Intellectual Property Law

Facebook Firsht

Posted on October 16, 2008
Creation of a fake profile on Facebook ??? the popular social networking website - by a former school friend has resulted in an award of ??22,000 in damages to businessman Matthew Firsht and his company, Applause Store Productions. The case...

Police powers to gather phone and email data.

Posted on October 16, 2008
The Government hasn't exactly had the best record of late when it comes to the way in which it handles personal data. It was in November 2007 that the Chancellor Alastair Darling revealed that two unencrypted CD's containing the personal...

GOOGLE REFUSES TO SUBMIT TO EUROPE???S DATA PROTECTION REGIME:

Posted on October 06, 2008
The Article 29 Workers Party has stated recently that Google considers that the European law on data protection is not applicable to itself, even though Google has servers and establishments in . It also asserts that Google wishes to retain...

Spore Copyright Saga

Posted on September 24, 2008
Earlier this month, the video game maker Electronic Arts ("EA") released the much anticipated "Spore" video game in the UK, but was promptly attacked by thousands of Spore fans on Amazon.com who found that their private use of the game...

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ICO'S NEW INSPECTION POWERS

Posted on September 24, 2008
Following a recent Data Sharing Review the Ministry of Justice has launched a consultation on proposed new inspection powers and funding arrangements for the Information Commissioner. The review concluded that the Information Commissioner's office requires stronger powers and sanctions to...

No residual goodwill in MINIMAX trade mark

Posted on September 22, 2008
Under a recent ruling in Minimax GmbH & Co KG v Chubb Fire Limited (Chubb), the High court has allowed an appeal from a hearing officer???s decision made in January 2008, and has rejected Chubb Fire Limited???s opposition to the...

NODUS

Posted on September 19, 2008
There was a fantastic turnout for the NODUS Event last night. Colin Bliss QC introduced the speakers for the evening who were Denise McFarlane, Douglas Campbell and Tom Hinchliffe, all of 3 New Square. Denise McFarlane started off with an...

New IP guides for businesses trading abroad

Posted on September 03, 2008
The UK Trade & Investment and the UK Intellectual Property Office are publishing a series of five guides aimed at British companies who are trading in major markets around the world. These guides are intended to explain where businesses are...

China looks to strengthen intellectual property rights

Posted on August 26, 2008
China has announced a new strategy that will see its intellectual property laws revised. This development will be closely watched to see if this affords foreign rights holders better methods of policing their rights in China. It is also a...

MYGAZINES INFRINGING COPYRIGHT

Posted on August 21, 2008
Mygazines is a website that grants a surfer of the internet easy access to well-known magazines covering a wide range of subjects, which are normally only available for purchase on the high street. Users of the site can copy and...

NODUS EVENT

Posted on August 19, 2008
The next NODUS event will be on 18th September at Freeth Cartwright's offices. Our Guest speakers are from Intellectual Property Chambers 3 New Square. Further details will be published shortly.

THE FIGHTBACK AGAINST INTERNET PIRACY CONTINUES AS PINBALL GAME RULING THREATENS TO OPEN THE FLOODGATES

Posted on August 19, 2008
The Patents County Court has ruled that an individual must pay damages of around ??6,000 and legal costs of ??10,000 to media company Topware Interactive for placing its game (Dream Pinball 3D) on an internet sharing network thereby infringing Topware's...

POLICE CANNOT RETAIN OLD RECORDS OF MINOR CRIMINAL OFFENCES?

Posted on August 04, 2008
Recently the BBC reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7520139.stm) that the police could be obliged to remove thousands of old criminal records of minor offences from the national database This report came after the Information Tribunal dismissed appeals from 5 police forces including Humberside...

Brought to Book

Posted on July 28, 2008
There was an interesting "zeitgeist-type" report on the BBC's news site the other day concerning a successful court action for damages against someone who maliciously created a false profile on Facebook. The article sets ot the main facts quite succinctly,...

CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL NET DOWNLOADS

Posted on July 24, 2008
BBC news has today reported that six of the UK's largest Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") including BT, Virgin and Orange have agreed a strategy with the music industry to significantly curb on-line music piracy. The ISPs in question have signed...

