information economy surrounding digital music.

A recent report by e-mail security specialist Pinpoint has found 63% of companies with 1000 or more employees either employ or are planning to employ staff to review company e-mail. The filtering policy, intended to ensure that corporate secrets or confidential financial information doesn't fall into the wrong hands, raises some privacy concerns for employees.

The governments of Canada, the US and Mexico announced on June 27 that they have signed a Framework of Common Principles for Electronic Commerce (E-commerce Framework). Resulting from the announcement of the Security and Prosperity Partnership at the leaders' summit in Texas on March 23, 2005, the goal of the E-commerce Framework is to maintain a predictable and secure online environment which, it is hoped, will foster the adoption of international Internet-based business solutions.

On June 20, the federal government introduced the long-awaited Bill C-60, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, in the House of Commons. In some respects the language of the Bill proved predictable, but there were a few surprises.

On June 20th, the federal Government introduced a bill to amend the Copyright Act. According to the Government press release, Bill C-60 "fulfills the Government's commitment to address short-term copyright reform issues and to update the Copyright Act to meet the challenges and opportunities of the Internet."

Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) has filed a motion seeking enforcement of a $450-million settlement agreement allegedly reached with NTP (see an earlier issue of e-tips®, Vol 3 No 10, January 26, 2005, regarding the Canadian Government's amicus curiae brief in the litigation). NTP is arguing that the settlement agreement was not finalized. Perhaps bolstering its bargaining position, RIM says that it now has a patent workaround that will allow the use of all of RIM's wireless e-mail technology without infringing any of NTP's patents.

A trial judge in a high profile multiple murder case in Vancouver has imposed an innovative media ban in order to keep information from potential jury members.

Equifax Canada Inc (Equifax), a credit reporting company, has announced that it has suffered a security breach, the second in about a year, a breach that has given criminals access to personal information of several hundred Canadians.

In what may ultimately be a significant victory for consumers, the US Supreme Court ruled that pharmaceutical companies are entitled to the benefit of the research "safe harbour" exemption from patent infringement earlier than previously thought permissible. The decision sets aside a holding by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal District and sends the case back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court's determination.