The objective of the blog is to provide a fair analysis and awareness of legal issues in an easy way for the understanding of the people at large
Thursday, September 23, 2010
IPLex (IPR India): USPTO Launches Ways to Incentivize Humanitarian Technologies
IPLex (IPR India): USPTO Launches Ways to Incentivize Humanitarian Technologies
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.
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.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Facebook in court to protect suffix ‘book’
The world’s biggest social networking website, Facebook, is acting as if it “owns the internet” according to the founder of a Chicago educational startup, Teachbook, which is the latest target in a campaign by the Silicon Valley empire to prevent outsiders from cashing in on its success.
With just two employees and a few dozen registered users, Teachbook is intended as a “productivity suite” allowing educational professionals to share lesson plans, homework assignments and coursework. It barely registers in the online universe — but it has attracted a federal court lawsuit from the empire founded by Mark Zuckerberg, which argues that the suffix “book” should be its exclusive domain.
A complaint filed by Facebook in California accuses Teachbook of “riding on the coat-tails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark” and demands that it change its name.
“They seem to think they own the internet and the word ‘book’,” said Teachbook’s founder, Greg Shrader. “We think they’re wrong on the merits of the case.
“How can this tiny little company in Northfield, Illinois be a threat to a multibillion-dollar social networking site?” The altercation, which Shrader views as the heavy-handed behaviour of a multinational, is the latest aggressive effort by Facebook to protect its reputation. The company, valued at an estimated $33bn, has already forced other sites, including a travel startup called Placebook, to change their names.
Facebook recently mounted a rebuttal against a soon-to-be-released Hollywood film, The Social Network, that depicts it as a product of a series of betrayals among university friends. Facebook has described the movie, which stars Jesse Eisenberg as a party-loving Zuckerberg, as “fiction”.
Experts say Facebook’s efforts to protect the word “book” would face an uphill battle if they ever came to trial — but smaller rivals are unlikely to battle that far. Tania Clark, trademark partner at the intellectual property law firm Withers & Rogers, said: “I believe it will have difficulty enforcing this trademark here, yet 90 per cent of cases like this never make it to the courts as the smaller company caves in.”
In a statement, Facebook said it would not tolerate outsiders cashing in on its brand. A spokesman said Facebook had no dispute with alternative uses of the word “book” and had never objected to many other websites, such as the used car site Kelly Blue Book.
“However, there is already a well-known online network of people with ‘book’ in its name,” said Facebook’s spokesman. “Of course the Teachbook folks are free to create an online network for teachers or whomever they like, and we wish them well in that endeavour. What they are not free to do is trade on our name or dilute our brand while doing so.”
Source: The Hindu 27th August, 2010.
With just two employees and a few dozen registered users, Teachbook is intended as a “productivity suite” allowing educational professionals to share lesson plans, homework assignments and coursework. It barely registers in the online universe — but it has attracted a federal court lawsuit from the empire founded by Mark Zuckerberg, which argues that the suffix “book” should be its exclusive domain.
A complaint filed by Facebook in California accuses Teachbook of “riding on the coat-tails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark” and demands that it change its name.
“They seem to think they own the internet and the word ‘book’,” said Teachbook’s founder, Greg Shrader. “We think they’re wrong on the merits of the case.
“How can this tiny little company in Northfield, Illinois be a threat to a multibillion-dollar social networking site?” The altercation, which Shrader views as the heavy-handed behaviour of a multinational, is the latest aggressive effort by Facebook to protect its reputation. The company, valued at an estimated $33bn, has already forced other sites, including a travel startup called Placebook, to change their names.
Facebook recently mounted a rebuttal against a soon-to-be-released Hollywood film, The Social Network, that depicts it as a product of a series of betrayals among university friends. Facebook has described the movie, which stars Jesse Eisenberg as a party-loving Zuckerberg, as “fiction”.
