FENNEMORE CRAIG I-LAW
April 23, 2001

Fennemore Craig counsels clients on Internet, branding and e-commerce issues and protection and commercial exploitation of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Clients include a range of domestic and international businesses from Internet start-ups to large multi-nationals, in industries ranging from computer software and hardware to pharmaceuticals, toys, games, optics, and electronics.

• The Canadian government has brought a UDRP proceeding against one of its citizens that registered numerous government department names as domain names. Link
  

• A university high tech consortium will take over the management of the .edu domain (for educational institutions only) from VeriSign. Link

• ICANN has asked the U.S. government to approve its agreement with VeriSign that would make VeriSign the .com registrar until 2007. Link

• Americans average 20 hours each month online, according to a recently released report. Link
  

• As I-Law readers know, e-mail is not private. The article link below describes who can read your e-mail and steps you can take to make it more difficult for them to do so. Link
  

• A Pittsburgh court has ruled that a high school cannot punish a student for taunting comments posted on an online bulletin board, as long as the comments were made off-site from the school and on the student's own time. The fact that the student had used the school computer once to post non-objectionable comments (a boast that his volleyball team would give the opposing school's team a "lashing") did not give the school the right to censor other more objectionable comments made at other times by the same student. Link.

• Approximately 60 of the federal government's websites are tracking users' online movements to determine if violations of U.S. privacy law are occurring. Link

• Below is a link to a 63-page academic article that discusses court jurisdiction regarding Internet cases including the Zippo test, and proposes a new test to determine jurisdiction. Link

• A Maryland court has held that general web presence targeted to the U.S. and Canada generally, which allows information inquires, but without any actual queries from Maryland, was an insufficient amount of contacts with Maryland to give the court jurisdiction over the owner of the website. Link

• TThe European Union Trademark Office will finally allow trademark applicants to register their marks for "retail services" instead of requiring an applicant to register for the particular retailed product. Although such registrations have been allowed in the U.S. for years, the EU had previously not allowed such registrations. Link

• Speaking of love, the maker of VIAGRA has brought a trademark suit against the maker of the soft drink NIAGARA, which allegedly puts its drinkers in the mood for love and is being allegedly marketed as "Viagra for women." Link

COPYRIGHT ISSUES

• The EU governments have ratified the new copyright directive which extends copyright laws to new technologies. The law goes into effect within 18 months. Link

• The federal judge handling the Napster case criticized Napster for its efforts to comply with her order requiring Napster to stop allowing copyright infringement. However, the Judge has not issued any further ruling shutting down Napster, instead appointed a technical expert to review the situation. Link Link

PATENT ISSUES

• As reported in a past I-Law issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit limited the use of the "doctrine of equivalents" in the Festo case last fall. The Court has now held that the limitation applies retroactively. Link

• Patent litigation can be expensive. This message hit home for chip designer Rambus last quarter. The company had $8.2 million in earnings in the quarter ending March 31, but spent $7.3 million on patent litigation during the same period. Link

• From the truth is stranger than fiction, the makers of Smucker's jams owns a patent for an "uncrustable" peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yes, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are now patented. Smucker's has filed a suit against Albie's Foods for allegedly infringing on that patent. Link

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