Bratz success caught by barbie-d wire

Posted on July 18, 2008
Mattel Inc, the creators of the Barbie doll enterprise and the world's largest toy maker, has won its copyright infringement claim against MGA Entertainment Inc, the marketers of the Bratz line of dolls since 2001. CNN has reported the ruling...

Life imitates art as cybercrime mastermind wooed by forces of good. (Now I really AM worried.)

Posted on July 16, 2008
This piece on the Guardian's site is about the teenage cybercrime overlord in New Zealand who has escaped a jail term (and pretty much any real punishment). it seems that the local law enforcement agencies know when they're outclassed, and...

Billion dollar litigation versus privacy

Posted on July 15, 2008
Since March 2007, Google has been involved in a US legal battle worth around 1 billion dollars with Viacom, the owners of Paramount Pictures and MTV over an alleged infringement of Viacom's copyright. Viacom has alleged that YouTube (purchased by...

You vote - we sell!

Posted on July 11, 2008
The BBC has today reported that a government backed review lead by Information Commissioner Richard Thomas and Wellcome Trust director Dr Mark Walport has condemned the recent practice of local authorities selling voters' details to marketing companies...

Is showing a film at a garden/yard party a public performance?

Posted on July 07, 2008
I was watching something on Channel 4 the other day, which couldn't have been that inspiring because I was roused to consciousness by the advert break. In particular, it was a promotional blurb by Channel 4 asking its viewers to...

LVMH 1 - eBay 0

Posted on June 30, 2008
LVMH, the luxury goods group has secured a judgment against eBay for failing to stop the on-line auctioning of goods that infringe LVMH's intellectual property rights.The French court ordered eBay to pay ?40m to LVMH. The brands involved include Dior,...

Ruthless? Moi?

Posted on May 27, 2008
I was drawn to a piece on the BBC website on Saturday reporting that web users are becoming more "ruthless and selfish" when going online. What's this - are we hogging more than our allotted share of (largely illusory) bandwidth?...

Actavis result

Posted on May 23, 2008
The Court of Appeal has now reached its decision in Actavis UK v Merck Co, Inc. By way of background, Merck is the proprietor of a number of patents related to a drug called Finasteride. That drug is the active...

Do Sharepoint-created websites breach the Disability Discrimination Act?

Posted on May 23, 2008
Bruce Lawson, a web accessibility expert, certainly thinks so. Lawson writes on the subject for the May 2008 edition of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. INfL is a subscription based publication (online and offline), so you'll need to be a...

February 2009 adoption deadline for ICO's new public authority publication scheme

Posted on May 09, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office has launched a new model publication scheme for public authorities. With the current model scheme expiring on 31 December 2008, the ICO is asking public authorities to adopt the model scheme by 1 January 2009 and...

NODUS, 7 May 2008

Posted on May 09, 2008
The fourth meeting of NODUS, the group for East Midlands IP&T practioners, was a well attended and lively event. IP barrister Jeremy Reed of Hogarth Chambers gave an enlightening talk on software patents and recent legal developments. To say the...

Another GPL enforcement success as Skype accepts German Court ruling

Posted on May 09, 2008
News is emerging that Skype has dropped its effort in the German Courts to challenge the validity of GPL2, still the most commonly used free software licence despite the launch last year of GPL3. The case is to do with...

Not My Space, as it turns out

Posted on May 02, 2008
In February we reported that social networking giant Myspace Inc had managed to get the myspace.co.uk domain name using the Nominet Dispute Resolution Procedure. Well, that's all changed because the owner of the domain name, Total Web Solutions (TWS), has...

Corruption 2.0 or internet rights 2.0? An IMPACT opinion on the Lessig SCL Lecture

Posted on May 02, 2008
As you will know from our last post, I attended the Society of Computer & Law's Annual Lecture on Wednesday evening, delivered by Professor Lawrence Lessig. There's already a number of items of content and opinion about the lecture (links...

Corruption 2.0 - Larry Lessig delivers the Annual SCL Lecture

Posted on April 30, 2008
I'll be attending the Society of Computer & Law's Annual Lecture this evening. Here's some blurb about the event and contact details if you are interested in seeing if there's any last-minute tickets available: "Technology policy has never been more....

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