Intellectual Property Law Internet Law IT Law Computer Law

In the era of the Internet and processing of documents in digital form, Tomasz Rychlicki must go to the Supreme Court, to buy stamps for the sum of 12 Polish złoty. He has to stick these stamps on the sheet of paper on which he has to include and write down the signature of the judgment of the Supreme Court of 11 March 2008 (act signature II, CSK 539/07), which he knows about only from information made available in the Bulletin No. 7/08 of 8 August 2008, PDF file, it only says that:

Username (nickname) which is used by a person in Internet services is a subject to legal protection on the same grounds as the protection of personal name, pseudonym or company.

Tomasz Rychlicki has to write his e-mail address on the same sheet of paper together with judgement’s act signature and stuck and cross out (sic) stamps. When he sends this sheet of paper by fax, Tomasz Rychlicki receives the ruling via e-mail sent to the specified e-mail address. Nice ladies are working in the Supreme Court, who are really willing to help, but some procedures are set out by ******** (autocensorship). Piotr Waglowski has also wrote some comments about this judgement. After our brief conversation I was “elected” to get the text of this judgment.

Penalties for a total of more than $ 1.2 million Polish złoty were imposed by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) on The Association of Authors (ZAiKS) and the Polish Filmmakers Association (APF), because of their agreement “to eliminate competition between them”.

In December 2005, at the request of the Board of Editors Press, UOKiK has began antitrust proceedings against ZAiKS and SFP. The decision to penalised those two organisations was issued on 29 August.

UOKiK has found that since 2003, ZAiKS and SFP, seeking to guarantee itself the highest profits, have operated under the unlawful antitrust agreement. SFP and ZAiKS concluded an agreement which established a uniform, rigid rates for the use of audiovisual works (such as DVD movies) and refused to negotiate them - announced Malgorzata Krasnodębska-Tomkiel (the President of UOKiK) at a press conference in Warsaw.

The decision of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, DOK - 6/2008 of 29 August 2008 and the official press release are available at www.uokik.gov.pl website in Polish language.

There is an article available at www.valleywag.com website commenting on funny terms from TOU/TOS licenses. There is also a post regarding recent action of Carl Malamud at www.slashdot.org website. Go Carl!

California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to share them. And that’s not sitting right with Internet gadfly, and open-access hero, Carl Malamud. He has spent the last couple months scanning tens of thousands of pages containing city, county and state laws — think building codes, banking laws, etc. Malamud wants California to sue him, which is almost a given if the state wants to continue claiming copyright. He thinks a federal court will rule in his favor: It is illegal to copyright the law since people are required to know it. Malamud helped force the SEC to put corporate filings online in 1994, and did the same with the patent office. He got the Smithsonian to loosen its claim of copyright, CSPAN to stop forbidding people from sharing its videos, and most recently Oregon to quit claiming copyright on state laws.

I’d like to remind you of some of my post I’ve “commited” regarding licenses’ issues. Among other things are posts such as “Oh, those Internet’s contracts” and “TOS not so absolute“.

FACIL, a non-profit association, which promotes the collective appropriation of Free Software, contests the Quebec government purchasing methods for software used within public administrations. FACIL has filed a motion before the Quebec Superior Court in order to bring an end to these methods which the association believes not to be in the best interest of the Quebec government, but more importantly, not in accordance with the regulation for supply contracts, construction contracts and service contracts of government departments and public bodies

More details at www.facil.qc.ca website and in the article available at www.cbc.ca website.

I think it is neither theft nor piracy. It’s just unauthorized copying.

Some people search for different websites with simple question in mind: where the inspiration ends and plagiarism begins? Their findings are published at www.pirated-sites.com website.

Joe Gratz wrote a post about a very interesting judgment in the case Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., No. 07-3783 (N.D. Cal. August 20, 2008), PDF file.

The purpose of Section 512(f) is to prevent the abuse of takedown notices. If copyright owners are immune from liability by virtue of ownership alone, then to a large extent Section 512(f) is superfluous. As Lenz points out, the unnecessary removal of non-infringing material causes significant injury to the public where time-sensitive or controversial subjects are involved and the counter-notification remedy does not sufficiently address these harms. A good faith consideration of whether a particular use is fair use is consistent with the purpose of the statute. Requiring owners to consider fair use will help “ensure[] that the efficiency of the Internet will continue to improve and that the variety and quality of services on the Internet will expand” without compromising “the movies, music, software and literary works that are the fruit of American creative genius.” Sen. Rep. No. 105-190 at 2 (1998).

