E-TIPS

The Federal Court of Canada recently overturned a decision of the Registrar of Trade-marks to refuse to register the trade-mark GRILL GEAR & Design for barbeque accessories.

Javelin Strategy & Research, a San Francisco-based research firm, released its report entitled "Online Banking and Bill Paying: New Protection from Identity Theft" on October 3, 2003.   The report asserts that the practice of paying bills online can help prevent identity theft in two ways.

It is estimated that 750,000 Canadian households currently receive unauthorized satellite signals, either because they are "stolen" from licensed Canadian distributors or because they are received from unlicensed offshore distributors through so-called "grey-market" equipment.   Thus, the term "piracy" to describe this unauthorized activity.

After making numerous amendments, the European Parliament on September 24th passed a resolution for a proposed directive to harmonize rules on software-related patents in its member states. entitled Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions.   Initially drafted by the EU Commission, its aim is to provide clear guidance on what software-related subject matter may be patentable.   Under the proposed Directive, in order for a computer-implemented invention to be patentable, it must make a technical contribution to the state of the art.   An invention will not make a technical contribution merely because it involves the use of a computer, network or other programmable apparatus.   The invention may only be claimed in the patent as a product or a technical production process using hardware under the control of software.

© 2003, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Amy-Lynne Williams (September 25, 2003) Introduction Beginning January 1, 2004, the Federal government's personal privacy protection legislation will come into full force. By that date, most organizations in Canada will either be subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA") or subject to substantially similar provincial privacy legislation.

© 2003, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Amy-Lynne Williams (September 25, 2003) INTRODUCTION All ten provinces in Canada have active, flourishing companies involved in e-commerce and online business and the provincial and federal laws have been changing at a rapid pace to keep up with the demands of an online economy.

On January 1, 2004, the federal government's personal privacy protection legislation will come into full force.   By that date, most organizations in Canada either will be subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA") or subject to substantially similar provincial privacy legislation.

Three parties, Tall Ship Art Productions Ltd. (a private entity), Bluenose II Preservation Trust Society (a charitable trust), and the Government of the Province of Nova Scotia, will soon get their day in court over ownership of rights relating to the name and image of Bluenose II.   The original Bluenose was a famous Nova Scotia-based sailing ship of the early 20th Century.   It appears on Canadian dimes and on Nova Scotia vehicle licence plates.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has granted a motion for summary judgment in favour of WhenU.com Inc, a distributor of free advertising software, against U-Haul International.   U-Haul brought suit against WhenU on a number of different fronts including trade-mark and copyright violations alleged to result from pop-up ads for competing movers, generated by the WhenU software.   The ads appeared to be superimposed on U-Haul's web pages.

On July 9, 2003, Health Canada announced the final version of its policy Interpretation of "Identical Medicinal Ingredient".

A group of Canadian Linux developers and users has banded together to deal with recent legal threats made by The SCO Group (SCO) against creators and users of the popular open source software.   The new group is called the Canadian Linux Interests Coalition (CLIC).

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill (HR 49) to permanently extend the moratorium on tax-free access to Internet services.   As originally signed into law in 1998, the moratorium was set to expire on November 1, 2003.   If approved by the Senate, the extended moratorium would ban state and local governments from imposing taxes on all methods to access the Internet and may even include a tax prohibition on bundled voice and Internet services.

In Canada's first criminal spam case, the Alberta Court of Appeal has upheld the acquittal of a spammer charged with counseling to commit an indictable offence, because he lacked the requisite intent.

As biometric identifiers are adopted to comply with looming US and international security requirements, it seems unlikely that this new technology will remain restricted to the field of cross-border travel.

Frustrated with the legislative delays surrounding Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act, Bill C-13, Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), has given the go-ahead to the formation of the Stem Cell Oversight Committee (SCOC).

E-TIPS reported earlier (April 10, 2003) that the US had enacted the Child Abduction Prevention Act (CAPA).   In the first prosecution under CAPA, on September 3, 2003, John Zuccarini was arrested and charged with registering misleading domains for the purpose of enticing children to pornographic web sites.

In a recent Internet-related case, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v. Chen [2003] FCA 897 (27 August 2003), the Federal Court of Australia recently considered whether it should issue an injunction to restrain the conduct of a US resident, given that there was apparently no mechanism available for the enforcement or registration of the injunction in the US courts.

On September 2, 2003, Amazon.com, Inc. was issued yet another business method patent by the United States Patent Office.   US Patent No 6,615,226 entitled "Method and system for displaying and editing of information" relates to a computer method and system for the ordering of items over the Internet.

A team of engineers in Illinois has concluded that Blackout 2003, which on August 14 affected the Northeastern United States and parts of the Midwest and Canada, could have been avoided had a "smart power grid" been in place.   And unless an Internet-based strategy is introduced, this same team of engineers predicts that serious problems are inevitable in the future.

A number of search engine web sites, such as Google.com and Lycos.com, allow marketers to place advertisements on pages which display results of keyword-based searches.   Ad content is matched to the relevant keyword.   In 2003, this industry sector is expected to generate about $2 billion in revenue.