ICC and INTA Oppose De Minimis Provision in ACTA

The International Trademark Association (INTA) and International Chamber of Commerce have issued a notice on ACTA urging countries to drop the de minimis provision that is designed to allay fears of iPod searching border guards.  The two associations argue that the exception "sends the wrong message to consumers."

For Further details click here

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Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Meet in to Discuss Copyright in the Internet Economy by Public and Private Sector Leaders in USA

On Thursday, 1st July, 2010, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke gathered with leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the relationship between copyright policy, creativity and innovation in the Internet economy as part of a symposium co-hosted by the Commerce Department's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

The day-long symposium included discussion of online copyright policy in the United States, specifically the impact of current copyright laws, existing and emerging techniques used to illegally distribute and obtain protected works, the extent and economic impact of infringement, and the role of emerging business models for legitimate distribution of content. During the symposium, it was announced that the Department of Commerce will issue a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) this month seeking public comment on the effectiveness of copyright law, and ultimately will issue a report which will contribute to the Administration's domestic policy and international engagement in the area of online copyright protection.

"The United States simply must get back to cultivating industries and lines of scientific discovery that provide long-term benefits to society and spur sustainable innovation," said Secretary Locke. "We have to find the sweet spot on Internet policy—one that ensures the Internet remains an engine of creativity and innovation, and a place that discourages piracy of copyrighted works."

In addition to Secretary Locke, featured speakers included U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Lawrence E. Strickling and other senior Obama Administration officials. The conference also included five panel discussions with participants representing the views of different stakeholders.

The Department of Commerce has assembled an Internet Policy Task Force whose mission is to identify leading public policy and operational challenges in the Internet environment. Recognizing the vital importance of both intellectual property rights and the Internet to U.S. creativity and innovation, the Department has made it a top priority to ensure that both remain a vehicle for these important purposes.

This effort is to that end. The Task Force is conducting similar reviews of cybersecurity, the global free flow of information goods and services, and information privacy.

Additional information on the symposium is available on the Internet Policy Task Force Web siteand the USPTO's Web site.

 Source: http://www.ipwatchdog.com 3^rd July 2010

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

ConferenceLex (Call for Papers): CII & APTDC, National Conference on Building Next Practices of IP Management

ConferenceLex (Call for Papers): CII & APTDC, National Conference on Building Next Practices of IP Management

Dr.Tabrez writes about the ever-expanding world of Intellectual Property Law,Cyberlaw,Corporate Law including burning issues of other areas of National and International Importance.

The Bilski Case is Finally Decided

 

          The court held that the Bilski's application was not statutory subject matter:

Petitioners' remaining claims are broad examples of how hedging can be used in commodities and energy markets. Flook established that limiting an abstract idea to one field of use or adding token post solution components did not make the concept patentable. That is exactly what the remaining claims in petitioners' application do. These claims attempt to patent the use of the abstract idea of hedging risk in the energy market and then instruct the use of well-known random analysis techniques to help establish some of the inputs into the equation. Indeed, these claims add even less to the underlying abstract principle than the invention in Flook did, for the Flook invention was at least directed to the narrower domain of signaling dangers in operating a catalytic converter.

* * * 

Today, the Court once again declines to impose limitations on the Patent Act that are inconsistent with the Act's text. The patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas. The Court, therefore, need not define further what constitutes a patentable "process," beyond pointing to the definition of that term provided in §100(b) and looking to the guideposts in Benson, Flook, and Diehr.

And nothing in today's opinion should be read as endorsing interpretations of §101 that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used in the past. See, e.g., State Street, 149 F. 3d, at 1373; AT&T Corp., 172 F. 3d, at 1357. It may be that the Court of Appeals thought it needed to make the machine-or-transformation test exclusive precisely because its case law had not adequately identified less extreme means of restricting business method patents, including (but not limited to) application of our opinions in Benson, Flook, and Diehr. In disapproving an exclusive machine-or-transformation test, we by no means foreclose the Federal Circuit's development of other limiting criteria that further the purposes of the Patent Act and are not inconsistent with its text.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Source: The 271 Patent Blog  By Peter Zura

For a copy of the opinion, click here (link)

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Launch of WIPO-Gold- an IP Research Portal

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva  has launched a IP Resource Portal named 'WIPO-Gold' focusing on providing online IP information tool, which can be helpful to access broad collection of  IP data  relating to technology, brands, designs, statistics, WIPO standards, IP classification systems and IP laws and treaties. The Portal is very useful since it provides treaties administered by WIPO, its regulations and also the contracting members list, which comes very handy in various situations. Along with it it also provides for Statistical publication of Patents, trademarks, designs, plant varities, microorganisms, etc. 

