NIPC Law

Earlier today I attended the launch of the "Americas Programme" organized by the International Trade Centre for Greater Merseyside at Haydock Park race course. It consisted of a series of workshops on the USA, Canada, Brazil and Hispanic America. Delegates had to choose one country or region for the morning and another for the afternoon. I chose the USA and Brazil because they are the biggest states on the continent, but it was a very hard choice as I am equally interested in Canada and Spanish speaking America. Each workshop was on the same pattern. It began with a market overview followed by presentations from a lawyer, someone already doing business in the area, a freight forwarder rejoicing in the name of Howard Hughes and private chats over coffee. The market overviews in each of the seminars that I attended covered simple history and geography. The legal seminar for the USA was led by Ned Martin from the London office of DLA Piper et al . He gave a brief overview on

I have just edited and transposed the Data Protection and Freedom of Information page from the old NIPC website. So far, it is just an introduction with links to the legislation enforced by the Information Commissioner . Other articles and case notes from the old site as well as some new materials will follow over the weekend. For the benefit of Americans and other readers outside the EC, the phrase "data protection" refers to a body of legislation that requires users of computer systems ( "data controllers" ) to hold and process data relating to living human beings ( "data subjects" ) in accordance with a set of principles ( "the data protection principles" ). They are essentially as follows: 1. Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully. 2. Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes. 3. Personal d

Trade Marks Although written from a US perspective, there is an interesting article by Stacey Friends entitled "Name game: Tips for choosing a trademark" in Boston Bizwoman. On today's home page of that same website incidentally there is a poll on "Do you have long term care insurance?". A staggering 77% either do not have such cover or do not know what it is. Bearing in mind that this website is aimed at business women who can be expected to be better informed and better able to afford insurance than most other groups, I rejoice in the fact that I live in a country that still has a welfare state despite its limitations. Patents Tod Mayover, whose IP Counsel Blog I have commended more than once in the past, has an article on claim construction in the light of Phillips. v. AWH Corp. There is a lot of good stuff on his site.

There has been a spate of invalidity decisions in English under art 25 (1) of the Community Design Regulation since 15 Sep 2005 and all but one of them have gone against the proprietor. The figures for the month even about a bit when some Italian decisions relating to bicylce wheels are taken into account but there appear to be still a lot of designs that are declared invalid.

I have transposed some more of the old NIPC website to IP/it-Update.com . The transposed pages include materials by two of our distinguished former members, Raymond Henley who is now teaching the Bar vocational course at Manchester Metropolitan University and Richard Cole who left chambers to take up an appointment with the civil service. Raymond wrote a very good case note on Nicholas Strauss QC's judgment in Countrywide Communications Limited v ICL Pathway Limited and International Computers Limited . This was a case where a potential sub-contractor did a lot of work to help the main contractor get a contract upon the understanding that it would get a share of the contract work if the bid was successful. The bid was in fact successful but the sub-contractor was not taken on. The judge allowed the sub-contractor a quantum meruit . This case deserved much better recognition because this sort of situation happens all the time. It happened to arise in the computer industry but it c

I am grateful to vnunet.com for referring me to Priority Records and others v Chan . Vnunet reports the case with a hint of glee as an unmitigated defeat for the recording companies. Having read Judge Zatkoff's judgment I am not sure that that was actually the case. It appears that the claimant copyright owners sued the wrong defendant. The IP address of the computer that had downloaded the allegedly infringing files belonged not to the defendant but to her 13 year old daughter. The claimant then applied to join the 13 year old with the intention of adding the mother to that claim as a joint tortfeasor on the ground that she had given her daughter the computer. As the case as first pleaded was obviously unsustainable the claimants applied to discontinue their original claim while reserving the right to join the mother as a defendant. The question before the judge - the case was in the US District Court for Eastern District of Michigan which is roughly equivalent to the Chancery D

