Intellectual Property Law

Lists lists lists

Posted on March 12, 2008
The Observer on Sunday has published a list of the "world's 50 most powerful websites". There's some good blogs on there that are well worth a look if you get chance today. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the state of the web...

No innocent infringement defence for Community Designs

Posted on March 11, 2008
The High Court has just delivered a judgment on design rights that looks to establish the Community Registered Design as a very useful right for designers. The case in question is J Choo (Jersey) Limited v Towerstone Limited. I set...

Memory trick shows that encryption isn't the answer to data security

Posted on March 06, 2008
The question of how to put personal data and other sensitive (in the plain English sense) information on portable devices and storage mediums such as laptops, CDs and memory sticks whilst keeping that data secure and achieving compliance with data...

Spot the difference

Posted on March 05, 2008
One's an Apple iPhone, one is a prototype phone from a company called Meizu. According to a report on Tom's Hardware Blog, at the CeBit trade show German police confiscated these Meizu phones and marketing materials, and are due to...

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New Phorms, new privacy concerns

Posted on March 05, 2008
There's a storm brewing online over the activities of Phorm, a company that specialises in delivering adverts online. Lots of companies already do that of course; what has caused all the fuss is that Phorm works by tracking the internet...

Do Androids dream of capturing the mobile phone market?

Posted on March 05, 2008
Not an IP or IT law story as such, but here's a quick heads up on an emerging mobile phone trend that may be of interest to IMPACT® readers. I'm not talking about sleek new designs for phones, interesting as...

DOSing around & squatters rights

Posted on February 29, 2008
In the usual course of events, a technology lawyer would only be connected with denial of service (DOS) or distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) if they were advising the Crown Prosecution Service on the prosecution of such an attack. This nice chilled out position doesn't apply in the case of Geeklawyer, the anonymous IT barrister whose blog is famous/infamous for its entertaining and acidic discourses on current affairs...

Creative Commons: IMPACT guide to the essentials

Posted on February 27, 2008
Whilst still in his role as an IMPACT® lawyer, Andrew Mills wrote an overview of Creative Commons for the October/November 2007 issue of Computers & Law. What follows is an IMPACT®  guide on Creative Commons, based on Andrew's article.Creative Commons (CC) is a Massachusetts-based charitable corporation...

This is a pre-recorded blog! (A week-long disclaimer)

Posted on February 25, 2008
This week, a lot of the IMPACT® team are either on holiday, embroiled in Court hearings for clients, or at conferences. Whilst, with the obvious exception of holidays, none of these activities are exactly rare, they're all happening in one week. With these exceptional circumstances in mind, we took the step of writing a number of blog posts last week that will appear on the blog over the course of this week...

It's Mine, All Mine...

Posted on February 25, 2008
Over the course of this week, BBC Radio 4 is running a series of programmes looking at "the global war between the defenders of intellectual property and those determined to share it". Called "Mine All Mine", each programme will be at 3.45pm. Whilst I think that "global war" might be taking things a bit too far, there's certainly a number of IP policies that are the subject of an ongoing and heated discussion, and this series looks to be a good introduction to that discussion...

Dead hand of copyright reaches further into the past

Posted on February 22, 2008
A number of blogs including the IPKat have reported on a statement by EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, arguing for the copyright period for sound recordings be extended from its current 50 years to 95 years. The Commissioner doesn't appear to have put forward any positive reason for such an extension being a good thing; simply that if the duration of copyright for other type of works is more than 50 years, why shouldn't that be the case for copyright? In the UK, MP Pete Wishart has put forward a Private Members Bill that, if passed into law, would give effect to McCreevy's suggestion...

"Data protection and privacy have come of age": the Information Commissioner

Posted on February 21, 2008
Something that completely passed me by in January was a speech by Richard Thomas, the Information Commission, about his role. The speech was given to the Centre for Regulated Industries. The ICO talks very often, and so it's good that there is a copy of Thomas's lecture note on the ICO website...

Tribunal orders disclosure of legal advice on public interest grounds

Posted on February 21, 2008
Breaking new ground in FOI law, the Information Tribunal is reported to have ordered that legal advice given to Merseytravel should be disclosed because the public interest in seeing the advice outweighed the legal professional privilege of that advice...

Get out of My Space!

Posted on February 19, 2008
Most discussions in legal circles about social networking have, over the past year or so, focussed on Facebook. So, it's only fair that, after a year in which most of us have grown sick of seeing the "FB" word in every sentence, it's the turn of Myspace to take up some space in the legal journals and blogs...

SFLC launches legal primer for FOSS projects

Posted on February 15, 2008
The Software Freedom Law Centre has today issued detailed legal guidance on free software/open source ("FOSS"). Aimed at those involved in FOSS projects, the 'Legal Issues Primer' seeks to deal with all key legal issues including: Choosing a licence Enforcing a licence (if you have an infringement problem, and polite requests can't solve it, maybe you can hire the Software Freedom Law Centre!) Structural/corporate issues Dealing with patent infringement claims Choosing and using a trade mark Whilst written from a US law perspective, much of the guidance will be relevant in other jurisdictions...

