Intellectual Property Law Internet Law IT Law Computer Law

That was a good action. Just read the post at www.adweek.blogs.com website.

Yesterday, different electronic media with a reliable www.slashdot.org website among them informed us that computer program gracefully named Display Eater will delete whole /home directory (under Mac OSX) if it “recognizes” that the user obtained it without a valid licence key. Today, the creator of this software explained on his www.reversecode.com website that it was a hoax. Passing over the whole case I started to wonder about the liability of an author of such computer program if his/her work would really have and executed such commands/functions. Would it be civil liability rules based on the Polish Civil code general provisions? I do not want to start to think about that now. There would be also one solution in the US law for this issue. Section 1030(a)(5)(A) of The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Pub. L. No. 99-474, 100 Stat. 1213 (Oct. 16, 1986), codified in 18 U.S.C.A. 1030., provides the responsibility for anyone who

knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, nd as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer

In 1994, the US Congress amended the CFAA and created a civil action right.
Section 1030(g)

Any person who suffers damages or loss by reason of a violation of this section may maintain a civil action against the violator to obtain compensatory damages and injuctive relief or other equitable relief.

One should always be aware that those are only statutory provisions and the US court would consider many other different factors. I mean a circumstance that this software was obtained without a licence, for instance. I recommend you a lecture of the judgement in the case Thurmond v. Compaq Computer Corp., 171 F. Supp. 2d 667, 684 (E.D. Tex. 2001), (PDF file). This case also concerns a judicial interpretation of rules I mentioned above.

Each time I read article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty on December 20, 1996, 36 I.L.M. 65 (1997).

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by authors in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty or the Berne Convention and that restrict acts, in respect of their works, which are not authorized by the authors concerned or permitted by law.

or article 18 of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty on December 20, 1996, 36 I.L.M. 76 (1997).

Contracting Parties shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures that are used by performers or producers of phonograms in connection with the exercise of their rights under this Treaty and that restrict acts, in respect of their performances or phonograms, which are not authorized by the performers or the producers of phonograms concerned or permitted by law.

not even to mention about this “legal trash” incorporated in the Article 6 section 3 of the Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. Official Journal L 167 , 22/06/2001 P. 0010 - 0019.

Technological measures shall be deemed “effective” where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.

and from time to time I see as “effective” technological measures controlled by the rightholders became a history then you will understand why I laugh so derisive even in the topic of this post. I recommend you to read the article at www.engadget.com website about the AACS “protection” which was circumvented again (sic!). Similiar thread is available at www.slashdot.org website. There is also an article about how “DRMs” couses “piracy” at www.slashdot.org website.

I do not need to convince anyone that Steve Ballmer is pretty good clown and buffon. Just see the movie at the end of this post. There are different articles about his latest statements. For a brief description of the issue and some links please refer to www.slashdot.org website. It has spawned the initiative “Show us the code”. Details about this action are explained at www.showusthecode.com website.

It is going to be very interesting dispute. I wonder who will win. So far I recommend you to read documents available at Trademark Trial and Appeal Board Inquiry System website. Maybe they will settle like Apple and Cisco did about the iPhone trademark. Details about that at www.extremetech.com website.

13 is the unlucky number and when you search more you may find some informations about triskaidekafobia also. This is worldwide-known superstition. Protests of the Brussels Airlines customers forced this airline to change its logtype. It was 13 dots making up the stylised B letter. Details at www.bbc.co.uk website.

In 2004 I wrote about the “conflict” between Romania and Chad regarding national flags. I based this post on the article from www.bbc.co.uk website. When I read the atlas couple of days ago I started to wonder what should I think about flags of Indonesia and Monaco. Are there any hints?.

The question from the topic concerns legal initiatives (maybe it would be more precisely to call it lobbying) presented by American authors, creators (I should call them copyright holders). Those actions were severely crticized by professor Michael Geist in the article at www.bbc.co.uk website.

As you may read at www.freebeer.org website there is beer already being made in the way of so-called “open licence”. Now it is time for something from the “soda-pop” beverages family. You may read the article about OpenCola at www.everythingelse.wordpress.com website. There is also available a receipe (PDF file).