Experts say Facebook’s efforts to protect the word “book” would face an uphill battle if they ever came to trial — but smaller rivals are unlikely to battle that far. Tania Clark, trademark partner at the intellectual property law firm Withers & Rogers, said: “I believe it will have difficulty enforcing this trademark here, yet 90 per cent of cases like this never make it to the courts as the smaller company caves in.”
In a statement, Facebook said it would not tolerate outsiders cashing in on its brand. A spokesman said Facebook had no dispute with alternative uses of the word “book” and had never objected to many other websites, such as the used car site Kelly Blue Book.
“However, there is already a well-known online network of people with ‘book’ in its name,” said Facebook’s spokesman. “Of course the Teachbook folks are free to create an online network for teachers or whomever they like, and we wish them well in that endeavour. What they are not free to do is trade on our name or dilute our brand while doing so.”
Source: The Hindu 27th August, 2010.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Scheme for Young Lawyers Launched in India
Image via Wikipedia
The Union Law Minister, M. Veerappa Moily, on Friday launched a scheme to improve the skills of young advocates belonging to economically and socially weaker sections, working at the grass- roots level of magistrate and munsif courts.Named after the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, the scheme would offer advocates an opportunity to undergo a month-long training programme in top law institutes and another month of training under senior lawyers attached to High Courts.The curriculum in the law institutes would cover issues ranging from the nuances of the alternative dispute resolution system, plea bargaining, intellectual property laws, cyber laws, to legislation such as the Domestic Violence Act, the Protection of Child Rights Act, the Dowry Prohibition Act and the Gram Nyayalaya Act.They would also be taught the art of cross-examination, presenting and arguing cases, besides gaining knowledge of usingmodern tools of information technology and communication.To begin with, the training would be conducted at the National Law University, Delhi. It would be later extended to other law universities, law faculties and top law colleges in different parts of the country.Each institute would be required to train batches of 50 advocates, from different States. The training would be imparted when the courts are on vacation. In other words, in a year, each institute would have four sessions and train 200 advocates.The students would be selected by committees headed by a sitting Judge of the High Court in each State. The panels would have as members Additional/Assistant Solicitor-General of India attached to the respective High Courts, the Chairman of the State Bar Council, and the Advocate-General of the State. The Chairman would be nominated by the High Court Chief Justice.A committee, headed by the Union Law Minister would administer the scheme. The Law Secretary would be the Secretary of the panel.The Law Secretary would also nominate an officer, not below the rank of Joint Secretary, to monitor the scheme. The officer would submit a report at the end of every training session. Candidates selected for the scheme should be below the age of 30, have a monthly income of less than Rs. 6,000 and should be ready to lend his services for legal aid programme under the District Legal Aid Authority. Preference would be given to women, the physically handicapped and those belonging to the Scheduled Castes, the Schedule Tribes, or Other Backward Classes.To begin with the Law Ministry would bear the entire cost of the project; additional options of self-financing by the candidates and introduction of a public-private partnership models were also being explored, Mr. Moily said.Discussions are on with the Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, Mukul Wasnik on the possibility of a joint sponsorship of at least a part of the programme. Vice-Chancellor of National Law University, Delhi, Ranbir Singh, said the first batch of advocates could receive training in October.Source: Sunderarajan, The Hindu, 21/08/2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Delhi Police Special Cell Did An Excellent Job In Arresting Cyber Criminal by Cyberforensics
Image via WikipediaRecently the Anoushka Shankar's (daughter of the legendary music maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar) email hacked into by an offender who took control of some very private photographs stored in the inbox of the email.
Pandit Ravi Shankar has made a complaint to Union Home Ministry that his daughter is blackmailed and threatened via email by some unknown person. Later the complaint was referred to the Delhi Police and the investigation of the case was taken up by Inspector Pawan Kumar under the supervision of ACP Sanjeev Yadav elite Special Cell of Delhi Police. The unknown accused person was allegedly blackmailed and threatened Anoushka via emails that he would make some of her photographs public found in her email inbox, if his demand of $ 100,000 is not paid by her.
It caused great tension to the father daughter duo who are internationally recognized musicians.