IPITevents

Posted on February 13, 2008
A website has been launched that aims to "fill a problem ? how to easily keep track of upcoming intellectual property and information technology conferences, events, and CPDs in the UK." The site, IPITevents, is the creation of Jordan S. Hatcher, a very friendly IP/IT consultant and academic who I've met a couple of times...

UK IPO changes position on software patents

Posted on February 13, 2008
The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) has announced that it has changed the way it should assess software patent applications following a recent Court of Appeal ruling. The ruling in question was for the Astron Clinicia case (see IMPACT(R) story on the Astron Clinicia ruling)...

New CCTV Code of Practice launched

Posted on February 07, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a new Code of Practice for CCTV, setting out the best practice for organisations that use CCTV, to assist with compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The previous CCTV code was published in 2000...

Database rights: does Crowson Fabrics change things?

Posted on January 31, 2008
At the start of last week, I mentioned the case of Crowson Fabrics v Rider and Others, in which the Court found that the database right existed in certain information taken from the Claimant by the Defendant, such as customer contact details. (The previous link is to the judgment, now available on BAILLI)...

Freedom of Information likely to be extended to some private sector bodies

Posted on January 31, 2008
Jack Straw, the UK's Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, has confirmed in the House of Commons that the government plans to extend the Freedom of Information Act to the private sector. The UK Freedom of Information blog brings this news, quoting an exchange between Straw and Norman Baker MP...

New music services offer music for free (although not DRM-free)

Posted on January 28, 2008
The Guardian brings news of the launch today of Qtrax.com, a site that claims to have over 25 million songs available legitimately for free. Qtrax.com is funded by advertising, and the record labels and artists get their cut, so everyone's happy. This is one of a number of free music sites discussed in the article...

High Court allows computer program patent claims

Posted on January 28, 2008
To make readers aware of an important development in UK software patent law, here are some extracts from an IPKat report on the Astron Clinica judgment:"In a surprising (to this Kat at least) turn of events, the Honourable Mr Justice Kitchin has ruled today that the current UK Patent Office practice of flatly rejecting patent claims to computer program products is wrong...

Amazon: one step closer to DRM free tracks in the UK?

Posted on January 28, 2008
According to a short piece on Guardian Technology, Amazon has announced that DRM-free music tracks will start being sold on certain of its 'international sites' during 2008. Whilst Amazon hasn't said which sites it is referring to, the Guardian presumes that this includes Amazon's UK site...

Clash of the Titans

Posted on January 25, 2008
The longstanding rivalry between media giants Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson has taken another turn this week, as Murdoch-owned company Gemstar embarks on patent litigation proceedings in the High Court against Virgin Media. Gemstar is a US TV listings business that is partly owned by News Corporation, and the litigation centres around three European patents that Gemstar claims are infringed by Virgin Media: EP0969662, EP1377049, and EP1613066...

ICO publishes powers and penalties wishlist

Posted on January 25, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office has published a 'wishlist' of new powers and penalties that it wants to be given. The ICO publication is called "DATA PROTECTION POWERS AND PENALTIES: The Case for Amending the Data Protection Act 1998"...

Ripping yarns for the week

Posted on January 21, 2008
Here at IMPACT, everyone's snowed under this week. As usual, the other IP/IT law blogs and sites out there are doing a good job and so there's lots of interesting stuff to read. Here's a brief selection. Firstly, the public section of the Society of Computers & Law contains Laurence Eastham's take on the latest legal developments arising from ripping music CDs to computers...

Nokia & Apple's not-so-firmware

Posted on January 17, 2008
To state the completely obvious (no better way to start a blog post!), Nokia and Apple are big players in the consumer technology arena. As well as selling devices, both want to have their customers using their mobile and portable devices' firmware for as many things as possible: locating goods or services in the locality, watching videos, taking photos and then buying the prints...

Larry Lessig practises what he preaches

Posted on January 17, 2008
Lawrence Lessig, US lawyer and founder of Creative Commons, has secured the release his 2001 book The Future of Ideas under a Creative Commons licence. The licence in question is Attribution Noncommercial (US law). To achieve this, his publishers Random House had to agree to the move...

New trade mark blog on the block... Class 46

Posted on January 16, 2008
Class 46 is an 'experimental' trade mark blog recently launched on-the-quiet by 'friends and supporters of Marques', notably including well-known IP academic and IPKat co-founder Jeremy Philips. I'm guessing that the blog is so named because of the 45 classes of goods and services used for trade marks...

Amazon launches DRM-free digital music service

Posted on January 15, 2008
There have been some big developments in digital music in recent weeks, mainly from e-commerce giant Amazon. The website has announced that it is launching a DRM-free digital music service. Not only that, but the service will feature music from all the big 4 record labels: Sony, EMI, Warner and Universal...

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