I still wonder why such regulation were not included in analogical provisions of Polish or European Union law.

There is a PC game called Beijing 2008. It looks like the Polish anthem is the only one to be badly recorded and by “badly” I do not mean the sound quality. There is a reaction in the net of course. You may find an article availabe at www.wp.pl website which is devoted to this issue. But I was more intrigued by such a statement.

Authors’ right to the anthem are the property of the whole nation so there is a lack of obligation to recieve a consent to use it. But it does not mean it may be any use - answered Iwona Radziszewska -spokesperson of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

In Re Boucher, 2007 WL 4246473 (United States District Court for the District of Vermont, Nov. 29, 2007), PDF file. If you are not interested in the nuances of US law then the title of an article available at www.news.com website will tell you all about the issue of the aforementioned judgment.

Judge: Man can’t be forced to divulge encryption passphrase.

Couple of years ago I thought that such problem could be solved by simple sentence.

You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions.

But Civil law lawyers will recall old Latin maxim nemo se ipsum accusare tenetur at once. Polish Criminal Proceedings Code of 6 June 1997. (Dziennik Ustaw No 89, pos. 555), with later changes.

Art. 74. § 1. The defendant has no duty to prove his/her innocence or a duty to provide evidences for his/her disadvantage

Rules of Ethics for Patent Attorney Profession (PDF file, Polish language). Uniform text with changes that were passed during IV National Convention of Patent Attorneys of 7 September 2005.

§ 3
Patent attorney shall perform his/her professional duties according to his/her best will and knowledge with
appropriate precision and conscientiousnes, acting in proper moderation and dignity.

Please note that Polish patent attorneys may represent clients in all industrial property law matters (i.e. patents, trademarks, designs, etc.) and there are no specific professions such as trademark agents.

To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.

More details in the article available at www.wsj.com website. I know that it is impossible to cover all things or issues by tapes to make them look good and nice and to aviod public comments. Frauds done during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games are the example. I’d like to say that China is a great country with very interesting history and culture, but Chinese government and what it had done since the beginning of the communism is totally different story.

I found Sam Varghese’s article at www.itwire.com website. He wonders why lawyers do not like Linux. Well… I know his question is asked for the purpose of this article. I know why some lawyer really likes Linux. It wasn’t easy acquaintance if one has started it with Bash and Polish legal studies force you to memorize a lot of materials instead of teching legal research techniques and empirical approach to problems. I hope it will change soon. Besides, I’ve got great mentors and friends such as Marcin Sochacki and Rafał Połoński. Other lawyers like Linux because it’s “trendy” and you can always find clients for your law firm and promote yourself. Good luck leeches! Thanks God I know there are others who do it because hacking is fun and even a lawyer can be helpful sometimes.

The state of Massachusetts has asked a federal judge for a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from giving a presentation on Sunday about hacking smartcards used in the Boston subway system.

You will read about the whole issue in article available at www.cnet.com website. the presentation is available at www-tech.mit.edu website, PDF file. As you may already know I fully support such actions. You may ask why? Because, for instance, I’d like to know as a potential consumer, that Apple had placed a hidden feature/switch in iPhone software that allows them to “secretly” delete installed applications. Read about that in the article available at www.itwire.com website.

Will the iPhone Dev Team now seek to delete this “kill switch” from future pwned versions of iPhone firmware, thus giving even more people a reason to pwn their iPhones?

Oh yes. Fu^H^HHack them all!

Sex on the beach tourist’s set Souvenir from Packet includes 50 g of sand from the Batlic beach and a gift from the company Open only in case of emergency.

An interesting judgment in the case Blueport v. U.S., No. 2007-5140 (Fed. Cir. 2008). The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld an appeal from the Court of Federal Claims, and acknowledged that the US government can not be held responsible for copyright or para-copyright infringement (some people call it also quasi-copyright). It was interpreted based on regulations provided in 28 U.S.C § 1498. One may be suprised by such approach, epsecially knowing that the US government strenuously lobbied for legal protection of TPMs in different international agreements. You may read about that at www.eff.org website. Sui generis hypocrisy? Read some comments available at www.arstechnica.com website and what Ethan Ackerman has to tell about it.