Intellectual Property Law

Legal Overview on Franchise Regulations in Indonesia

Posted on October 13, 2008
The term "franchise" was introduced by Isaac Singer in 1851.  In general, franchise refers to an approval by the owner of particular products or services (the "Franchisor") granting rights to another party to use or to market such products or services under a certain terms and conditions...

California Passes Bills to Protect Health Data Privacy for 2009

Posted on October 12, 2008
In the aftermath of a series of serious data breaches affecting many Californians in the last few years, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation to improve patient privacy laws and address leaks of confidential health information. The new laws are Senate Bill 541 (SB 541) and Assembly Bill 211 (AB 211), which give the state the ability to assess and enforce fines for unauthorized leaking of patient information...

The European Union will have a Criminal Record Information System

Posted on October 08, 2008
On September 18, 2008, the EU Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted an opinion that agrees on the EU Council's proposal to establish an electronic European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS).   ECRIS would be a criminal record database available to Member States, and include citizens' criminal convictions...

LEGAL AND ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF COMPUTER MISUSE BY ATTORNEYS

Posted on October 08, 2008
As a greater percentage of lawyers become computer savvy, there is a marked increase in ethical violations committed via computers. These violations can lead to both civil and criminal liability, as well as to disciplinary sanctions. A number of recent cases have highlighted ethics violations that were committed by attorneys by their misusing the Internet...

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Free Movement of Goods within the EU vs. Member States' Law Restrictions on Mail Orders

Posted on October 06, 2008
Article 28 and 30 of Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of June 8, 2000, on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market ("Directive on Electronic Commerce") aims at free movement of goods among EU Member States...

Governor Palin's Email Hack: Federal Statutory Law

Posted on October 06, 2008
In the midst of an FBI investigation and convening of a grand jury, it is still not clear if there will be a prosecution on the email hack of Governor Sarah Palin, US vice presidential nominee. Palin's Yahoo account was breached, and her private emails posted online, before authorities tracked down the hacker's ISP fingerprint to Knoxville, Tennessee, connected to college student David Kernell...

Parody: a Safe Harbor under the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act

Posted on October 01, 2008
he Antic-Cyber squatting Protection Act (ACPA), 15 U.S.C.S § 1125(d), prohibits bad-faith, for profit, and abusive registration of Internet domain names in violation of the rights of trademark owners.  This practice is known as cyber squatting.  A successful cyber squatting claim must prove three elements: (1) that the affected trademark was distinctive at the time the domain name was registered; (2) that the domain name registered is identical or confusingly similar to the trademark; and (3) that the defendant used and registered the domain name with a bad faith and intent to profit...

Recent regulation aimed at simplifying the enforcement of Italian Data Protection Regulation

Posted on September 29, 2008
Since its enactment in 1995, Italian Small Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) found numerous difficulties in the enforcement of the Italian Data Protection Code (IDPC) provisions. These difficulties are mainly due to the IDPC complexity as well as to the costs related to its compliance...

Court Upholds The Validity Of A Clickwrap Agreement Entered Into With Minors

Posted on September 29, 2008
In a recent decision, A.V. v. iParadigms, Civ. Act. No. 07-0293 E.D. Va., March 11, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia held that the clickwrap agreement to which the plaintiffs assented when submitting their papers to the plagiarism-detecting program, ?TurnItIn?, was valid and enforceable, despite the fact that the plaintiffs were minors at the time of entering into such agreement...

Data Protection in Colombia

Posted on September 24, 2008
On May 2008, the Colombian Telecommunication Commission -Comisión de Regulación de Telecomunicaciones- offered a synopsis about current Colombian data protection regulations and pending legislation on this issue. The Colombian Constitution and various national decrees and resolutions are currently applied to the protection of personal data, or "habeas data" as most Latin American countries refer to this topic...

Alaska Crime of Unauthorized Email Access & Applicable Law

Posted on September 24, 2008
On September 17, 2008, an email account used by US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was breached by a hacker. The contents of her emails, including private photos, were then posted online by someone called "anonymous," stating the aim was to "derail her campaign...

FCC Upholds Net Neutrality by Ordering Removal of Transfer Barriers

Posted on September 22, 2008
Net neutrality is the notion that Internet providers must transmit all content at equal speed. In August 2008, the FCC issued a ruling, stating that Internet service providers cannot intentionally degrade any applications, that such activities amount to discrimination and do not constitute proper network management...

Protection of Personal Data in Chile

Posted on September 22, 2008
Protection of Personal Data in Chile is regulated by Law No.19628 (1999) [Protection de la Vida Privada], and its most recent update Law No. 19812 (2002). Law No. 19628 (Data Protection Law) protects individual's personal data and all data found in commercial, financial, banking and criminal records...

Internet Services & Abuse of Dominant Position and Predatory Pricing in the European Union

Posted on September 18, 2008
It started long time ago when the liberalization of the economy movement, gradually adopted by most countries, brought private investment to the telecommunication sector. Then, those concerns proper of a free market, such monopoly, abuse of dominant position, predatory practice, etc...

Missouri Physicians and Prescription of Medicines over the Internet

Posted on September 17, 2008
The Internet, slowly but steadily, is defying every area of law, including professional regulatory practice. State statutes, in most states, regulate the prescription of medicines by licensed physicians as a matter of public concern.  Even though most of the statutes have not been adapted to regulate physicians dispensing services on the Internet, courts are willing to construe these statutes, called remedial statutes, to meet the cases that are within the reason or the spirit of the law...

