Columbia Science and Technology Law Review » Link Roundup

STLR Link Roundup – April 24, 2010

STLR — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:29:52 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

Authorities in San Mateo, California, contemplate filing criminal charges in connection with the sale of an Apple prototype (of a new iPhone), lost by and possibly stolen from an Apple software engineer and bought for $5,000 by the website Gizmodo.com, the New York Times reports.

From the San Francisco Chronicle: citing a desire to help fight censorship, Google has launched a tool that discloses requests the company receives from governments for content removal and user data.

India’s new copyright proposals, which include both fines and jail time for offenders, are still not strict enough for the RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations that lobby for greater intellectual property enforcement, Ars Technica explains.

From CNET, a summary of the recent Supreme Court decision declaring unconstitutional a law banning Internet videos of animal cruelty, while leaving open the possibility that a narrower law would be permissible.

A new study funded by net neutrality opponents claims that the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules would cost the telecommunications industry over 340,000 jobs in the next ten years, PC World reports.

PatentlyO notes that the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case on international copyright exhaustion, and gives a summary of the case.

Also from PatentlyO, links to videos of patent attorney Kevin Noonan defending genetic patents on 60 Minutes and the Colbert Report.

STLR Link Roundup – April 16, 2010

STLR — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:32:43 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

Ephemeral Law takes a look at the court documents in Microsoft’s challenge to the Waledac botnet, which it describes as on the “cutting edge of legal efforts to shut down hacking operations.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Department of Justice is stepping up its antitrust investigation into technology firms’ “no-poach” policy and salary fixing.

Eric Goldman reports on a decision of the California Court of Appeals rejecting an argument that a California statute prohibiting eavesdropping precluded admitting Yahoo! chat logs in evidence.

Why the anti-commons aren’t so tragic, from Patent Docs.

The MTTLR Blog writes about falsely-convicted victims of DNA forensics errors.

Wired: a new malware scam threatens BitTorrent with copyright infringement suits.

Spicy-IP blogs about BioPiracy – the practice of mining the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities for biological and medicinal patents – in Africa.

Feature from The Register: the Russian Association of Electronic Communications promises to crack down on spam and cybercrime.

British Election special: the mother of British hacker Gary McKinnon, who was at the heart of a recent UK-US extradition battle, has announced that she will run against Chancellor Jack Straw in the upcoming parliamentary elections, from bbc.co.uk.

STLR Link Roundup – April 9, 2010

STLR — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:03:14 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The British Parliament has approved a law authorizing temporary suspension of internet access for those accused of repeated copyright infringement, reports the New York Times. Opponents of the law, such as the Open Rights Group, promise to turn this into an election issue in Great Britain.

Canadian company Wi-Lan has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against 19 high-tech companies—including heavyweights Apple, Dell, Motorola, Acer, and others—for allegedly violating its Bluetooth patents, reports Business Week.

From Wired: a U.S District Court judge has given a lawyer a 30-day sentence for contempt of court for encouraging people to flood the judge’s e-mail account, to persuade him to side with the lawyer’s client in a civil suit. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing whether the judge had the authority to impose a contempt sentence for conduct outside the physical courtroom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a 30 year computer ban for a sex offender, saying that the ban is “substantively unreasonable” and “aggressively interferes with the goal of rehabilitation,” reports Wired’s Threat Level.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauds the 2nd Circuit’s decision in Tiffany vs. eBay, finding the online auction company not liable for contributory trademark infringement on the basis of users selling items in Tiffany’s signature blue boxes, but the digital rights organization worries about the lack of a statutory “put back” procedure in trademark law.

The New York Times has a detailed article explaining China’s internet censorship methods.

After a federal court held that the FCC cannot impose network neutrality on ISPs (as PC World discusses), the FCC declared its intention to pursue its National Broadband Plan nevertheless. CNET reports that the FCC considers the court’s ruling to have forbidden one technical mechanism for achieving the FCC’s goals, but not the goals themselves.

From eWeek: an Arkansas woman faces misdemeanor charges for posting slanderous messages on her teenage son’s Facebook account.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found that Google’s AdWords program does not infringe the patent for a bidding system determining pricing for ads on search results, Ars Technica reports.

Mexico may disconnect millions of people’s cell phones for failure to register their identities with the government via text message. This is part of an attempt to fight crime by regulating cell phone use, Reuters reports.