An interesting post from Dennis Crouch on his excellent Patently-O Law Blog is that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will be sitting in Chicago in November (see " CAFC Goes on Tour to Chicago "). It will spend only one day in a federal court room. The rest of the time will be spent in various local university law faculties, Chicago and DePaul on 8/11, Chicago Kent in the afternoon of 9/11 and Northwestern on 10/11. Visits of the Court outside Washington are rare and as Dennis says, each venue should have a good crowd. He has offered to keep us posted with the progress of the cases that are listed before their honours. The Federal Cicruit is the court of appeal for patent cases and its equivalent in England and Wales would be Sir Robin Jacob sitting on appeals from Sir Hugh Laddie with Sir David Neuberger and perhaps Sir Nicholas Pumfrey or whoever it is who has recently been appointed to replace Sir Hugh. It would be nice for their lordships after holding court

The Australians may no longer be quite what they were at cricket but they can certainly teach the rest of the world a thing or two about things that really matter, such as privacy and civil liberty. I am grateful to Baker & McKenzie's E-law highlights bulletin for alerting me to the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 which has recently received royal assent in the state of New South Wales. This state statute requires employers to notify employees in advance of surveillance unless they obtain a covert surveillance order from a magistrate. The notice must indicate: (a) the kind of surveillance to be carried out (camera, computer or tracking), and (b) how the surveillance will be carried out, and (c) when the surveillance will start, and (d) whether the surveillance will be continuous or intermittent, and (e) whether the surveillance will be for a specified limited period or ongoing (s.10 (4)). Certain places such as changing rooms and lavatories are off limits (s.15). There are als

I am grateful to IP Central for raising the question "what the devil qualifies as a patent on software, anyway?" The blogger adds that it is not an easy question. Although I had not really thought about it in that way I have to agree. IP Central points to a working paper by Anne Layne-Farrar of The AEI-Brookings Joint Centre for Regulatory Studies entitled " Defining Software Patents: A Research Field Guide ." Now although I don't usually agree politically with the the institutions that published this paper, I commend this work.

The New Scientist claims that the following list was the result of asking 10 of the biggest names in science to explain the significance of their discipline. They magazine does not state how it ranks thse 10 and it is not always clear how the ideas relate to every respondent's discipline. But it is still a good article. The 10 ideas, by the way, are: 1. The big bang 2. Evolution 3. Quantum mechanics 4. The theory of everything 5. Risk 6. Chaos 7. Relativity 8. Climate change 9. Tectonics 10. Science Do we all agree?

New kid on the blog block is the ISOC WSIS Blog. ISOC is the Internet Society, an association open to everyone with an interest in the internet and WSIS is the World Summit on the Information Society which is currently taking place in Geneva. This blog is the work of the ISOC delegates to PrepCom3. The blog links events at the summit to other news. Its latest post, for example, " China makes political misstep in WSIS " comments on a report of action taken by the Chinese government against local bloggers and its impact on China's image at the conference.

Its always pleasing when one's county takes the lead at something worthwhile and I am particularly pleased to see that Bradford College and Sheffield Hallam have taken the lead in establishing the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology . More information is available at Yorkshire Pride on my Invention blog .

Earlier today I was consulted on a matter that required me to look up the Nigerian Copyright Act. I checked the CLEA (Collection of Laws for Electronic Access) on the WIPO website which is usually pretty good. It listed all the relevant laws alright but the full text was not available in electronic format. A Google search revealed “ Nigeria Law ”, a resource as good as many on LII network. Not only did that site contain the Nigerian Copyright Act 1990 , which supplied the answer that I needed for my advice, but also the Patents and Designs Act 1990 and many other statutes of that enormous and increasingly important country. Two particularly good sections of the website caught my eye. The Nigerian Internet Law Reports , a collection of transcripts of the Supreme Court, and an FAQ which offered some useful advice about some of the too good to be true propositions that occasionally beat our spam filters. In view of the debate on my Oracle post a few days ago I was interested to see w

Having lost a threats action in England, the defendants in Cintec International Ltd v John Humphries Parkes (t/a Dell Explosives) and another [2003] EWHC 2328 (Ch) (2 Oct 2003) have tried their luck in the Court of Session (see Frost and Another v. Cintec International Ltd [2005] ScotCS CSOH_119 (9 Sep 2005 )). Though litigants in person, they might have been expected to have fared better there. They certainly did not lack experience. Laddie J noted that one of them, Mr. Frost, had appeared 127 times in court, mainly in Scotland, although he had no legal education or qualification. His lordship added that that clearly had led him to acquire considerable self confidence as an advocate. Mr Frost did not appear to think much of our legal system. As the judge observed: "time after time he suggested that Scottish law and procedure is very different. Some of his claims on this front I found surprising. For example, during one of his repeated complaints about the fact that this case ha

