I’ve read with great interest the text of a presentation by Dr Francis Gurry to the Blue Sky Conference: Future Directions in Copyright Law, held in Queensland at the end of February. Dr Gurry is the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and I believe that his presentation Read more
Last year an Australian judge gave an important ruling in the landmark case Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Limited [2010] FCA 24. You can read a full report on the case by yours truly here. iiNet is an Australian internet provider, which was sued by Australian film producer Roadshow Read more
The High Court of England and Wales has decided on an interesting test copyright case regarding linking and news aggregation by public relations firms. The case is that of Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd v Meltwater Holding BV [2010] EWHC 3099 (Ch). The claimants in the case are the Newspaper Licensing Read more
Last month we reported on an interesting development taking place in the copyright enforcement front. Law firm Gallant Macmillan requested a Norwich Pharmacal order (NPO) against BT in order to identify thousands of alleged copyright infringers of its music. Because of the ACS:Law email leak debacle, BT decided to fight Read more
Anyone who has ever heard me speak about Internet regulation will know of my barely contained scepticism with regards to Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, and all that it represents. In fact, the Declaration speaks of a more innocent time in Internet history, and it is usually considered to Read more
The final draft of the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been released to the public (unlike previous drafts, which were leaked). Previously we had looked at the possible changes that the agreement would bring to UK copyright law. I am happy to say that at least the worst case scenario Read more
On the back of the ACS:Law debacle, there has been a lot of interest in the way in which firms like ACS:Law and Davenport Lyons obtained customer information from internet service providers linking IP addresses to broadband account holders. The information was obtained in English courts through what is known Read more
So, the ACS:Law email leak is the gift that keeps on giving as reports have come out of more unsecured sensible data included in Andrew Crossley’s emails. While I have expressed that I generally disagree with vigilante justice, for some reason the words chickens, home, and roost keep coming up Read more
For some time now English law firm ACS:Law has been in the middle of controversy for its use of dubious tactics against copyright infringers. ACS:Law’s cause célèbre is that they became famous when they teamed-up with porn producers and then they started sending cease-and-desist letters to people claiming that they Read more
I have finally finished reading SAS Institute Inc v World Programming Ltd (the IPKat beat me to it). This is an important software copyright case for many reasons. After a decade of mostly software patent cases in English courts, it is refreshing to see a complex software case where it Read more