The special cell cops traced the internet protocol address (IP address) from which the Emails were sent. An IP address or “Internet Protocol” address is the unique number assigned to every device such as a computer on an internet network so that data can be routed to and from that device and no other. It is much similar to a postal mailing address that identifies the physical location of your post office and allows the mail carrier to know where to deliver the mail, a device’s IP address is what allows the internet to know where to send the data destined for the particular computer. It’s not an easy task to trace the physical location of the computer to which an internet IP address has been assigned.
The IP address can be tracked from the header of the Email IDs. There are various IP address locator available like http://www.whois-search.com from where one can get information about the ISP address to which the particular IP address belongs. Some additional information may be available that indicates the general area that an IP address might reside, i.e. the location of the country or city, if ever, but nothing more specific than that. Here the help of the ISP is required to pinpoint the location and identity of the user. The ISP that allots the IP address to particular computer knows where the user lives. But the ISP’s would not provide the information to the general public due to the strict privacy policy which they adhere to. Here the role of law enforcement machinery comes into picture. The Police and the courts can, with appropriate cause, direct the ISP that the requisite information with respect to the IP addresses be provided. The Section 91 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and Section 69 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 makes provision to this effect.
The extortive emails sent by the offender were found to be sent mostly from Gmail Account. However, the Gmail blocks the IP address of the sender and it is not visible to the recipient of the email. However, one email was found to be from other email service provider and it was found that it had been sent from India; rest of the emails were found to be from Dubai, elsewhere in the UAE, and the USA. The police tracked down one of the IP address to a residential address located at MUMBAI and nabbed the accused person, whose name came to be known as Junaid Jameel Ahmed Khan who confessed to his crime. The cops seized the hard disk of the computer from which the alleged emails were sent, prepared the mirror image of the same and the hard disk was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory, Hyderabad for further analysis. The cops also seized the passport of the offender through which it was found that the offender was at Dubai on the same date when the extortive emails from Dubai were received by Anoushka, which clearly corroborates the offence committed by the offender.
The police have seized and preserved the crucial digital evidences and other documentary evidences which would prove the guilt of the accused person. Cyber technology is an extremely complicated field and the internet is being increasingly used as a place to commit crimes using personal computers, as well as network-based computers. It clearly shows that the Special Cell Cops know their job; they not only understand the criminal mindset but also Computers and networks, how they work, and how to track down information on them and know the basics of gathering evidence and bringing offenders to justice.
The Special Cell cops registered the case under Section 386 Indian Penal Code which deals with offence of extortion. The maximum punishment for such a crime, if proven guilty, is 10 years’ imprisonment. The offence is cognizable and non bailable. The accused hacked into the email of the Anoushka, however the police at the preliminary investigation stage did not invoked Section 66 IT Act, because the modus operandi of the offender was not known as how he took control of the private photographs of Anoushka, which during investigation and seizure of the computer become apparent that the same has been copied into his computer by hacking the email id of Anoushka. Now Section 66 IT Act has been added as the same is attracted to the offence. The material evidence seized by the cops proves the involvement of the offender as the IP address has been traced to his residence. Further, the examination and analysis of the seized hard disk of the computer of offender at the forensic laboratory would prove that the emails have been hacked into and photographed copied by the offender from the inbox of the email. If it is further revealed by the analysis of the hard disk that the photographs (read obscene or nude) found in the possession of the offender, have been transmitted by him electronically, say some of his friends, the same would amount to publication in electronic form which would be squarely covered and punishable under Section 67 of the IT Act, 2000 as well.
The success of Delhi Police definitely provide some deterrence to the cyber criminals that they are not scot free. At the same time the internet users should learn some lessons and be more cautious of the security and fire walls of their e-mails and websites.
The success of Delhi Police definitely provide some deterrence to the cyber criminals that they are not scot free. At the same time the internet users should learn some lessons and be more cautious of the security and fire walls of their e-mails and websites.
Source: Neeraj Aarora http://ongkinhviet.com visited 28th July.
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