A specific section has been dedicated to WIPO UDRP Panel Decisions, which houses full text search of WIPO Decisions on Domain Names. 

In the website, Director General Francis Gurry said "The launch of WIPO GOLD is a significant step towards fulfilling one of the Organization's strategic goals – that of serving as a world reference source for IP information and analysis". The WIPO GOLD portal is a rich, dynamic and evolving information tool that will continue to be expanded and improved over time," he added. 

To visit WIPO Gold, please visit : http://www.wipo.int/wipogold/en/

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

5th LAWASIA International Moot Competition 2010, New Delhi India

As you are aware but might have not taken notice or remembered, Wednesday 30^th June, 2010 is the deadline for expression of interest of participation in the 5^th LAWASIA International Moot Competition with the actual deadline for the registration of teams on Tuesday, 13 July 2010. The expression of interest is to enable the LAWASIA Standing Committee to plan and prepare for the actual competition in November. Your expression of interest is therefore important from that perspective.

 

Please note that there are limited places for the competition and therefore the general principles adopted by the Standing Committee in deciding who gets to participate are based on the widest possible national representation of teams in line with our ethos of embracing humanity with all its diversity. The first team from a country to express interest/register will be given a place. If there are more than one team from a country such subsequent teams will be placed on a "reserve list" in chronological order of expression of interest/registration unless in the view of the Standing Committee the number of Law Schools in that country warrants the admission of a second or third team. The team at the top of the reserve list being the team to have first expressed interest/registered and so forth. In the event there is a tie the team that registered will take precedence over the team that merely expressed an interest. Similarly if there is more than one team from a country preference will be given to teams not from the same Law School. Schools that have participated in previous years will be considered favourably. There is no appeal and the Standing Committee's decision is final.

 

 

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Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic'

 

The expectations and demands of privacy activists are unrealistic and uncommercial, according to one of America's top privacy law academics. Lobbyists for privacy rights should be more pragmatic and cooperate with companies, he said.

Privacy advocates this week wrote to social networking giant Facebook in the latest of a long line of criticisms of its privacy policies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU of Northern California, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) complained in an open letter (pdf) to the company that it did not do enough to protect the personal information people post to the site.

Such demands will never be successful, though, because they run so counter to the business interests of companies, Chris Jay Hoofnagle told podcast OUT-LAW Radio. Hoofnagle was speaking before that letter was made public.

Hoofnagle is director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's information privacy programs and senior fellow to the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic.

"The privacy advocates have been less than pragmatic on these issues and they're calling for interventions that I don't think will protect privacy," he said, speaking of criticisms expressed by various organisations in recent months. "[They also] might be commercially impossible to put into play."

The privacy groups this week urged Facebook to make many of its features opt-in only, so that users had to actively choose them.

"The answer can't be opt in," said Hoofnagle. "Let's say [US consumer regulator] the Federal Trade Commission says we're going to create this opt in rule, companies will simply require people to opt in to see any content."

Hoofnagle has published widely on privacy law and the internet. He told OUT-LAW Radio that the very basis of the action of many privacy advocates is wrong, and that he backs a very simple solution to the privacy problem.

"If I could do anything now I would simply create a ceiling on how long advertising data would be kept, something like three months," he said. "It would cause advertisers to have to compete under that ceiling, whoever could do the best targeting with just three months of data.

"It would eliminate the civil liberties concerns because companies would have to erase the click-stream after a short amount of time. And the other benefit is that it wouldn't require the consumers to do anything," he said.

User data is valuable to website publishers such as Facebook because it allows them to sell more expensive advertising space to companies which will use the gathered data to try to match adverts to users based on their activity and supposed demographic profile.

But Hoofnagle said that advertisers had told regulators in the US that they did not need lots of historic data to make online advertising work.

"The FTC received a lot of testimony in recent years … and behavioural advertisers came forth and said that the most accurate data is the live data, it's the thing you're doing now," he said. "That really indicates your what your purchasing intent is. Historical data isn't as useful.

"A number of advertisers … said that any data that was older than a month was worthless for targetting," he said.

By OUT-LAW.COM • Get more from this author, Posted in Law, 18th June 2010 12:29 GMT

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk

--
Dr.Tabrez Ahmad,
Associate Professor of Law, KIIT Law School
KIIT University, PATIA, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, 751024.
Website: www.site.technolexindia.com
Blog: http://tabrezahmad.technolexindia.com http://iplexindia.blogspot.com
Profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/tabrezahmad7.
Blogs: http://www.blogger.com/profile/15337756250055596327
Blog: http://drtabrez.wordpress.com
   http://tabrezahmad.typepad.com/blog/
Research Papers: http://ssrn.com/author=1189281