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....

ICO favours extending Freedom of Information to public sector contractors

Posted on April 28, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office has confirmed its support for extending the Freedom of Information (FOI) regime to contractors and outsource service providers to the public sector. The ICO, the enforcer of the FOI and and Data Protection Act in the...

European DP Supervisor adopts Opinion on ePrivacy Directive changes

Posted on April 24, 2008
Not a subject we can cover on IMPACT today, but the Society of Computers & Law website has a report on this: EDPS and the ePrivacy Directive Review.

Blawg Review enters the Virtual World

Posted on April 21, 2008
Benjamin Duranske of Virtually Blind hosts this week's Blawg Review. Whether or not you keep up with Blawg Review, the resulting post is an interesting and entertaining insight into the legal issues associated with virtual worlds. According to Duranske, 3D...

'Youngest inventor' makes a clean sweep

Posted on April 17, 2008
Just spotted this from the BBC: 'Youngest inventor' patents broom A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UK's youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves. Sam Houghton, of Buxton,...

Two stripes and you're out

Posted on April 16, 2008
Trade mark lawyers will be interested in a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case of Adidas v Marca Moda, C&A Nederland, H&M & others. The ruling arises from a reference to the ECJ from...

INTA, Berlin May 17 - 21 2008

Posted on April 16, 2008
Ann Critchell-Ward and Alex Newson, of Freeth Cartwright LLP's IP & IT law team, will be attending this year's INTA Annual Meeting. INTA is the International Trade Mark Association. The event, which in 2008 is being held in Berlin from...

Free Software Foundation's First European Licensing & Legal Workshop

Posted on April 14, 2008
On Friday I had the privilege of attending the first ever European Licensing & Legal Workshop of Free Software Foundation Europe. Thanks and congratulations to the FSFE Freedom Task Force (FTF) for organising such a successful event. The Workshop, which...

Introducing... the IP Finance Blog

Posted on April 10, 2008
Looking across the blog rolls on some the other law blogs recently, I found the IP Finance Blog. This: "looks at financial issues for intellectual property rights: securitisation and collateral, IP valuation for acquisition and balance sheet purposes, tax and...

NODUS - 7 May 2008

Posted on April 09, 2008
Details have been released of the next meeting of NODUS, the organisation for IP & IT legal professionals in the East Midlands. The meeting is being hosted by Browne Jacobson at their Nottingham office. Nick McDonald of Browne Jacobson has...

6 months is enough, Article 29 Working Group tells search engines

Posted on April 08, 2008
The Article 29 Working Group of EC data protection commissioners has given an Opinion on the handling of personal data by search engines. The headline grabber so far has been the statement that search engines should retain personal data about...

Banking Code: user liability for losses from online banking

Posted on April 04, 2008
Out-law reports on the new Banking Code, which will see customers regarded as liable for losses from their bank (e.g. from hackers gaining access to their account) if they do not act with reasonable care. One of the key examples...

Free software licensing & Software as a Service

Posted on April 04, 2008
Brendan Scott, a leading open source lawyer, has produced a useful analysis of the legal issues to do with free software licensing as applied to "Software as a Service" (SAAS). SAAS is the term often used for web-based applications (e.g....

IMPACT is back!

Posted on April 04, 2008
As you will know if you are looking at the blog, reading your RSS or receiving the IMPACT email, we're back online. A domain name issue of fiendish technical complexity (or so our IT people tell us) caused a server...

3 law firms, 6 weeks: data protection crackdown continues

Posted on April 01, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) may be unhappy with its existing powers, but it is not afraid to use them. Yesterday, the ICO announced the successful prosecution of a small London solicitors firm for failing to notify the ICO of...

Keyword advertising & trade mark infringement

Posted on March 31, 2008
This is a quick heads-up on two recent trade mark infringement judgments, both to do with the use of a third party's trade mark in a keyword advert. Keyword adverts are the sponsored links that sit alongside ordinary search results...

Laptop theft leads ICO to declare Skipton in breach of the DPA

Posted on March 26, 2008
Looking at the latest ICO press releases, we see that last month the ICO found Skipton Financial Services to be in breach of the Data Protection Act. This arose out of the theft from a Skipton contractor of a laptop...

UK software patent law uncertainty continues

Posted on March 25, 2008
The uncertainty over whether computer software is patentable in the UK continues, following a decision by the High Court last week which the UK Intellectual Property Office has announced it will appeal. The ruling relates to an application by Symbian...

New ICO survey reveals level of public concern over data protection

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Information Commissioner's Office has released a survey of 1,000 people across the UK, which it claims shows that the public has 'woken up' to privacy. Whilst the survey itself is a huge set of figures (28 pages of them,...

