E-TIPS

The Ontario Government is considering drafting new legislation to address the issue of the applicability of the Ontario Retail Sales Tax to software and related services. At present, the government is going through a consultation process with industry organizations such as the Information Technology Association of Canada for Ontario. A copy of the draft legislation will be posted on the Website of the Ministry of Finance.

The California Court of Appeal recently issued a decision on the issue of what constitutes an "offer" in an online auction. The dispute centered around the domain name Golf.tv, which was being offered in an auction by the defendant, dotTV Corporation (TVC). TVC registers .tv domain names for a fee.

A recent decision of the National Arbitration Forum ("Forum") has concluded that only Molson Canada is entitled to use the domain "canadian.biz". Molson Canada is the registered owner of the trademark "Canadian" in Canada.

In a recent decision, the British Columbia Securities Commission has ruled that B.C. resident Jesse J. Hogan contravened that province's Securities Act by intentionally distributing false information on five NASDAQ companies using email, chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards.

The Supreme Court of Canada in the recent decision of Lavigne v. Canada (Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages) confirmed that exceptions to the general duty of federal institutions to disclose personal information must be interpreted narrowly.

A number of major U.S. media companies, including the parent companies of The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have filed a lawsuit against Gator Corporation, a leading provider of adware, in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. Adware is software that triggers pop-up ads when web surfers visit a particular website. The media companies claim that Gator is selling ads on their Websites without authorization and profiting from the media companies' investment in their own web sites.

On June 18th, the Canadian House of Commons passed legislation (Bill C-48) that would require Internet retransmitters to obtain a licence when retransmitting copyrighted material over the Internet.

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a U.S. based think tank, recently released a report entitled "The Best States for E-Commerce". In the report, the PPI examined the 50 States and the District of Columbia and ranked them in order of their friendliness to e-commerce.

Air Canada, in partnership with IBM, is piloting a wireless system to help ticket agents check-in late passengers as they wait in the queue at Toronto's Pearson airport. The system is based on the partnership's electronic kiosks, in use since 1998 by Air Canada.

There were two recent decisions released by U.S. Appellate Courts regarding jurisdiction online. In the first decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals (4th Cir) in ALS Scan v. Digital Service Consultants held that the District Court in Maryland could not exercise personal jurisdiction over an ISP based in Georgia in a copyright infringement case on the sole basis that the ISP provided web hosting services to the alleged infringers who had posted copyrighted pictures on their website.

Audiogalaxy.com and owner Michael Merhej have settled the claims by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) that Audiogalaxy and Mr. Merhej were guilty of vicarious and contributory copyright infringement in allowing copyrighted materials to be exchanged over their peer-to-peer file exchange web service. Unlike Napster, the Audiogalaxy site allows filtering of materials to prevent infringement. Until now, this feature was largely unused.

The State of California has fined a Los Angeles pharmacy and its principals $88.7 million(U.S.) for violating a law that makes it illegal for Internet based pharmacies to fill prescriptions for patients without a proper examination by a licensed physician.

Analysts estimate that up to 8 percent of all international long-distance calls are made using the Internet. State controlled telecommunications companies around the world feel threatened by this popularity to the extent that more than a dozen countries have banned the practice.

On June 19, 2002, Research In Motion (RIM) announced that it had filed a Complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware against Good Technology, Inc. The Complaint alleges that Good Technology's wireless goods and services infringe on four of RIM's patents.

Amazon.com has settled with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) for its part in a misstatement of accounts by former partner Ashford.com. The SEC suit against Amazon.com, Ashford.com and two of Ashford.com's executives, Kenneth E. Kurtzman and Brian E. Bergeron alleged that Amazon.com helped Ashford.com misstate its financial results in 2000 by resolving a payment dispute using two separate documents each declaring a different settlement time. Ashford.com executives only disclosed one of the documents to the company's auditors, and thereby deferred a $1.5 Million loss.

In an effort to provide legal assistance to low income litigants and to reduce court workloads, the state of California has introduced computerized video kiosks that dispense legal advice and assist litigants in preparing common court filings.

Well in advance of the January 1, 2004 deadline for Canadian provinces to provide privacy legislation in lieu of the federal legislation (PIPEDA), the 2001 Annual Report of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) calls for the adoption of Ontario's proposed privacy legislation (the Privacy of Personal Information Act, 2002).

© 2002, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Jennifer Jannuska (June 19, 2002) The intermingling of standard-setting and patents has been a contentious topic in legal and technology circles in the last several years. Some say there is an inherent conflict between standard-setting (as an open and public activity) and patents (which are by nature closed and proprietary). Disclosure and licensing are two areas of concern for patent owners interested in participating in standard-setting.

© 2002, Deeth Williams Wall LLP. All Rights Reserved. By: Jennifer Jannuska (June 19, 2002) Ownership of Inventions, Patent Rights by Employees Under the Patent Act, the inventor is the first person having the right to apply for a patent. In practice, where an invention has been assigned to a company, the company may apply for a patent in its own name by providing evidence of the assignment of rights from the inventor.

A numbered Ontario company carrying on business under the name Domain Register of Canada (DRC) and one its affiliates, Domain Register of America Inc. (the Plaintiffs) have initiated legal proceedings against Tucows for having sent out emails warning its clients of DRC's questionable marketing practices.