IMPACT®

Corruption 2.0 - Larry Lessig delivers the Annual SCL Lecture

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 critical. Privacy, security and the appropriate balance for copyright are now central policy making challenges, if the economic and social potential of the Internet is to be realized. In this lecture, Professor Lessig will build upon the work of Oxford Professor Jonathan Zittrain to identify a critical dynamic in policy making affecting the Internet, and how technologists have become central to that dynamic. The threats to privacy, security, and the proper protection for copyright are not technical, but political. The remedies to those threats will not just be political, but in an important sense, also technological. Professor Lessig will describe this dynamic, and describe the emerging movement in the United States to address it.

SCL confidently expects that there will be a considerable call for tickets from members and  non-members alike and therefore you are advised to apply for your tickets as soon as possible either online or by emailing caroline.gould@scl.org"

Lawrence Lessig is an influential US lawyer and writer, who many IP/IT lawyers will know through his writings about "free culture" - the free software and online collaborative movement. He's now changed his focus to political corruption, as evidenced by the Change Congress movement that he co-founded with Joe Trippi. If you're attending the Lecture, I look forward to meeting you.

If you can't attend, you can still find out what Lessig is on about. If I'm right, Lessig will be giving what he describes as his "Change Congress" speech. With him being firmly embedded in "free culture", you won't be surprised to learn that there are a number of versions of the speech online. You also won't be too shocked to know Lessig is publicising this content on his Lessig Blog.

Have a good day!

ICO favours extending Freedom of Information to public sector contractors

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 UK, gave the confirmation in a public response to a Ministry of Justice consultation on FOI. In its response, the ICO said:

"The [ICO]... observes the fast pace of change in the delivery of public functions and services in terms of public and private sector remits, for example in the Health Service. It is vital that the FOI Act keeps pace with these changes in order that public confidence in the regime is maintained and compliance with right to know legislation cannot be reduced by funding external organisations to carry out functions or contracting out. Where public authority functions are transferred to other organisations in principle FOI obligations should follow."

Key points to the ICO's response:

• The ICO favours a staged approach to extending FOI, gradually widening its remit rather than doing to the complete extension in one go. The ICO says this will enable it to manage its resources, and enable lessons to be learnt from each stage of expansion.
• The ICO doesn't think that all contractors/outsourcers to the public sector should be subject to FOI. The ICO: "would suggest that careful consideration needs to be made about the value that can be gained from adding organisations against what information is already accessible via the Act. The Commissioner considers that a bar set in the region of £1million for public sector contracts might provide a suitable starting point for considering whether public sector contractors are brought within the Act."
• The ICO lists five private organisations (not subject to the FOI regime) for whom it has received FOI complaints/enquiries: Press Complaints Commission, Financial Ombudsman Service, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, ICTIS (now PhonepayPlus, and Financial Reporting Council. The ICO doesn't offer any 'firm views' on whether they should be covered by FOI.

The ICO is very influential at present, having acquired a very high profile as a result of the very public in losses of personal data by both public and private sector bodies in 2007 and so far in 2008. We will have to wait and see whether this influence is apparent in the Ministry of Justice final proposals on FOI.

European DP Supervisor adopts Opinion on ePrivacy Directive changes

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

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 worlds such as Second Life are a glimpse at the future:

"The 3D internet is coming next, and now is a great time to get familiar with it."

Duranske's post briefly covers legal issues to do with virtual worlds such as intellectual property rights, dispute resolution and employment law. Well worth a look.

If, like me, you find these kind of worlds interesting in theory, but tricky to use in practice (system crashing, walking into walls and disjointed conversations), Duranske's prediction on the 3D internet isn't something that you'll be cracking open the champagne to celebrate.

That said, virtual worlds are already popular and some have proved profitable for both their operators and more entrepreneurial users. Some worlds have been around for years and so this doesn't look to be a part of the internet that will be abandoned by users when the next Facebook comes along. In addition, user interface technology is improving all the time - for example, touch screens (iPhone), motion-sensitive controllers (Nintendo Wii). Technological advances in this area could mean that interacting with virtual worlds becomes more of a pleasure than a pain.

Notably, user creativity virtual worlds has also resulted in a new film form: machinima. We were lucky enough to be part of the panel of a legal session at the Machinima Festival Europe 07. An article on the main legal issues,  wrote after the event, can be found in the February/March 08 issue of Computers & Law magazine, and a summary will appear on IMPACT in the near future.

'Youngest inventor' makes a clean sweep

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, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.

