E-TIPS

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.

George Radwanski, Canada's Privacy Commissioner, has criticized several government security initiatives in his Annual Report to Parliament.

Recently, a Seattle Small Claims Court held that online retailer, Amazon.com, did not have to honour a sale price mistakenly listed on its website. A customer had purchased a television that had been listed for $99.99. However, the correct sale price was $849.99. The customer received an e-mail confirming the transaction and providing a shipping date upon completing the order. Two days later, the online retailer notified the customer of the mistake and canceled the order. The customer's credit card had not yet been charged since Amazon.com does not charge for purchases until the item enters the shipping process.

On January 28, 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) released its decision in a trademark infringement case regarding Al Jardine's use of the name "Beach Boys". The dispute in Brother Records v. Jardine arose when Jardine began touring with his own band under various names that used the "Beach Boys" trademark. Brother Records Inc. ("BRI"), which had been formed by members of the band to hold and administer the intellectual property rights for the Beach Boys, commenced a trademark infringement action alleging that Jardine had used the trademark without a license. Jardine counterclaimed, alleging that the company had breached a lifetime employment and license agreement.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that it will no longer reserve dot.ca Internet domain names of Canadian municipalities.

In EF Cultural Travel v. Zefer Corporation, the U.S. Court of Appeals (1st Circuit) affirmed the District Court's preliminary injunction prohibiting the Zefer Corporation ("Zefer") from using a "scraper tool" to collect pricing information from EF Cultural Travel BV's ("EF") website. In an earlier decision, the Appeals Court upheld the injunction against co-defendant Explorica Inc. ("Explorica").

On January 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a decision of a District Court that Infineon (a group of related companies) did not infringe four of Rambus Inc.'s patents. The Court revised the claim construction performed by the District court judge and remanded the case for further consideration under the revised construction.

The U.S. Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit) recently considered the test for Internet jurisdiction in a trade-mark dispute in Toys "R" Us v. Step Two SA. Toys "R" Us had acquired a number of U.S.-registered IMAGINARIUM marks and was using them in its stores and on the website imaginarium.com. Step Two operates a chain of toy stores in Spain under the name "Imaginarium" and had registered the mark IMAGINARIUM in Spain. Since 1996, Step Two also operated a website using the domain imaginarium.es, advertising merchandise available in its stores. In February 2001, the New Jersey-based Toys "R" Us sued Step Two, a Spanish company, for infringement and unfair competition in its use of IMAGINARIUM.

On January 17, 2003, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ("CRTC"), issued a Broadcasting Public Notice stating that it would continue to require a broadcasting license for Internet retransmission of television and radio broadcasts.

The Nevada State Board of Pharmacy has begun cracking down on online pharmacies. In its first case, the manager of Nevada based Prescriptiononline.com was recently fined $200,000 (U.S.).

The Medical Board of California has revoked the licence of Dr. Jon Steven Opsahl. The decision, which will be effective February 21, 2003, was based on Dr. Opsahl's practice of drug prescription over the Internet without patient examinations.

The January 14, 2003, a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) arbitration panel released its decision in Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited v. Mike Rollo. The panel ordered the transfer of the domain names canadiantiredealer.com and canadiantiredealers.com to Canadian Tire Corporation ("Canadian Tire").

A New York state judge recently ruled that Network Associates Inc. (NAI), a security software company in California, cannot use its end-user license agreements to restrict what its customers say about its products.

A twenty-two year old Welsh web designer has been sentenced to two years in prison for creating and distributing computer viruses. Simon Vallor was tracked down by Scotland Yard's computer crime unit and the FBI after he bragged about his viruses on an Internet message board.

A new discussion paper has recently been released by the Canadian government entitled: E-mail marketing: Consumer choices and business opportunities. The paper addresses the choices available to consumers, filtering technologies, current policies, network solutions, the application of existing laws, consumer awareness and the role of the government in dealing with spam.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has granted The Recording Industry Association of America's (the "RIAA") motion to enforce its subpoena served on Verizon Internet Services ("Verizon") under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 ("DMCA").

The United States Patent and Trademark Office ("USPTO") was planning to convert from a paper to an electronic public search system. However, this plan has now been put on hold. This decision by USPTO came about after a lawsuit was launched by the National Intellectual Property Researchers Association ("NIPRA") to stop the USPTO from its plan to begin dismantling its paper collection of patents and trademarks.