I have just uploaded a " Computer Contracts " and a " Computer Systems " page on the IP/it-Update website. It is basically an introduction to the subject. More will follow but in the meantime I recommend: Tod Lewis Mayover's IP Counsel Blog which has some really good articles on contract drafting Contracts Prof Blog by some US academics, and Onecle which has masses and masses of precedents that have actually been used including many for the computer industry. Anyone who needs an on-line version of the Sale of Goods Act 1979, Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 should check out Western Circuiteer John Antell's site.

My colleague Sulliman from La Reunion has posted a notice about an IP seminar at the French embassy in Mauritius which took place today. Too bad he didn't mention it earlier because we would all have fancied a junket out to the Indian Ocean. He has linked to the website of the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce which promises a really good programme. Mauritius is an interesting place. It is next door to La Reunion and the first language of most of its people is still French. Although it is in the Commonwealth its legal system appears to have a lot of French influences. For instance, in Sun Insurance Company Ltd v Seagull Insurance Company Ltd and another , a recent road traffic case, the magistrate talks about the need to prove " faute ". According to the WIPO, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and International Trade is responsible for intellectual property on the island. I searched the ministry website on the governmental portal but came back none the wiser. Maybe Sullim

In my last post I mentioned IBCOS in which I appeared on the losing side. In the minds of all the advocates were US cases such as Lotus v Borland and Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., (2nd Cir. 1992) . Very early in the argument, Mr Justice Jacob (as he then was) made clear that he could see very little relevance in those authorities because US copyright law had diverged from English law as far back as Baker v Selden 101 U.S. 99 (Mem), 11 Otto 99, 25 L.Ed. 841. Part of the reason for that may be the statutory entrenchment of the ideas-expression dichotomy by s.102 (b) of the US Copyright Act (17 USC 102 (b)) now transposed to TRIPS by art 9 (2) of that Annexe. Part of it may be psychological arising from the requirement to register a copyright in order to bring proceedings in the USA. The significance of that requirement is that it leads to the dissection of a work into "copyrightable" and "non-copyrightable" elements. We have never taken

To accompany the Software Patent Overview which I mentioned on Tuesday , I have now uploaded a new overview on software copyright law in the UK. It is not quite the same deal that it once was with cases like IBCOS v Barclays Highland [1994] FSR 275 and TIPS v Daman [1992] FSR 171, Whelan v Jaslow [1987] FSR 1 in the USA and Autodesk v Dyason [1992] HCA 2 in Australia, but there is still the off scrap over title to copyright as in Cyprotex Discovery Ltd v University of Sheffield [2004] EWCA Civ 380 (1 April 2004). As I have lived through this period, wrote the first Atkin Court Forms on computer supply litigation in 1986 and actually appeared as counsel in some of the English cases, I have traced the history from the days of Gates v Swift [1982] RPC 339 through the Copyright (Computer Software) Amendment Act 1987, the early "look and feel" cases on both sides of the Atlantic, the various EC copyright directives, right up to the WIPO Copyright Treaty of the present. I have

One of the differences between the Commonwealth and American common law traditions was highlighted by the High Court of Australia's judgment in Dow Jones Inc v Gutnick [2002] HCA 56 (10 Dec 2002). In that appeal the Australian courts rejected an application by a US publisher against the lower court's refusal to stay a claim for libel by an Australian resident on the ground that any libel would have been published in the USA and not Australia. In Australia, as in most of the rest of the Commonwealth, a separate cause of action arises whenever and wherever a defamatory statement appears. In the USA, by contrast only one action is allowed and that is at the source of the publication. The defendant's print circulation in Australia was trivial but it had a website that was accessible anywhere in the world including Australia. The publisher argued that, as its circulation in Australia in every medium was negligible, the action should be stayed on grounds of forum non conveniens.

I have today updated our " Software Patents Overview " page with new paragraphs on CFPH and Halliburton and the Patent Office's notice on examination for patentablity and FAQs , the cases that have come on before the Comptroller since CFPH and Halliburton and the EPO's useful microsite on computer implemented inventions . I have also experimented with linking that article to related posts on this blog and also linking those blogs to the site index.

