While reading about Newegg’s victory over patent troll Soverain Software over the weekend, I was reminded of the Three Billy Goats Gruff fairy tale I read to my children just a week ago.

Soverain claimed three patents it owns gave it intellectual property rights over the “shopping cart” technology that virtually every e-commerce site depends upon. Sorverain filed lawsuits against Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Home Depot, Victoria’s Secret, Avon and even e-retailing giant Amazon.com.

While Soverain successfully extorted millions of dollars from these e-commerce companies, it picked one last fight that would prove to be the patent’s troll’s undoing. That fight was . . . [more]

I would like to take this opportunity to suggest a few of you perusing this post pause for a just a moment to consider an earlier age, a more simple age and a device that set many of us on the path to our constantly connected state that we now occupy. If the names Pong, Missile Command, Frogger, Asteroids, Centipede, and Burgertime mean anything to you, then I’m willing to bet that you belong to Generation X and that you just may have got your start on the road to reading a blog about technology and law by playing Atari . . . [more]

This week, the UK Supreme Court launched a YouTube channel that highlights short summaries of judgments.

According to a press release published by the Court:

“Video of the five-minute summary given by the lead Justice in each appeal as they deliver their judgment will now be posted on the popular video-sharing website YouTube shortly after delivery in court. The move follows the success of the Court’s live web streaming of proceedings provided in partnership with Sky News (…)”

“The Justices’ summaries aim to explain briefly the background to the appeal in hand, the decision the court has reached, and

. . . [more]

PLEI Connect recently began a new series of public legal education webinars, some topics in English and others in French. For those not familiar, “PLEI Connect is a project to help organizations across Canada identify and share technology tools to effectively deliver public legal education and information (PLEI) services.”

PLEI Connect is a multi-jurisdiction, team initiative of CLEO, Éducaloi, PovNet, and Courthouse Libraries BC. It originated only a couple of years ago at the Just a Click Away conference. A look at a bit about PLEI Connect shows how these fine organizations share defined responsibilities for the project. From the . . . [more]

The High Court of England and Wales (Technology and Construction Court) has held that an employer has no proprietary right in emails sent by the company’s CEO that would give the company the right to see the content of the emails. The case is Fairstar v Adkins [2012] EWHC 2952 (TCC). (For various reasons no claim arising from copyright or confidentiality could be made, and the employment contract did not deal with the question.)

The court reviews a great deal of English (and a bit of Canadian) law on the point. It also considers the practical implications of holding that . . . [more]

Many people don’t bother wearing watches any more because its so easy to check the time on our phones. But that may change as watches move from just telling time to being a display device that works with our phones. A Datamation article entitled 5 Tech Trends That Will Bring Back the Wristwatch explains why. 

The 5 trends:

• Multi-screen functionality where devices work together
• Wearable computing
• Voice interaction
• eInk displays that are thin and consume very little power
• Bluetooth 4.0 that consumes very little power

See, for example, the Pebble watch, a Kickstarter project that is now shipping. I’ll take . . . [more]

The UK House of Commons Chamber started tweeting on January 4th on the feed @HouseofCommons. The feed is maintained by House staff and provides official news and information including links to relevant items on the www.parliament.uk website and Twitter feeds from members and others. They have also been re-tweeting the UK Parliament (@UKParliament) and responding to suggestions.

 Hat tip: CBC parliamentary/political reporter Kady O’Malley  (@kady) who issues a challenge to the Canadian Parliament:

. . . [more]

New Zealander Kim Dotcom, that large gadfly who is still facing extradition to the US for alleged "piracy" of American entertainment (see the WSJ story) has launched his new—and improved—cloud file storage service, MEGA.

In last week’s episode of Spark, CBC Radio’s show on digital culture, host Nora Young interviewed Patrick Cormier, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology (CCCT), about social media in the courtroom. The Cormier interview is at the beginning of the show and lasts about 12 minutes.

The discussion covered the wide range of rules and practices in Canada, the different considerations surrounding the use of social media by reporters, court personnel, lawyers and jurors, as well as the CCCT’s Draft National Guidelines Regarding the Use of Electronic Communication Devices in Court Proceedings (Twitter, blogging etc.).

As one . . . [more]

No, you can’t sell those pictures you found on Twitter. But their owner also can’t enjoy an absurd windfall if you do.

Three years ago we saw heartbreaking images of a devastating earthquake in Haiti. Photographer Daniel Morel saw the devastation firsthand. As it is his work to do, he captured photos of what he saw. He also shared his images via Twitter. As it turned out, it seems much of what the world saw in the early aftermath were those pictures taken by Mr. Morel. We saw them not, however, through any arrangements made by Mr. Morel.

Agence France . . . [more]

Facebook just announced a new search tool called Graph Search that is now in beta for a limited number of users. It allows users to search based on information about their friends. A search, for example, for a restaurant will return results based on the likes and interests of the searcher’s friends.

It seems that Facebook is respecting user privacy settings, and basing the search only on what users have chosen to make public. But then again consent is all about context, and users may not have thought about such a feature when considering their privacy settings.

Facebook’s announcement has . . . [more]

GTA Linux User’s Group, Political Outreach Group (David Collier-Brown, Editor)

Slaw readers may have noticed a flurry of interest around Voltage v. Doe and TekSavvy, an effort to get the courts to compel TekSavvy to identify 2000 households which Voltage Pictures argues are engaging in commercial copyright infringement via the “bit torrent” program.

Slaw has considered the subject of discovery of IP addresses recently in two posts: https://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/13/norwich-orders-applied-to-gmail-account/ and https://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/15/york-university-v-bell-canada-enterprises-observations-and-implications-for-future-norwich-jurisprudence/.

The technical community is following such cases with both interest and trepidation, as we expected suits against individuals to be rare, and limited to $100 to $5,000 . . . [more]