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The IPKat gets fatter

The IPKat team is expanding for 2007. Two new bloggers will be joining the team, bringing the total number of bloggers there to four. The two new bloggers are:

• Johanna Gibson: a Reader in IP Law at the  Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London (try fitting all of that on an address label!) Johanna already writes 2 blogs: Patenting Lives and IPmed.
• David Pearce, who is from a patents background including creating some inventions himself.

Congratulations to Johanna and David.

IPKat is already probably the best academic IP law blog (in the world... ever!) so I'm looking forward to seeing what an expanded IPKat can do.

Wired News' predictions for 2007

Wired News has posted its predictions for the technology industry in 2007. A lot of it's tongue-in-cheek, but here's some of the more serious ones:

• The volume of internet traffic will double
• The amount of spam will double
• A major newspaper will move to only publishing online
• Myspace loses its popularity with the growth of niche social networking sites
• The development of services that control profiles from multiple social networking sites

Everybody's suing in the USA (Christmas special)

Two more stories/updates that might be of interest:

Disney: Santa is Our Intellectual Property!
Full of festive cheer, earlier in December Disney World threw a man who looked like Santa Claus (and went round the parking saying "Ho Ho Ho!" to children) out of the theme park.

The Times quoted the poor Santa:

"They told us Santa was considered a Disney character,” he complained. “Their statement to me was that I needed to alter my appearance . . . or I needed to leave the park because I was impersonating Santa Claus."

This story was picked up by quite a few news sources at the time. To quote the best comment, IPKat said:

The IPKat is frankly impressed if Disney has found a way to assert personality rights over a fictional character deeply embedded in Western culture.

AllofMP3 statement on legal action by US record labels
Techcrunch reports on a brief statement by AllofMP3 about the legal action recently started by a number of US record labels (see our story). Basically they'll carry on operating whilst the action continues, so it's business as usual for AllofMP3.

The Independent asks: what freedom of information?

Commenting on the latest Freedom of Information statistics, The Independent (a UK broadsheet) argues in its headline story that the government is refusing routine FOI requests about government policy. It argues that this policy is in contrast to the government's release of information in response to FOI requests asking about what went on behind-the-scenes in previous Tory governments.

Commenting on the government's proposal to change the FOI fees structure, The Independent says:

"Two years ago ministers were "willing to trust the people", or so they said. Now they claim that their priority is to minimise the cost to the taxpayer of the functioning of the Act. Excuse our scepticism. There are other areas where the Government can cut costs if it needs to. The British public's right to know still leaves much to be desired. It needs to be expanded, not curtailed."

IMPACT comment
It is not necessarily the case that all FOI requests must receive a full response for public bodies to be complying with the FOIA; the information covered by some requests may be exempt from disclosure. The Independent isn't trying to say that all requests must be fully responded to, but it is worth remembering that exemptions to disclosure do exist.

The Independent is a newspaper that will undoubtedly have made numerous FOI requests and therefore has important practical experience that public bodies can learn from. Its viewpoint must therefore be taken seriously. To assess the accuracy of its view, an independent review of the overall validity of refusals to disclose information in response to FOI requests would have to be undertaken.

Links
Independent main article
Independent leader column

Weblog Awards: the winners

Hello everyone! Hope you all survived the annual food marathon that is Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

The winners of the Weblog Awards 2006 have been confirmed. The list of winners is worth a read, as are the blogs themselves of course. There were 45 categories in the awards so I'm not going to list all the winners here. The following winning blogs  might be of interest to IMPACT readers:

• Best overall blog: The Daily Kos - a political blog. Ranked number 2 blog in the world by Technorati.
• Best tech blog: Engadget
• Best law blog: The Volokh Conspiracy
• Best online community: FARK

A total of 526,974 votes were cast.

Merry Christmas!

Just to say Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year. I've foolishly agreed to work on 28 and 29 December so there may well be a few articles on the blog during those days.

Thanks to all everyone who's read and contributed to the blog since we started it in August 2006, and especially to all those who voted and helped us be 3rd best law blog (worldwide) in the Weblog Awards 2006.

UK Statute Law Database: use with care

I've received 2 comments on my post yesterday about the new UK Statute Law database. They're featured below that post of course, but are worth repeating here so that potential users of the database are aware of its limitations.

Scott Wortley, a Lecturer on Law at Edinburgh Law School, commented:

"I have tested this against a few statutes I know well and found that there are a number of inaccuracies. Statutes repealed in 1995 remain on the database with no note of repeal. Statutes passed in 2000 have not had the amendments incorporated into earlier statutes, and one piece of recent Scottish legislation I have written on (which was amended by statutes in 2003 and 2004) has remained unaltered in the database.

I am a little disappointed and would urge caution in relation to the use of the material."

I've since emailed Scott, who gave further details of his experience with the database. If you're interested, go to the extended version of this post by clicking to read more below.

Jim Boff has also given the following words of caution:

"Really useful - but dangerous.

A search on the word "Patent" indicates that there are only two Acts relating to patents in force -Price's Patent Candle Company Limited Act 1992, and Letters Patent Act 1571.

A search on "Patents" gets a more useful result. Care will be needed with this site, but with care it looks good."

Hopefully we'll see the above issues ironed out as time goes by. For the time being, however, it seems like those who need a reliable version of a UK statute will have to continue to rely on  paid-for services.

The "100 most useful sites"

If you're still in the office, rather than having already jacked it in til the new year, you might be inclined to do more internet surfing than usual to pass the time until the Christmas break begins. (Not us at IMPACT of course, we're still efficiently going through all that work!)

If you do have the time or just fancy a distraction, the Guardian has produced a list of the 100 most useful websites of 2006. It's mostly consumer websites, but the blogging services detailed will be of interest to businesses. I'm surprised that there isn't a photo sharing website section in the list - Flickr is a great example of an easy to use and powerful web service - but overall it looks like a pretty good list.

Everybody's suing in the USA

The IMPACT blog focuses on IP and IT law developments in the UK and European Union, although whenever there are interesting developments elsewhere we might give them a mention. Two stories this week that you might want to look into further:

Sony pays off US customers damaged by anti-piracy software
Sony has settled a US group-action by customers who used Sony CDs containing hidden anti-piracy software. The customers weren't told that the CDs contained the software, and the software arguably damaged their computers because it could be misused by hackers. See BBC story about the Sony settlement.

Legal action started against AllofMP3 by US record labels
Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol and UMG recordings have started a legal action against music download site AllofMP3.com. The action accuses AllofMP3 of unlawfully selling music for which the labels own the copyright. See BBC story about the AllofMP3.com action.

FOI statistics released for July - September 2006

The Department for Constitutional Affairs has issued the Freedom of Information Request statistics for July to September 2006.

According to Martin Rosenbaum of the BBC's Open Secrets FOIA blog, the figures show a decrease in the number of requests overall, but with a doubling of the number of requests made to the Home Office, when compared with the figures for the same period of 2005. Even the increase in requests to the Home Office could just be because of a change in the way that requests are recorded, says Martin.

Link
The report