STLR Link Roundup – April 2, 2010

STLR — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:03:39 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The Southern District of New York’s decision in Association for Molecular Pathology and ACLU v. USPTO and Myriad (the “gene patents case”) handed down last Monday, has generated a lot of commentary this week. Here’s a selection: reports from Wired and On the Edges of Science and Law; IP Watchdog describes the ruling as “inane”; Patent Docs gives more detail on the patents at issue; Patently O thinks the Federal Circuit is likely to reverse the decision; and Holman’s Biotech IP Blog takes the investor’s perspective.

British science writer Simon Singh (of Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Code Book and Big Bang fame) wins libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, from The Guardian.

Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It comments on the iPhone developer license agreement, disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act request.

From OutLaw, Google, Microsoft, eBay et al call for U.S. privacy law update.

Salt Lake City jury rejects “copyright troll’s” claim to Unix - Wired reports.

The European and FCC antitrust complaints against Google are not about Microsoft, opines The Register.

US criticizes Australian internet filtering plan, from E-Commerce Times.

STLR Link Roundup – March 26, 2010

STLR — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:40:56 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The working text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been released. See Wired and The Register coverage of the story, and our post on the draft treaty here.

The Federal Circuit rules on patent dispute Applera Corp v. Illumina, Inc. on the basis of Californian employment law, writes Patent Docs.

Holman’s Biotech IP Blog discusses the patent law implications of the Federal Circuit’s ruling in Ariad v. Eli Lilly.

Less than two months after hacker Max Vision was sentenced to thirteen years, the sentencing record is broken again as TJX hacker gets twenty years, from Wired.

Ephemerallaw asks whether it is worth chasing cybercrooks (see our recent post on cybercrime here).

The European Court of Justice rules in favor of Google in a challenge to its practice of selling trademarked keywords for its adwords paid results service to competitors. The Stanford Center for Internet and Society and the E-Commerce Times report.

The Register reports that a twenty-five-year-old Frenchman has been arrested on suspicion of hacking President Obama’s Twitter account.

Early in 2009, a settlement between Ireland’s leading internet service provider and four record companies looked set to put in place the world’s first three-strikes-you’re-out copyright violation rule. Tech law blogger TJ McIntyre reports on the latest.

Spicy IP discusses proposed amendments to the Copyright Act and digital rights managements in India.

STLR Link Roundup – March 19, 2010

STLR — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:56:26 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The Department of State’s annual Human Rights Report turns the spotlight on internet freedom in China and Iran, from ZDNet Government.

The US District Court in Delaware stays the patent litigations between Apple and Nokia, pending decisions by the International Trade Commission, says The Register.

A California appeals court rules that cyberbullying threats are not protected free speech, reports Wired.

Also from Wired, the Supreme Court agrees to review a Ninth Circuit decision on privacy rights in the context of background checks on government workers.

The FCC announces that it will recommend the sale of 500 megahertz of spectrum to meet the needs of mobile broadband users, from the Washington Post.

Programmers in trouble over financial misdeeds: two programmers who developed code for Madoff are charged with fraud (The New York Times, The Register) and the Securities Exchange Commission files a complaint against a one-man Russian investment company for hacking into online portfolios to “pump and dump” stocks (Switched, Wired).

From E-Commerce Times: TiVo wins its long running patent infringement case against digital video recorder rivals.

Spicy IP reports that Brazil seems set to invoke WTO intellectual property cross-retaliation provisions for the first time, against the US.

The European Parliament threatens to bring a legal challenge against the European Commission if it fails to disclose details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), writes Outlaw (see our post on the controversial treaty here).

Also from Outlaw: Net Neutrality in the UK: Ofcom to probe broadband providers’ management of web traffic.

STLR Link Roundup – March 12, 2010

STLR — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:31:38 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The New York Times explains that television providers, including TimeWarner and Verizon, are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to change TV retransmission rules so that stations (like ABC or CBS) have less leverage over TV providers.

The FCC is also asking people to test their broadband speeds at its website, Wired reports, to evaluate whether American telecommunications companies are keeping their promises about broadband speed and accessibility.

Business Week reports that the Business Software Alliance (representing Microsoft and Symantec, among others) is getting increasingly angry over China’s piracy policies.

