E-TIPS

Microsoft has attempted to stake out its own exclusive territory in the XML processing field. XML has been adopted as an industry-wide standard for exchanging and re-using data on the World Wide Web and elsewhere by different systems. Recently, patent applications in Europe (EP1376387) and Canada (CA2427122) filed by Microsoft came to light. These applications cover methods for a software program to read an XML document created by a word processor. (An earlier corresponding US application is apparently pending, but its content is yet to be disclosed.) This family of patent applications constitutes one of several owned by Microsoft directed to XML-related technology which have been recently published in a number of countries.

The case of Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer who has been at the centre of a six-year-long legal battle involving traditional farmers, environmentalists and the biotechnology industry, has been heard in the Supreme Court of Canada this week.

In a recent decision, Gerolsteiner Brunnen & Co v Putsch, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that a trade-mark owner in the European Union cannot prevent a third party from using a phonetically similar geographical indication if that use is in accordance with honest practices in industrial or commercial matters.

The saga of the Eolas patent infringement law suit against Microsoft continues (see E-TIPSâ„¢ Vol 2, No 11, November 6, 2003). A federal judge in Chicago on January 14, 2004 upheld the jury verdict for Eolas Technologies. Microsoft has 30 days within which to launch an appeal.

The last issue of E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2, No 15, January 8, 2004) reported that the Ontario government had released draft Regulations of its unproclaimed Consumer Protection Act, 2002 for public comment. On December 19, 2003, Nova Scotia's new Internet Sales Contract Regulations (ISCR) under its Consumer Protection Act, 1989 came into effect. The regulations are based on the Internet Sales Contract Harmonization Template, a framework, endorsed by federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for consumer affairs in May 2001, that covers online contract formation, cancellation rights, credit card charge-backs and information provision.

In what may be the first Indian court order on spamming, a judge in New Delhi has ordered a local company to stop jamming an internet services provider based in India.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (US PTO) has released a proposal that would see sweeping changes to its admission and practice rules for patent representatives. The proposed rules, published in the December 12, 2003 Federal Register, are open for comments until February 10, 2004. The proposed rules include changes to practice requirements, as well as, a new section of detailed ethics rules.

On December 17, 2003, the Ontario government introduced draft legislation for a proposed Health Information Protection Act. If passed, the legislation would set clear rules for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal health information in Ontario.

The Government of Quebec is set to challenge the federal law governing the collection and use of personal information.

The lower price of prescription drugs in Canada is drawing more US cities and States to actively consider purchasing drugs from Canada, a practice encouraged by the ready availability of drugs by direct online purchases.

Microsoft recently received a US patent (serial no. 6,662,341) for its technology for launching an application from within a browser such as its Internet Explorer or Netscape's Navigator. The application, a standard HTML program (or written in a scripting language such as VBScript or JavaScript), runs in its own window outside the browser and free of the security restrictions of the browser. Taking advantage of the relaxed security enables the application to do such things as read from and write to a storage medium on a user's local computer.

Taking another step towards implementing the province's unproclaimed Consumer Protection Act, 2002 (the CPA), the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business Services released draft Regulations for public comment in mid-December 2003.

The last issue of E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2, No 14, December 18, 2003) reported that the Canadian Government intended to amend the Patent Act to address fee correction as a result of the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Dutch Industries Ltd. v The Commissioner of Patents, et al. The proposed amendments have now been released and the Call for Comments welcomes submissions until March 31, 2004.

Did you know that it is possible to track the administrative status of a Canadian patent or pending application online? Since August 2003, the Canadian Patent Database has included administrative status information linked from any Canadian patent or patent application published in the database. The administrative status information includes filing date, priority information, national phase entry (if applicable), publication date, request for examination date, issue date, and lapse date.

A previous issue of E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2, No 8, September 25, 2003) reported that a US District Court in Virginia had ruled in favour of WhenU.com, a distributor of free advertising software, in a case involving trade-mark and copyright violations alleged to result from pop-up ads for competing companies. In November, in a similar lawsuit brought in Detroit, the Court held that consumers were not likely to be confused by the source of the pop-up ads and denied an injunction against WhenU.

In December 2003, the Connecticut District Court upheld the forum selection clause in America Online's (AOL) Member Agreement and granted its motion to dismiss a suit launched by a subscriber.

On December 3, 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada began hearing arguments on the question of whether domestic and international Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should pay a tariff for music downloaded by Canadians.

Until recently, typing the name of a prescription drug into an Internet search engine would produce an array of ads from unlicensed pharmacies offering the drug for sale. These unlicensed pharmacies used the targeted advertising feature offered by many search engines to directly reach their audience and to bypass the regulations surrounding the sale of prescription drugs.

On December 12, 2003, the Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision on private copying levies for 2003 and 2004 and suggested that music downloaded from peer-to-peer (P2P) networks was legal, provided it was in accordance with the private copying exemption found under s. 80 of the Copyright Act (the Act).

Back in the 1960s, electronics industry pioneer Gordon Moore of Intel Corp. made a prediction, now immortalized as "Moore's Law", to the effect that transistor density on integrated circuits would continue to double every two years. This prediction of exponential development has largely proven valid, as ever-shrinking transistor size has resulted in increased performance and decreased cost for chips. Partly as a result of this "Law", chips have become the basic component of computers, mobile phones, and just about every other modern electronic device.