Germany Convicts Non-Resident Blogger for Inciting Hatred by Denying Holocaust

Posted on September 15, 2008
Claiming the Holocaust is a hoax is illegal in Germany, even online, and a non-resident alien man who denied the veracity of the Third Reich's ?Final Solution? on a blog was imprisoned for the act. A German court sentenced Ernst Zündel, a former Tennessee, USA and Canadian resident, and lifelong Holocaust denier to five years in prison for incitement of racial hatred...

The U.S. Telemarketing Rule

Posted on September 15, 2008
Telemarketing includes soliciting services through telephone calls and fax messages.   Because U.S. businesses are increasingly using telemarketing services to advertise their products and services, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) adopted the Telemarketing Rule (16 C...

United States-India Copyright Treaty

Posted on September 10, 2008
Just as China once emerged as the manufacturing outsource centre for U.S. producers, India has emerged as the technological hub, data processing, research, and now paralegal outsource centre.  U.S. businesses using these offshore services must be aware of both Indian domestic intellectual property (IP) laws and bilateral intellectual property treaties between these two countries...

In case of fraud, what legal remedy do I have against eBay or an online seller?

Posted on September 08, 2008
Bought auto on Ebay auction' I'm in Va auto in Texas; paid $10k; 100 days later I have no auto no money back; sellers used money to payoff their lien; used excuse awaiting title clearance,then auto got damaged so prefer return money in installments,without auto as security; seller is army recruit & wife...

SEC Announces the Imminent Release of Guidance on the Use of Websites for Corporate Reporting Purposes

Posted on September 08, 2008
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is on the brink of issuing guidance to publicly trading companies that wish to disclose their corporate reports by posting them on their respective Websites. Under the new guidance, documents reported by means of posting the information on the Web will have the same legal force as documents transmitted via traditional paper reports or via PDF reports on EDGAR...

FCC Rules Comcast Cannot Limit Data Downloads

Posted on September 08, 2008
In a decision meant to protect the vitality of the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission has reacted strongly to Comcast Corp.'s decision to limit the amount of bandwidth to its customers. Bandwidth is the measure of how much data a customer has streaming into their computer from the Internet...

How can I Protect my Mac Computer?

Posted on September 01, 2008
Recently I saw an article regarding the newest Mac OS X malware threat. There is now an Applescript trojan horse targeting Macs. Please refer to Brian Kreb's Security Fix/tech forums/178361. I would like to know HOW to go into my files and WHAT to look for so I know HOW to delete from my files/machine ANY files that have or change any Applescripts...

China's New Corporate Income Tax Laws and their Effects on Foreign Investment

Posted on September 01, 2008
China's State Council approved the Detailed Implementation Regulation (DIR) on December 2007.  DIR's main goal was to implement China's new Corporate Income Tax Law (CIT) that entered into force on January 2008.  DIR and CIT are extremely relevant for foreign companies doing business in China because they determine how the China government will tax its income, establish withholding tax rules, eliminate taxes on qualified dividends, determine tax credits and exemptions, and set other significant corporate tax rules...

U.S. Lawyers are Free to Outsource Legal Work

Posted on August 31, 2008
According to the recently enacted American Bar Association Ethics Opinion 08-451, U.S. lawyers and firms can outsource legal work provided that they adhere to ethic rules on "competence, supervision, protection of confidential information, reasonable fees, and not assisting unauthorized practice of law...

Italy Introduces Consumer Class Actions

Posted on August 26, 2008
Budget law 24 December 2007, n. 244 introduces, for the first time into Italian law system, a type of class action (called "azione collettiva risarcitoria") for awards of compensatory damages or payments of amounts to multiple individual users or consumers...

European Concept of Services for Trademark Registration Purposes

Posted on August 25, 2008
Registration of trademarks is under the EU Member States' jurisdiction but substantive conditions to acquire trademark rights is a matter of community law.  Indeed, Council Directive 89/104/EEC of December, 21, 1988, was enacted to approximate substantive trademark laws among the EU Member States...

Tuning In to Combating Music Piracy in Chile

Posted on August 24, 2008
In Chile, over 400 million songs are downloaded unlawfully every year.  Piracy has consumed 50 percent of the music market, as reported by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA).[1]  A combination of internet piracy, unlawful reproduction of CDs and DVDs, and the growing presence of street vendors eager to make a profit from the sale of pirated music have contributed to significant losses in the sound recordings and musical composition industries...

Does the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act Cover Internet Gaming?

Posted on August 19, 2008
Federal law authorizes US Indian tribes to regulate gaming activities within Indian lands provided that the gaming activity is not expressly prohibited by federal law or the law of the state where the Indian tribe is located.  The US Congress enacted the Gaming Regulatory Act (GRA) in 1988 to provide a statutory basis for the operation of gaming by Indian tribes...

The Highest Bidder For The Global Cyber Brand Dot DUBAI

Posted on August 19, 2008
  Who would like to bid the highest amount for the exclusive global rights to the new domain suffix .dubai? Such a suffix will create a powerful domain root that will corner some 180 services underneath it,like go.dubai, hotel.dubai, job.dubai, cars...

Open Source Licenses and Copyright Infringement Claims

Posted on August 18, 2008
Copyright owners who dedicate their works to free public use can control the future distribution and modification of those works and claim copyright infringement according to a recent decision by a US court of appeals.  This decision becomes extremely important for the Internet society where software incubators sites and other copyright holders offer works that can be freely used and, before this decision, were not considered the object of copyright infringement claims...

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