From the E-Commerce Times: The Federal Trade Commission is concerned about the potential unfair competitive advantage
Google would gain by its proposed acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob, and may ultimately refuse to allow the acquisition to go forward.

The Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong warned Google to comply with China’s censorship laws, CNET reports.

From Out-Law: the USTPO has affirmed the validity of Amazon’s amended version of its “one-click” patent, a patent for the technology for buying products online with one click of a web page button, which many sharply criticized as being too obvious to patent.

Also from Out-Law: there is push-back from companies and activists against the proposed UK amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow courts to order ISPs to block websites accused of hosting copyright-infringing content.

STLR Link Roundup – March 5, 2010

STLR — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:03:37 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

Out-Law reports on a US District Court for the Northern District of California case that clarifies how damages for groundless claims of copyright infringement should be determined.

Apple is suing HTC over infringement of its user interface patents, but it’s really Google it’s after, says IP Watchdog.

RealNetworks drops its appeal against a ruling declaring that its DVD-copying software violated the DMCA – Wired reports.

Is it the car or the driver’s fault? Toyota recall casts doubts on driver’s conviction, says Autoblog.

BusinessWeek reports that Google is pushing for the U.S. to take a WTO action against China over internet censorship (and see our recent post on the subject here).

Are you liable if you forward a defamatory e-mail with introductory comments? Eric Goldman reports on a recent California appeals case.

The E-Commerce Times wonders whether Microsoft is behind Google’s recent antitrust troubles.

Netflix is being sued for its deal to delay the availability of Warner Brothers DVDs, reports the New York Daily News.

Out-Law opines that the convictions of Google executives in Italy is not just about Italian law – the problem is with the EU directives Italy implements (see our post on the case here).

Is that really Yao Ming’s Twitter page? Twitter is testing out a new verified account feature for celebrities. See our old post on Twitter-squatting here.

STLR Link Roundup – February 27, 2010

STLR — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:14:14 +0000

A federal appeals court held that federal agents need not get warrants to search files shared over peer-to-peer networks, reports Wired.

The Pentagon will now allow troops access to online social media like Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace, Business Weekly reports.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given Google a license to trade energy on the wholesale market, as The Register reports.

Notifications of website privacy policies do not appear to actually protect online privacy, the New York Times observes.

From Computer Weekly: Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon will have a new court date to determine whether he should be extradited from the United Kingdom to the U.S.A.

BBC: Italy convicts Google executives for allowing the posting of a video of the harassment of an autistic teenager (see our earlier post on the case here, and Google’s official response here).

All Facebook: Facebook gets a patent on its news feed.

From CNET: Google’s Street View map photos do not conform to European Union privacy standards.

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, gives Microsoft a victory by ordering the deactivation of hundreds of e-mail addresses allegedly linked to spammers, reports the Wall St. Journal.

STLR Link Roundup – February 19, 2010

STLR — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 04:38:40 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

As it launches its cloud computing platform, Azure, Microsoft calls for federal regulation to clarify many of the open legal questions surrounding cloud computing, says the MTTLR Blog.

Ten years after it applies, TiVo is granted patent for season pass subscriptions, writes Gizmodo (see our recent post on TiVo’s patent battle with Microsoft here).

INFO/LAW recommends a Paul Ohm paper arguing that statistical techniques are eroding the effectiveness of anonymization of data, with great implications for privacy law.

The Third Circuit revives the hopes of Mr. and Mrs. Boring, who sued Google in trespass after a Google Street View car drove down their private driveway, writes Eric Goldman.

Ephemerallaw reports on the looming compliance deadline for the Massachusetts Data Security Law.

Rob Tiller of Red Hat argues for calling a troll a troll at Opensource.com’s law channel.

Mashable reports that the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have given the go-ahead to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal that will see Yahoo’s search engine powered by Bing technology.

The controversy surrounding Google’s Buzz is not confined to the U.S. (see our post): the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner is also taking a look, says CBC News.

Further afield, Indian IP blog Spicy IP considers whether the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation (IRRO) might challenge the Google Books settlement, on the basis on India’s stricter “fair use” standard.

It’s not just China: European security and rights watchdog, the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, calls on Turkey to reform or abolish its restrictive internet law.

And also in Europe, Out-Law gives a round-up of just-decided and upcoming litigation involving trademarks and keywords.