Steve Jobs published his opinions about so-called “DRMs” at www.apple.com website on February 6, 2007. I wasn’t even suprised by this kind of statement. Regarding the situation of different consumers organizations and legislative bodies which pursue to open iTunes and iPods based on interoperability issues. I do not want to get involved here into the deliberations about TPM and RMI regulations. Couple days after, Fred Amoroso (CEO and President of the Macrovision Corporation) answered Steve Jobs’ letter at www.macrovision.com website. It did not suprise me as well since Macrovision is one of the biggest players in the field of providing solutions for technological protection measures for copyrighted content among other things. There is also available the “unofficial translation” of those postulates at www.daringfireball.net website.

In a very very near perspective of time, (I must admit that I love unspecified terms because they allow me to feel so comfortably unobligated ;) I am going to publish some compilations of materials related to the US law (US copyright law, US patent law and US trademark law, maybe some other subjects from the field of so-called intellectual property law). I will use different syllabi and casebooks as a background for this project. I am going to use my access to www.westlaw.com and www.lexis.com databases to achieve this goal. There will be a good opportunity to start with this webpage if someone of you is interested in self-studying of such topics.
There is no strict copyright protection of databases in the US legal system. Since the judgement in the case Feist Publication, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340, 111 S. Ct. 1282, 113 L. Ed. 2d 358, (1991) one may observe wery strong pressure being exterted (so-called lobbying ;) in the US Congress to change the law and even to adopt (often criticized) European Union’s style protection, based on sui generis right to databases, as they are provided in the Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases. Official Journal L 077 , 27/03/1996 P. 0020 - 0028.
It will take me some time to prepare those materials so I’d like to ask you to be very patient, beside, patience is a virtue. I’d like also to recommend to you a lecture of the judgement in the case Mathew Bender & Co. v. West Publishing Co. 158 F.3d 674 (2d Cir 1998). This case is related to issues about legal databases and copyright subject matter of pagination of judgements. It was a long dispute and was even brought before the Supreme Court of the United States, based on the writ of certoriari, but the SCOTUS denided to hear it.

If you were ever wondering about the origin of this misleading term of intellectual property you probably did some Internet search. Well-known www.wikipedia.org gives you a little help in this matter. You may read that this term was first used in 1845 roku by Judge Charles L. Woodbury’s in the judgement Davoll v. Brown, 1 Woodb. & M. 53, 3 West.L.J. 151, 7 F.Cas. 197, No. 3662, 2 Robb.Pat.Cas. 303, Merw.Pat.Inv. 414, (PDF file).

Only thus can ingenuity and perseverance be encouraged to exert themselves in this way usefully to the community; and only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man’s own, and as much the fruit of his honest industry, as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears.

For all of you who are interested I post a link to the whole case. It concerned patent law issues. I edited also this Wiki post. If some of you have a copy of A. Nion’s book titled “Droit civils des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs” I would appreciate if you contact me about publishing it here.

Wendy Seltzer published on her website a post about copyright notices that were displayed during Super Bowl games. It is very ironic that she received the answer that nobody could expect. More detilas on her website www.wendy.seltzer.org.

Some readers asked me about the scope of material during the LL.M. program in International Intellectual Property Law. I can briefly write that I had to take among other classes:

• Intellectual property law - professor Graeme Dinwoodie.
• Patent law - professor Timothy Holbrook.
• US Trademark and unfrair competition law - professor Richard W. Renner.
• US Copyright law - professor Ronald Staudt.
• E-commerce law - professor Richard Warner.
• International copyright law - professor Jean-Luc Piotraut.
• International trademark law - professor Jean-Luc Piotraut.

Some more information about Master of Laws title.

The FAA together with the Vintage Aircraft Association are attempting to develop a legal process that will allow them to release data about vintage aircraft designs that have obviously been abandoned. Existing laws restrict the FAA’s ability to release this data because it is deemed to be intellectual property even though the owner of record has long since ceased to exist. More details in the official press release available at www.vintageaircraft.org website. I found it at www.slashdot.org website.