Managing your IP in a digital world
Posted on 02/09/2008
AMCHAM's Digital Future Now forum was an opportunity for nearly 100 senior executives from businesses operating in the online environment to discuss the many challenges and issues impacting the industry. Baldwins' presentation addressed the key topic of how intellectual property law relates to those challenges and issues (summary below). If you would like to know more please contact Rosemary Wallis or Gus Hazel.
- software patents are generally allowed in most countries in the world, though the eligibility requirements and test applied vary;
- a new Patents Act has been proposed in New Zealand. What is patentable is unchanged. However, the documents that can be taken into account when considering whether a claimed invention is new will be based on documents and other material available anywhere in the world, not just in New Zealand. This is a significant change that aligns New Zealand with most other countries.
- a very topical issue is whether the inclusion of trade marks in metatags and sponsored links is "use" and therefore infringement;
- different jurisdictions have drawn different conclusions on these topics;
- Google's policy, following decisions in various jurisdictions, is to allow trade marks to be used in sponsored links for customers in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland, but not elsewhere.
- digital content is easily and accurately copied;
- New Zealand's copyright legislation was recently amended to take digital issues into account. The changes include:
- allowing format shifting of music (subject to conditions);
- allowing time shifting of television broadcasts (again subject to some conditions);
- enhancing rights in relation to technological protection measures;
- allowing reverse engineering of software for certain purposes;
- permitting limited transient copying and caching;
- absolving ISP's from liability for infringing material they host (again provided certain conditions are met).
- the number of available extensions keeps expanding, making protection increasingly difficult;
- an effectively unlimited range of "vanity URLs" announced earlier this year will increase the problem;
- the relevance of domain names is arguably decreasing given the widespread use of Google and other search engines to locate websites.
In relation to the internet:
- a constant stream of lawsuits is targetting search engines and auction sites for infringing content, eg Google and eBay;
- there are different results in different countries;
- people need to be wary of reproducing material from elsewhere, even if the format is changed.
For further details contact us.