Yesterday was the first day since I started this blog that I allowed a day to pass without at least one post. I am sorry about that but it was really not my fault. Sometime after 5pm on Saturday evening, the wi-fi signal of the Admiral House Hotel in Douglas went down and had still not come back on when I checked out at 10am this morning. Now that I am safely returned to Yorkshire, I can post the article that I had intended to upload yesterday. Not long ago I commented on NMR's Application which was the first decision of the Comptroller following CFPH . Now there is another one and it is even more interesting than the last because of the route by which the hearing officer arrived at his decision. Oracle Corporation's appeal agent the examiner's refusal of a patent for a method of converting text from one mark-up language into another was rejected because the hearing officer, Stephen Probert , interpreted Peter Prescott QC's judgment in CFPH as prohibiting anything that

As you will have gathered from the title to the post, my wife and I are taking a long weekend in the Isle of Man. If you click this link or the one on the title, you will be transported to the Manx government website tourism home page which should show a webcam picture of the Promenade at Douglas including the hotel from where I am sending this post. If you click back to the webcam you will see that it is in the middle of the picture. While I will give a hotel and restaurant review, the main purpose of this post is to give an intro to the legal and financial status of the Isle of Man. Though I am here on holiday, I enjoy my work so much that intellectual property is never far from my thoughts and I spent much of yesterday thinking about the island as a venue for special purpose vehicles for securitizing royalty streams and escrow. About two weeks ago, I had emailed one of the advocates (the equivalent of solicitors in Canada or attorneys in the USA as they have a fused profession her

A bit more of the Patents Act 2004 will come into force on 1 Oct 2005. The third commencement order was made on 5 Sept 2005 and published on the OPSI website yesterday. The most interesting of the new provisions will be which imports a new s.74A and s.74B into the Patents Act 1977. These new sections provide for advisory opinions by Patent Office hearing officers on validity and infringement of patents. I have already mentioned the relevant issues in my post of 12 Sept 2005 on the free seminar on Patent Office advisory opinions which will take place in Leeds 24 Nov 2005. This new commencement order will make the new seminar even more timely. The necessary changes to the Patent Rules 1995 will also come into being on 1 Oct 2005 as a result of The Patents (Amendment) Rules 2005 . All the more reason to turn up to Mr Hayward's talk at BPP Law School on 24 Nov 2005.

I am grateful to Ms Suzi Turner of ZDNet for attracting my attention to the class action that has been issued out of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division) by Logan Simios and others against 180 Solutions Inc and 180 persons unknown (John Does 1 to 100). There is a link to the complaint from Ms Turner's article. To an English lawyer the complaint is a curious document. It's nothing like our particulars of claim. The only thing that I have ever seen in my professional career that comes close is a Scottish pleading though mercifully the Americans don't spice it up with lots of "esto" and other dog Latin the way the Scots do. I seem to remember that the Scots stick the defendant (sorry " defender's" pleading) alongside the claimant's (I mean "pursuer") in a confusing mass of verbiage that makes me think of haggis. Getting back to the Spyware case the claims against the defendant are alarming: compu

The Information Society Commissioner has approved plans by the French posts and tele-communications regulator, ARCEP (Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes), to exempt voice over internet protocol and voice over broadband services from telecommunications regulation. The reasons for the decision are that: - voice over broadband services are provided by access lines that are already regulated; and - such service can also be provided by any access provider (that is to say, a traditional telco). This decision comes more than a year after ARCEP's submission to the Commission (a copy of which can be downloaded from ARCEP's website). The ARCEP site seems rather more interesting than the Offcom site . For a start they have quite a good blog . They have also bothered to translate much of their material into English and German.

The reason the blog is late again is that I have spent my very limited spare time available time today on my website. I have already uploaded a new " Industries and Other Activities " page which will focus on the legal issues affecting our clients. We have kicked off with an " Information & Communications Technologies" index which will link to Intellectual Property , Computer Supply Contracts, Non-Contractual Liability, Privacy and Freedom of Information, Computer Misuse and Telecommunications Regulation. These already link to our Database Rights and Semiconductor Topography pages. Other index pages will link to E-commerce, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Universities, Fashion and Textiles.