DRM gets another lease of life

Posted on March 19, 2008
Reports in the Financial Times today suggest that Apple, massively influential in the music industry through its iTunes store, is about to shake things up again with a scheme allowing unlimited downloads from the store in return for a monthly...

St Patricks Day legal action: this time it's an Irish ISP being sued

Posted on March 17, 2008
In what is probably not intended by the record industry to be a St Patricks Day gift, Out-law.com reports that Eircom (an ISP) is being sued by 4 record companies for failing to stop its services being used to send...

Music, fans & copyright online: Open Rights Group event

Posted on March 17, 2008
Linking in nicely to our previous post, the Open Rights Group is holding an event called "Music, fans & copyright online" on Wednesday, 2pm at the London School of Economics. More details at the Open Rights Group Blog. In my...

Worldwide piracy crackdown threatens ISPs

Posted on March 17, 2008
As you may have read, the UK government has said that it is becoming increasingly frustrated by the volume of illegal file swapping taking place online, and has threatened new legislation by April 2009 if the situation doesn't rapidly improve....

Court considers "all reasonable endeavours"

Posted on March 14, 2008
Those of you that negotiate contracts may find useful a recent Chancery Division decision, Hiscox v Pinnacle. One of the points considered in the case was the meaning of the certain standard of performance wording that often features in contracts:...

Testing Testing 1 2 3

Posted on March 14, 2008
Those of you that read IMPACT via the website rather than email or RSS may have noticed that the blog has a new design. At the moment, like the BBC iPlayer site, the new design is still in the beta...

German search engine keywords legal update

Posted on March 12, 2008
Those with an active online presence in Germany should check out Class 46's report on a final ruling by the German Courts on a search engine keywords case. In summary the German Courts have held that using a competitor company's...

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...

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...

US Air Force takes off for cyberspace

Posted on January 14, 2008
It will be no surprise to those who know me that my eye was caught by an astonishing report on the Computing site, about the US Air Force setting up a unit dedicated to "both offensive and defensive cyberspace operations".  Led by a 2-star general no less, it is reported that the unit will (rather ominously) "co-ordinate with physical armed forces in order to target and attack those enemies with a hostile presence in cyberspace"...

Model behaviour: ICO issues draft model publication scheme

Posted on January 11, 2008
In mid-December 2007 the Information Commissioner's Office issued a new draft model Freedom of Information publication scheme. The ICO states in its press release that it aims to publish the final version in June 2008, so that public authorities can adopt it as their own publication schemes...

Preparing for the .ASIA landrush

Posted on January 11, 2008
The 'landrush' period for the new .ASIA domain begins on 20 February, ending on 12 March 2008. During this period anyone can apply for a .ASIA domain name can do so, with any domain name receiving multiple applications being auctioned between those that applied...

UK gov launches copyright exemptions consultation

Posted on January 09, 2008
In a widely reported development, the UK government, through the UK Intellectual Property Office, has launched a consultation on reforming the exemptions given under the Copyright Designs & Patent Act 1988. If you want a translation of the above from IP-legalese into English, look no further than the introduction to the consultation by Lord Triesman...

?The Telephone Gambit? Casts Shadows on Legacy of Alexander Graham Bell

Posted on January 07, 2008
Telecommunications Industry News brings us news of what sounds like a fascinating book: "In The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell?s Secret, journalist, Seth Shulman argues that Bell ? with the help of aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner ? improperly accessed patent documents that Gray had filed, then falsely claimed credit for the invention...

Introducing Certified Open

Posted on January 04, 2008
Just a quick post to notify you of an emerging standard that could prove equally important for both IT purchasers and suppliers. Certified Open is a new standard for software, designed to promote fair competition in the IT industry that I learned about at the Open Source Summit in November 2007...

The day the music died: US record industry sues man for ripping own CDs to computer

Posted on January 03, 2008
From The Register and IPKat comes the news that the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing a man for ripping music CDs to his computer. The allegation isn't that the defendant, one Jeffrey Howell of Arizona, distributed the resulting 2,000 music files on the internet...

Data protection - more signs of unrest

Posted on January 03, 2008
More today on the increasingly militant climate on data protection - this time, says the Times online, it's MP's calling for tougher, criminal sanctions for breaches of data security - like the recent debacle at HMRC. What's that, you cry - our MP's calling for penalties which could be applied to them if they ever attain ministerial rank ? How noble, though cynics may ask whether these are the same MP's who recently claimed credit for the Freedom of Information Act while seeking to exempt themselves from its more tiresome provisions...

Playing favourites - branding in action

Posted on January 03, 2008
We at IMPACT® are very interested in branding matters, and were therefore drawn to an item spotted in the run-up to Christmas on the Channel Register site.  This describes the use of a brand name which has enjoyed a premium in one market being used in a different territory to "trawl for bottom feeders", and thereby protect the profile of another - and clearly more cherished - brand owned by the same proprietor...