After passing the rigorous patenting process, his idea is now protected from anyone who might copy it.

Bakewell is a place that, until now, was more known for its tarts (of the food variety) than for innovation.

Sam's dad is Mark Houghton, a patent agent at Derbyshire-based Patent Outsourcing Limited. The BBC reports that, thanks to this, the only cost of the patent application was a £200 official fee. Presumably Mark's other clients will be hoping he can prosecute their patents for a similar cost!

IMPACT educational aside: If you want to read more about patents and the 'rigourous patenting process' mentioned by the BBC, check out our overview of patents.

(Pictured: A non-patented single-headed broom yesterday)

INTA, Berlin May 17 - 21 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 17 - 21 May, is one of the largest and most important events on the trade mark professional's calendar, with over 8,000 trade mark owners, managers, advisors, and providers of related services due to attend from across the globe. This will be INTA's 130's Annual Meeting.

At the event, we will be meeting with clients, the suppliers with use for the IT behind our trade mark services, and our contacts from other firms. We'll also be attending a Meet the Bloggers session.

If you are attending INTA and would like to meet with either of us, please contact the team and we'll get something sorted.

Two stripes and you're out

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 the Dutch Supreme Court, in a case to do with Adidas' well known three stripes, which it uses on almost all of its sports gear. Adidas has various trade mark registrations for the three stripes.

The ruling is heavily technical, and readers can find a detailed report by Jeremy Philips on Class 46. Here's a quick summary of the key facts and bits of the ruling...

A number of retailers in the Netherlands, including H&M and C&A, had started retailing clothes that featured similar stripes (e.g. H&M sold sports gear with two stripes). Adidas sued these retailers for trade mark infringement. The retailers sought to rely on a number of provisions of the Trade Mark Directive to argue that Adidas' trade marks were either invalid or did not prevent the usage on clothes by others of types of stripes except for three stripes (i.e. two stripes good, three stripes bad!) The ECJ ruled that, because the Adidas three stripes were so distinctive, Adidas could rely on its trade marks to bring infringement actions against others who featured stripes on their clothes.

The above summary deliberately over-simplifies things, so once you've taken in the key facts, head to Class 46's report for the fine detail.

Free Software Foundation's First European Licensing & Legal Workshop

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 was held in Amsterdam, comprised a day of talks, discussion and networking for members of the organisation's European Legal & Technical Network. Some 54 lawyers and licensing experts from across Europe (plus a few who had travelled from Australia and the USA) attended the event, which was chaired by Shane Coughlan, the driving force behind FTF.

To slightly understate the situation, free software & open source (FOSS) is a movement with a degree of politics to it, with factions taking different positions on issues such as what materials should be caught by FOSS licences and if/how software patents should be dealt with. (In fact, it is so factionalised that some would argue you can't even describe it as a single 'movement'.)  More importantly, it is a movement that inspires a huge amount of creative activity, and offers a credible alternative to "proprietary" software, and presents an alternative source of business for IT companies. It was a significant achievement of both FTF and the Workshop attendees that the event focussed on the latter and left out the politics. I will write a more full report on the event later this week.

Introducing... the IP Finance Blog

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 R&D breaks, film and product finance, calculating quantum of damages--anything that happens where IP meets money."

The IP Finance Blog is brought to us by an eclectic international crowd, including: Jeremy Philips, one of the most influential people in IP law and a thoroughly nice bloke too; Roya Ghafele, an economist who focuses on IP, currently a researcher at the University of California Berkeley; Darren Olivier, a trade mark lawyer based in the UK who works for South African firm Bowman Gilfillan; and IP lawyer Neil Wilkof of Israel law firm Herzog, Fox, and Neeman.

Whilst the blog only appeared at the start of 2008, the contributors have already published an interesting collection of posts. If you're interested in IP and its links to cold hard cash, the IP Finance Blog is worth adding to your newsreader.

NODUS - 7 May 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 issued the following email to NODUS members:

"I can now confirm the speakers at the event, who are as follows:

• Jeremy Reed (Hogarth Chambers) - speaking on "Software Patents and the Recent Developments in the Law"
• A patent examiner from the UK-IPO - speaking on "The Role of the Patent Examiner"

Should be very interesting.

I look forward to seeing you on 7 May 2008 at 5pm. Drinks and nibbles will be provided!"

If you are an IP or IT legal advisor, patent or trade mark attorney based in the East Midlands and you'd like to attend NODUS, please contact Nick at: nmcdonald@brownejacobson.com