The Patent Office has just published some FAQs on computer implemented inventions . They cover the reasons why the software patent directive was rejected by the European Parliament, the likelihood of a new directive in the future, the policy behind the proposed directive and the meaning of "technical contribution." The FAQ express the view that "t echnical contribution" has been superseded in the UK by the CFPH and Halliburton judgments, which not everyone would agree with, and refer to the Practice Note of 29 July 2005. Perhaps stung by criticsm of the kind that I mentioned in "Software Patents - Call for EP Resolution" on 31 Aug 2005, the Patent Office denies that the Directive would merely have regularized the Patent Office's current position of granting patents it shouldn't. It sets out its view of the law in its leaflet " The Computer Implemented Inventions Directive Explained ." The Patent Office has also updated its page on th

The reason why this post is so late is that I have only just come back from a day in London. I was there to make a video on domain names for the Einstein Network . It was almost my first time on the small screen and I was very nervous. It was almost my first contact with the Einstein Network. I have checked through some of their other offerings on the law and have found some useful stuff. Jonathan Barnes of 5 Raymond Buildings has made a cassette on Douglas v Hello [2005] EWCA Civ 595 , Daniel Beard of Monckton on Damages in Competition Law and Keith Weatherspoon of Freshfields on Freedom of Information . I feel flattered to join such eminent company. The filming, which took place in Victoria near the Treasury Solicitor's Department, finished at noon. The route back to my flat in Clifford's Inn took me past the Ashes victory celebration and I caught a glimpse of the players' coaches returning from The Strand. While I am as delighted as anyone that England has finally won a

Not long ago I mentioned that Mr Stephen Nipper and his colleagues had set up an RSS feed for US Patent and Trademark Office news and announcements (" US and European Patents Info on RSS " 23 Aug 2005). They are now offering a patent litigation alerter service on RSS and by email. Each item will contain information on claims filed in the previous week with the names of the parties, district court, and case number. As they explain in their post, this is a very useful piece of information. It alerts defendants who are parties to claims that have not yet been served. The fact that a competitor has been sued can also be useful to those who could easily find themselves in the same position. On a related but different point, I asked Gary Townley of the Patent Office whether there would be any objection to my providing an RSS feed for Patent Office news along the lines of the Rethink(IP) service. I was told that it would be unnecessary because the Patent Office will announce its own

Senior Patent Office hearing officer, Peter Hayward, and Ian Lewis of Miller Insurance Services will discuss "Patent Office Advisory Opinions" at BPP Law School in Leeds on Thursday, 24 Nov 2005 at 18:00. Admission is free but space is limited. Enquiries should be addressed to Jonathan Haines, Managing Director, BPP Leeds on +44 (0) 845 678 6868 or JonathanHaines@bppls.com . This will be my contribution to a rolling programme of talks to be organized by a group of practising and academic intellectual property lawyers, patent and trade mark agents, business people and others interested in intellectual property in the North of England. Other members of our group will arrange talks on technology transfer, freedom of information and branding over the coming academic and legal year. The reason I have approached those speakers is that Mr Hayward will be in charge of advisory opinions and Mr Lewis works for one of the market leaders in intellectual property litigation and asset prot

In Update 260 published today, the WIPO announced online publication of the WIPO Gazette of International Marks , the official publication of the Madrid System for the International Registration of Trademarks. The Gazette contains all relevant data on new international trade mark registrations, renewals, subsequent designations and changes and other entries affecting international registrations. Also online is the PCT Gazette which is accessible from the WIPO's new "Patentscope" Patent and PCT Application portal . A particularly useful resource from this portal is the PCT newsletter which contains a table summarizing the type of protection within each contracting party. The table indicates whether "national" or regional (that is to say, European, Eurasian or OAPI) patents and utility models are available in a particular country. There is also a search facility on the portal.

