With a hat-tip to my young colleague, Michael Ladanyi:

While the decision is not yet posted online, according to the Federal Court website, Amazon.com’s appeal of the Commissioner’s Decision denying Amazon.com a patent for its 1-click purchasing was granted today. The status update giving notice that the appeal was granted can be seen here. The application describes purchasing items over the Internet using a single-action by transmitting a client identifier associated with information about a buyer.

Here is the full text of the status update posted online today:

Reasons for Judgment and Judgment dated 14-OCT-2010 rendered by The

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In her annual report to Parliament on the Privacy Act last week, the federal Privacy Commissioner expressed concerns about several issues. The Privacy Act deals with privacy issues for the Federal government.

Issues included the way surplus equipment and paper is disposed, and improper and unauthorized access to documents. Highlights from the press release include:

• Wireless audit: Of five federal entities examined, none had fully assessed the threats and risks inherent in wireless communications. Gaps in policies and/or practices resulted in weak password protection for smart phones and inadequate encryption for Wi-Fi networks and data stored on mobile devices. Shortcomings

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On Monday, November 15, 2010 from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM EST, I am presenting a teleseminar along with Hermie Abraham of Abraham Law, David Anber of David Anber’s Law Office and Phil Brown of the Law Society of Upper Canada, Prof Development & Competence on:

* Choosing the right technology to stay connected
* Collaborating with clients on the Web
* Addressing all considerations before going virtual
* Finding the simplest tools to make it work seamlessly
* Upholding confidentiality in the virtual office

Link to program page: http://ecom.lsuc.on.ca/cpd/product.jsp?id=CLE10-0110301
Link to printable program brochure: http://ecom.lsuc.on.ca/cpd/flyer.jsp?id=CLE10-0110301

Please join us! . . . [more]

The days when law students lament over whether they should “blog” are surely over when the Dean of Law has their own blog.

Lorne Sossin, Dean of Osgoode Hall, has just launched Dean Sossin’s Blog, where he “can draw your attention to topics that affect Osgoode, our students and the broader legal and academic community.” The sole post is from Monday, and provides a response to Maclean’s always contentious 2010 law school rankings.

It’s not off to a bad start, although there could be greater use of the hyperlinking function. There also appears to be a significant . . . [more]

Dan wrote yesterday about what to do if hackers steal your online accounts. As a companion to that, Yahoo!Canada has an article from Real Simple magazine entitled Scams Even you Could Fall For – And How to Avoid Them. 

It talks about things like phony gift card offers, mails that look like they come from your bank, sellers of fake items like event tickets, and fake charities. It also suggests some resources to use for checking to see if things are legit. Sometimes just doing a Google or Bing search will ferret out if something is a common scam. . . . [more]

Earlier today I tweeted about a great article on the New York Times tech blog What to Do If Hackers Steal Your Online Accounts.

In hindsight, I think the advice in the article is very practical and relevant to just about everyone, thus making it worth sharing via a SLAW post with a far wider audience than just those that follow me on Twitter.

Over the years I have received more than few panicked calls from lawyers that have had their email accounts hacked, and more recently, from a lawyer that lost control of his Facebook page. Email and . . . [more]

Groups against anti-piracy companies and law firms who allege heavy-handed tactics have launched Denial of Service Attacks against law firms and their clients.

This week in biotech was pretty mellow, fellow denizens (and residents) of Slaw.

Health Canada is , saying that personal test kits are “neither prohibited by law, nor subject to federal regulation.” This is in contrast to the U.S., where regulators have been inclined to treat the tests as regulated medical devices.

Endo Pharmaceuticals bought generics company Qualitest this week, demonstrating just how chill they are with mixing generics and innovative products. The blurring of lines between innovators and generics is part of a general re-alignment of constiuencies in the pharma industry that will impact how products are developed . . . [more]

The Khan Academy represents a new way to learn. It’s a YouTube-based video library consisting of over 1,800 videos on topics ranging from math, science, the humanities and other topics. Sal Khan, an MIT graduate, Harvard MBA and ex-hedge fund manager, singlehandedly delivers each of the lessons. His videos have more than 22 million views and are viewed more than 70,000 times per day – more than the combined courseware provided by both MIT and Stanford. For an idea of what a typical lesson looks like, take a look at Khan’s lessons on DNA or solving linear equations.

His . . . [more]

Last week when I wrote about Students and the New Personal Learning Environments, the topic of students now contacting experts directly came up. One major component of students’ Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the Personal Learning Network (PLN).

The new social networking tools allow students to more easily find, connect and interact with experts and other students from around the world learning about the same topics. Educator Wendy Drexler, who presented last week’s video, wrote and produced this Common Craft-inspired video a year earlier (December 2008):

Asking others about what they know and looking for expertise within our . . . [more]

Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker for September 27th contrasts the civil rights movement of the 1960s in the US with social media ‘activism’ today. He says that social media are great for sharing information widely, for exploiting weak ties for low risk, low commitment actions. However, they are not good for working strong ties towards high-risk, disciplined activity.

He says that the reports of the usefulness of Twitter at the time of the Iranian election and in Moldova were greatly exaggerated.

The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change if it just wants

. . . [more]

The ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission is holding hearings to explore the impact of technology on client confidences and lawyers’ use of the internet to develop business. The Commission invites interested persons to register now to testify at an Oct. 14 public hearing in Chicago. You may also make written submissions. See below for details on registering or making written submissions.

The commission has issued two issues papers identifying areas it expects to explore in oral testimony or written comment. One explores implications for client confidentiality raised by lawyers’ use of such technological tools as cloud computing, while the other raises . . . [more]