E-TIPS

Following the events of September 11, 2001, all insurance for terrorism-related risks became very expensive. In the US, the Safety Act, which was enacted as part of the Homeland Security Act, responded by attempting to protect the incentive to manufacture effective anti-terrorism devices such as gas masks and emergency radios – i.e. products designated as "Qualified Antiterrorism Technologies" (QATs) by the Secretary for Homeland Security.

© 2003, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Colin Adams, Student at Law (December 18, 2003) Legislative efforts to combat spam persist around the globe. While initiatives continue in the UK, the US, and Australia, Canada is taking tentative steps to join the anti-spam movement.

As noted in an earlier issue of E-TIPSâ„¢ (Vol 2 No 8, September 25, 2003), the federal government's personal privacy legislation, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), is set to come into full force on January 1, 2004, and will apply in provinces without existing "substantially similar" personal privacy legislation.   At present, only Quebec's Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector has met the "substantially similar" standard.

On November 27, 2003, Europe's highest court held in the case of Shield Mark BV v Kist that sounds can be registered as trade-marks if they can distinguish a person's goods and services from those of another and if the sounds can be represented graphically.

Is computer data a form of "tangible" or "intangible" property?   The starting point for this question is always the specific wording of the insurance policy itself.   When no clear answer is found in the policy, courts have reached conflicting conclusions.

Recently, the US Supreme Court rejected Duke University's appeal for review of a ruling of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that had found it liable for patent infringement.

UK telecommunications regulator Oftel recently approved in principle the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS) as a new Internet dispute resolution service.   The CISAS was developed by the UK's ISP trade group, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA), and telecommunications companies Orange, Telewest, and T-Mobile to provide an independent means of resolving disputes between ISPA members and their customers.   The CISAS will launch on December 9, 2003 and will be administered by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, widely recognised as one the world's leading arbitral agencies.

The docket of litigation over software patents was expanded recently when AT&T commenced infringement proceedings against eBay Inc. and its subsidiary PayPal, Inc. over AT&T's US patent no. 5,329,589 issued July 12, 1994.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the placement of personal information on a web site does not constitute the transfer of data outside the European Union (EU).

In 1980, the US Supreme Court held that patents could be issued for "anything under the sun made by the hand of man."   Since then, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted numerous patents for genetically engineered organisms, including higher life forms, such as the onco-mouse, a transgenic animal predisposed to develop certain types of cancer.

The European Union (EU) has decided to establish an agency to help protect the Internet. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) is to be operational in early 2004.   The agreement of EU Member States came nine months after the European Commission (EC) originally proposed its draft regulation for ENISA, which will advise Member States and the EC on security issues, to increase awareness and help disseminate information regarding Internet risks, such as computer viruses and identity theft, and to coordinate security activities within the EU.

© 2003, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Colin Adams, Student at Law (December 4, 2003) Introduction Is computer data a form of "tangible" or "intangible" property? Of course, the starting point for this question is always the policy itself. When the answer cannot be found in the policy, courts have reached differing conclusions. In the absence of a definitive answer, this area of insurance law should raise a red flag for businesses.

In a letter dated November 6, 2003 from Canada's Minister of Industry, Allan Rock, to a Parliamentary Committee, the Minister expressed the need for caution on Canadian ratification of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet Treaties.

On October 21, 2003, the US Patent Office issued a patent to Bluecurrent Inc, a small Texas-based company, for its invention covering a method and system of installing a new computer's applications, settings and other information from a source computer using the Internet.   The invention under patent is aimed to compete with software-management systems offered by companies such as Microsoft Corp and Computer Associates International Inc.

Legislative efforts to combat spam persist around the globe.   Recent and notable battlegrounds in the fight against spam have appeared in the UK, the US, and Australia as each country has adopted anti-spam legislation.   Although Canada has yet to enact dedicated anti-spam legislation, individual Parliamentarians have launched two bills in an effort to spur the federal Government into action.

Late last month, following a bitter and long-running trade-mark dispute, an agreement was reached between French fashion giant Lacoste and Hong Kong-based Crocodile Garments Ltd.

The Federal Trade Commission has begun proceedings against D Squared Solutions LLC (D Squared), a US-based software company, for engaging in unfair trade practices.   The FTC alleges that D Squared created a computer virus that exploited Microsoft's MSN Messenger, an instant messaging program, and then sold a program that would remove the virus.   The complaint was filed in a Maryland US District Court on October 30, 2003, and a temporary restraining order was granted that same day. The FTC sought an immediate restraining order and other ancillary damages.

The Intellectual Property Caucus of Congress recently sent an open letter to House of Representatives leaders stating its view that reforms to the US Patent and Trade-mark Office (USPTO) would stall if a proposed fee bill is not passed this year. The bill, United States Patent and Trade-mark Fee Modernization Act of 2003, proposes to increase patent-related fees across a wide spectrum of items. The resulting increase in cost for a patent application, estimated from 15 to 25 percent, is designed to finance a five-year strategic plan of the USPTO for addressing problems of quality and pendency (the time the patenting process takes) that have plagued the patenting process.

One of the infringement provisions within the European Union's Trade Marks Directive was recently interpreted by the European Court of Justice ("ECJ"), in Adidas-Salomon AG and Adidas Benelux BV v. Fitnessworld Trading Limited.  

Amazon.com recently introduced a new feature to enable book shoppers to conduct full-text searches of more than 120,000 books sold on its online store.   In addition to displaying matches for books based on title, author, or publisher, search results using Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" feature will produce a list of books containing the search term and provide excerpts from the text.   Users can follow links from the excerpts to view the specific page of a book in its entirety.   This feature will also allow users to browse forward and back two pages from the linked page.