Last week I mentioned the BCS conference on identity cards which is due to take place in Leeds on 21 Sep 2005. Coincidentally, the Register announced today a 7-day charm offensive by Home Office Minister, Andy Burnham, "aimed at winning the general public around to the idea of a national identity register and identity card." If, as the Labour Party often says, most people actually favour identity cards the idea of a charm offensive to win public support ought to be otiose. I also have to say that the only person in my circle of acquaintances who supports the government's proposal, hopes to get work for his business from the project. The article by Lucy Sheriff "UK Govt wants you to lurve ID cards" contains some potential hostages to fortune. For instance, Mr Burnham is supposed to have told the BBC: "We have been slower to respond to more subtle claims that ID cards weaken the privacy of the individual against the state. In fact, the exact opposite is tru

Yesterday, I went on for quite a long time about the differencve between our chambers website , which has always tried to offer information on the law, and those of many other chambers which are, as often as not, little more than an online version of the chambers brochure. Much of my thinking has been influenced by Trey Ryder who runs a marketing consultancy for lawyers in the USA. While there are many sites on the internet there are prettier than Mr. Ryder's, there are few that are as useful. His site contains lots of good, short articles in straightforward English. My favourite is " How to Build Your Law Practice With Dignity " in which he introduces his concept of education based marketing. Here is a snippet: "Educate your audience with written information and advice. Write your message in a form that you can send to anyone who calls your office. Then, by offering to mail copies without charge, you attract calls from genuine prospects. When prospects call, they gi

The TCC ("Technology and Construction Court") has published a new Court Guide to supplement CPR Part 60 and PD60 from 5 Oct 2005. The significance of this Guide is that the TCC is the tribunal in which most computer supply disputes are heard. Originally known as the Official Referee's Court, it was something of a Cindarella for many years. Even though very complicated high value cases often came before it, the judges of that court were circuit rather than High Court judges and they were addressed even in the Royal Courts of Justice as "Your Honour" and not "My Lord". Its status has been elevated by three important developments. The first was the Practice Direction of 9 October 1998 which changed its name and established it as a specialist court within the Queen's Bench Division under the supervision of a High Court Judge. Judges of the TCC were henceforth to be addressed as "My Lord" wherever they sat. The second major development was de

I have spent much of yesterday and the whole of this morning of website maintenance ladies and gents. It's a horrible job only marginally better than preparing a quarterly VAT return. However, it has to be done. We have always had a website ever since we opened in 1997. Unlike most other barristers' chambers we have used it to communicate information about intellectual property and technology law rather than replicate our chambers brochure. Lots of barristers claim expertise in intellectual property though as often as not those same barristers also claim expertise in many other areas of the law. We took the view that solicitors, patent and trade mark agents, foreign lawyers and other clients and potential clients could judge whether we actually do know what we are talking about if they could see some of our articles, case notes and presentations. Just before Alex Khan and I left Kingsgate Chambers at the end of last year we had over 320 articles, case notes, PowerPoint present

I have just uploaded our "Information and Communications Technology" page on our Chambers site. This outlines some of the things that we do in chambers: - settling and reviewing assignments of computer software, databases and other works; - settling and reviewing shrink-wrap, click wrap and other licences; - drafting and reviewing hardware, software development and turnkey agreements; - drafting and reviewing terms of trade including website and internet access conditions - drafting and reviewing hardware, software and maintenance agreements; - advising and representing applicants for software implemented and business method patents - advising and representing parties before the Technology and Construction Court - advice and representation in data protection and freedom of information claims; - advice and representation in domain name disputes before the UDRP panellists or Nominet DRS experts; and much, much more.

My local LES branch has circulated particulars of a very interesting conference to take place in Leeds on 21 Sep 2005 at Leeds United FC ground, Elland Road on Identity Management. The programme is as follows: 09.30 Registration and Coffee 10.00 Welcome and Introduction Roger Cook, Leeds City Council 10.15 Why is There a Privacy Fuss ? Dr Chris Pounder, Pinsent Masons, Solicitors 11.00 Coffee Break 11.15 ID Management in the NHS - the Perils and Pitfalls Margaret Moore, NHS Primary Care Sector 12.00 Buffet Lunch and optional tour of Elland Road 13.15 The "Laws" of Identity and the Need for an Identity Jerry Fishenden Management System Microsoft 14.00 Identity Management in the Banking Sector Exact Title and Speaker to Be Confirmed 14.45 Tea Break 15.00 The Truth about Biometrics ! - Dispelling the Myths Jonas Andersson, Stephen Edwards Precise Biometrics 15.45 Close Norman Jackson, BCS-ISSG, and Roger Cook, Leeds City Council

Two of the guests at Carin Burchell's reception last night were Aisla Pemberton and Kate Reid . They have joined together to set up Pemberton Reid , one of the first if not the first, specialist intellectual property law firms in the North of England. They practise at York where there is already quite a cluster of technology and intellectual property law expertise. Like Carin and indeed like NIPC , they do a lot to raise IP awareness locally. One of their initiatives is a "free advice day" on 15 Sep 2005. The Lord Mayor announced similar free clinics by Carin yesterday. I understand that Aisla and Kate are just coming up for their first anniversary. Chambers wish them the best of luck.

