Minnesota Federal Court finds no coverage under technology errors and omissions policy because claims did not arise out of a “Wrongful Act” as defined in the policy ...
There is a distinct (and dynamic) overlap between competition law and intellectual property rights, no more evident than from the European Commission's investigations into, and the European Court's judgement in, Microsoft. In a similar vein, the Commission is investigating each of Qualcomm and Rambus for potential abuses of a dominant position (through the allegedly unlawful exploitation of IP rights) in the standard setting arena. No doubt buoyed by U.S ...
The main characteristic of Third Generation services (3G) is to permit voice, data and image transmissions at substantially higher speeds than traditional technologies (like 2G and 2.5G). This capability makes 3G the appropriate standard for mobile multimedia applications and wireless broadband data transmissions, allowing subscribers to be connected without interruption to the mobile web ...
The development of online markets continues to pose challenges for legislators, who must balance the protection of IP rights owners with protecting traders against anti-competitive behaviour. Trademarks and copyright are particularly vulnerable to infringement on the Internet ...
In recent weeks, hefty fines for data breaches have been issued in the United Kingdom and Greece. Surprisingly, these fines have not been levied by data protection authorities, but by other regulators with overlapping jurisdiction over data security. The authors, from Hunton & Williams, write that data protection enforcement in Europe appears to be entering a new phase ...
WiMax, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a new product developing in Chile that promises to revolutionise Internet access. WiMax allows high speed transmission of data and multimedia services (e.g., the Internet and videos) from laptops, cell phones and other portable devices from distances greater than was possible with previous technologies. According to some preliminary tests, WiMax equipment can reach up to 40 km in open spaces ...
Much has been made of the e-communication provisions set out in the new Companies Act 2006. However, less is known of a piece of legislation which came into force on 1 January 2007, the Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006, which affect the electronic communications of every company and limited liability partnership in the UK ...
Immediate access to the latest data is essential for business. The Internet and other networks ensure that data are readily accessible. But easy access to data carries with it certain risks, including the risk of unauthorised access. According to research by Gartner in 2006, 80 percent of companies will have suffered an application security incident by 2009 ...
On November 9, 2006, the Minister of Justice, Yvon Marcoux, introduced Bill 48, entitled An Act to amend the Consumer Protection Act and the Act respecting the collection of certain debts (hereinafter, the “Bill”).The Bill is based on the Internet Sales Contract Harmonization Template agreed on by the provinces further to the Agreement on Internal Trade ...
Intellectual Property is important. Although never at the forefront of our thinking (IP Lawyers aside) the role of patents, trade marks and copyright in shaping the business and leisure aspects of our lives is immense ...
On 26 October 2006, the Antitrust Court issued a decision, from a defense of competition perspective, in connection with the legality of the behaviors between Voissnet S.A. ('Voissnet') and Compañía de Telecomunicaciones de Chile S.A. ('CTC-CHILE'). Voissnet, a company that provides telecommunication services consisting of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), accused CTC-CHILE of performing acts against free competition ...
He may be a knight, one of the most successful music artists and a noted viniculturalist, but Sir Cliff Richard is not resting on his laurels. Add legal reform campaigner to this list as the Peter Pan of Pop leads the quest to change UK copyright law.Copyright can be deceptively simple on the face of it, but scratch the surface and you reveal the complexity of co-existing legal rights. Take Sir Cliff's 1959 best selling single 'Living Doll' ...
The IT outsourcing market has matured in the past years. Many IT outsourcing relationships are fruitful and long lasting. Nevertheless international surveys continue to show that numerous outsourcing deals are untimely terminated in the first two to four years. This paper highlights the key risk factors for failure of IT outsourcing relationships. These key risk factors will be underlined by various failed outsourcing case law. Such case law probably only represents the top of the iceberg ...
Open source software ("OSS") is quickly entering the mainstream and becoming increasingly widely used. In fact International Data Group analysts have predicted that the OSS marketplace will be worth £35 billion by 2008. OSS is software that is freely available (without discrimination) and can be copied, modified and redistributed ...
The House of Lords has clarified what makes a message sent by means of a public electronic communications network "grossly offensive" and therefore capable of amounting to a crime under the Communications Act 2003 ("Act") ...
Procuring and implementing an ICT system within an organisation can be a stressful task. High profile failures in both the public and private sectors hit the headlines all too often. The National Audit Office's report last month on the £6.2bn NHS IT upgrade in England put many of the challenges firmly in the spotlight. In the heat of the procurement process it is easy to forget some basic procurement principles ...
Every day in Mumbai, India, a team of 5,000 couriers deliver, collect and return 200,000 lunch boxes. This massive logistics operation is undertaken with an error rate of less than 1 in 8 million deliveries and without using any information technology. Enormous labour cost disparities enable this manual operation to be undertaken cost-effectively ...
The Police and Justice Bill was put before the House of Commons on 25 January 2006. The main aim of the Bill is to improve the powers and scope of the police force but there are a number of sections which look to update the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA) and in particular to make Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks illegal. DOS attacks can take many forms but are essentially an attempt to disrupt the use of a computer, server or website ...
Dominant companies have special responsibility to ensure that the way they do business doesn’t prevent competition on the merits and does not harm consumers and innovation», said European Competition Commissioner Mário Monti, regarding the Commission’s Microsoft decision dated March 24th, 2004 ...
The interoperability information on Microsoft’s decision deserves special attention by the undertakings that have a dominant position in the market. Intellectual property rights, granted as an incentive for the creation of innovation and as a tool to recoup the investments made by companies, used to be understood as providing several rights to its owners ...
Complaints by foreign businesses regarding protection of intellectual property rights in China have been a consistent feature in media reports since large scale foreign investment commenced some 20 years ago. However, China's economic revolution over the same period means that opinions based on negative experiences in the past must be constantly reassessed ...
Internet telephones are set to take the global communications industry by storm. Big names like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay are piling into the market and former state-run telecoms providers like BT are also investing. The technology was first developed by the US Defense Department as part of a research project on interconnection in the 1970s. But until recently only techno-geeks have had the interest and ability to make any use of it. But times have changed ...
On 1 May 2004 a new and revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation (the TTBER) entered into force - Regulation No. 772/2004. The TTBER will provide block exemptions for IP licensing agreements, ensuring that certain technology transfer agreements are automatically exempt from the application of Article 81(1) of the EC Treaty, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements ...