Data protection breaches blog launched

Posted on January 02, 2008
Nicely linking into Deryck's previous post and comment that data protection is now a matter of public interest, information security company Trusted Toolkit has launched BreachBlog. This blog, which launched in November 2007, brings headline details of data protection breaches from around the world, and names the organisations responsible...

Gym operators pick bad time to be found unfit in DP department

Posted on January 02, 2008
Data protection is a hot topic.  The public certainly thinks so now, and the media have definitely picked up on this.  If further proof were needed, a report on the Manchester Evening News site today provides it. The report reveals that personal data on "more than a thousand" women (it was a women's gym - double whammy) were stuffed in a bin bag and dumped outside for collection with the rest of the garbage...

Ringing in the New Year: IMPACT recommendations for 2008

Posted on January 02, 2008
Happy New Year to all readers! With the day-to-day grind of work about to begin again, it's easy just to keep your head down and get on with the work. However, this is a great time to look at new sources of information to improve your know-how, and new ways of getting that information...

Christmas day e-commerce bonanza

Posted on December 31, 2007
25 December 2007 was the day when the British collectively said thanks for the presents, and promptly went online to buy more stuff. The Telegraph reports than 1 person in 13 in the UK bought something online on Christmas day. The total Christmas Day online spend in the UK was a whopping £84 million, by 4...

Compo for HMRC Data Breach - no sure thing

Posted on December 31, 2007
I was interested to read an item published by the Newcastle Sunday Sun on 23 December 2007, which announced the startling news that "The Government is facing a multi-million pound compensation payout to families over the lost child benefit discs blunder"...

Sir Nicholas Pumfrey 1951-2007

Posted on December 31, 2007
It is with real sadness that we note the sudden and un-expected death of Lord Justice Nicholas Pumfrey following a stroke on Christmas Eve. Not only did Nicholas have one of the finest legal minds of his generation, he was also a wonderful human being...

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Posted on December 20, 2007
There are just under 2 working days left until the Christmas break. With the usual mad rush underway, as clients try to get deals completed with time to spare for last minute shopping, it's time to close the blog until the New Year. Thanks to all who have read and commented on the blog during 2007...

Freedom of Information requests drop during July - September 2007

Posted on December 18, 2007
The Ministry of Justice has recently published statistics on the number of Freedom of Information requests received by central government during the quarter July to September 2007. The statistics indicate a reduction in requests of 8 percent compared with the same period of 2006; 7,580 compared with 8,209...

Changing the subject: Canadian ISP alters web pages

Posted on December 18, 2007
David Harris's Briefblog brings news of Rogers, a Canadian ISP, adding content to the pages of its customers. According to David, at the moment Rogers is only doing this to the pages of customers who it wants to notify about issues with account status such as exceeding usage limit...

2008 predictions: mobile phones replace laptops

Posted on December 17, 2007
Along with various legal and technology experts, Computers & Law magazine asked the lawyers at IMPACT to give their predictions for developments in 2008. Here's my contribution... I believe that the most important new technology trend in 2008 will be the mainstream use of mobile phones for activities that would previously have been done on computers...

The European Patent Convention 2000

Posted on December 13, 2007
The European Patent Convention 2000 (EPC) came into force today. It revises the European Patent Convention 1973 as agreed at the Conference of the Contracting States in Munich from 20 to 29 November 2000. Substantive patent law is predominantly unchanged with the main amendments in Article 54(3) and 54(5)...

International design system opens its doors to UK designers in 2008

Posted on December 12, 2007
A change in the law means that from 1 January 2008, UK businesses will be able to obtain international design registrations. The change also means that people will be able to obtain Community Registered Designs (giving EU-wide protection) through the international design system...

Bluetooth marketing law update

Posted on December 12, 2007
In October, I reported on a change in position on Bluetooth marketing by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The ICO went from regarding Bluetooth marketing as being covered by the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations to considering that such marketing was in fact not covered...

Sensible DRM? Nokia's new music service

Posted on December 10, 2007
Digital rights management, better known by its acronym DRM, is a concept that's been unpopular from the start. For the media industry, the big issue with distributing music in the form of digital files was always that there was no way of preventing the punters going and copying the files to their mates...

The end of the European Patent Litigation Agreement?

Posted on December 04, 2007
The IPEG blog quotes patent specialist Jochen Pagenburg on the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). Pagenburg suggests that, with discussions having been "fruitless" so far, unless there are big movements forward in 2008, discussions on both EPLA and the Community Patent (talks on which EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy earlier this year described as being "stuck in the mud") might as well be dropped...