I have just uploaded "Database Rights" pages to our chambers site (the site that provides information about NIPC and its members ) and IP/it Update (our site with information about intellectual property and technology law). For those outside Europe, database right is a new intellectual property right that protects investment obtaining, verifying and presenting the contents of a database as distinct from the intellectual effort of creating it. It avoids the sort of difficulties that occurred in the USA as a result of the US Supreme Court's judgment in Feist publications Inc. v Rural Telephone Service Co. 499 US 340 (1991) . The source of database rights law in Europe is Directive 96/9/EC ("The Database Directive") which we have implemented in the UK by The Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 . Last year, several references were made to the European Court of Justice on various points that rose from the directive. Links to those cases are available

IP enforcement was the topic of my very first post, "Porridge for Patent infringement" on 22 Aug 2005. I also rabbited on about it at some length on 2 Sep 2005 in "Patents: Why are there no British Names in the Patent Office's Top Ten?". It is such an important subject that I make no apologies for returning to it. I do so now for two reasons. The first is that the Patent Office has advertised a seminar entitled "Intellectual Property "The Commercial Reality for SMEs" on 27 Sep at The Institute of Child Health in London. According to the press release, the speakers will be: Lawrence Cullen of the Patent Office, David Begg, Principal, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College, London Henry Carr, QC Pitfalls and problems of litigation Kim Cauthorn, Kroll USA Risk assessment James Riddiough, Smith & Williamson IP valuation Ian Lewis, Miller Insurance Service Limited Insurance for litigation and liability risks Matthew R Hogg, Kiln Insurance for

A disturbing post from vnunet.com is a report that the a branch of the Probation Service is to use new technology that analyses writing styles to predict whether an offender is likely to reoffend. The software is apparently supplied by a company called SPSS . According to the post, this software relies on demographic, social, lifestyle, emotional and behavioural factors as well as information on the original charges and offence. Vnunet.com expressed my concerns more eloquently tha I could: "How good was the programmer who did this, and is there any inbuilt bias in the system? Are we going to see a computer report on what could be a man's llife inside or outside prison, and will lazy administrators use this without checking the facts themselves? Finally is the software perfect, with no flaws that could damn someone on false evidence? There's little doubt that only a fool would guarantee the answers to these questions."

I have now found out a bit more about Microsoft's annulment proceedings courtesy of vnunet.com. Apparently the claim challenges the Commission's decision requiring Microsoft to provide greater access to Windows code. More specifically, it challenges the requirement to make Microsoft's communications protocols available to other suppliers. The point at issue is that the protocols contain data that competitors need to make their products work with Microsoft's.

Chambers congratulate York trade mark agents Branded! on their move to new premises at Centurion Office Park, Clifton Moor. We wish them the best of luck in their new offices. Formerly known as Carin Burchell Trade Mark Services, they have also recently re-branded to BRANDED! Personal congratulations are also due to Carin's colleague, Gareth Price, on his recent wedding. Branded! is one of the professional firms listed by Huddersfield Intellectual Property Forum . Anyone else who wishes to be listed by HIP should contact our practice manager . PS Just come back from the grand opening of Carin's new offices. They are very smart indeed. They are located on a new business park a couple of miles outside the town centre where there are lots of other new businesses. In her speech, the Lord Mayor (actually a lady), celebrated Carin's 10 years in practice.

ZDNet announced yesterday that Microsoft had commenced annulment proceedings in the Court of First Instance in respect of broad licenses for source code of communications protocols. This appears to be unconnected with the Media Player bundling case of last year, which is also subject to annulment proceedings, or the rather older digital cable matters from 2001. ZDNet expected a response from the Commission today. As soon as I can work out what this case is about I'll let you know.