| ICANN |
| 2/8. The House
Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications
held a hearing titled "Is ICANN's
New Generation of Internet Domain Name Selection Process
Thwarting Competition?" Subcommittee members criticized
the process by which ICANN recently awarded new top level
domains -- .areo, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, and
.biz. See, testimony
of ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf. See also, prepared statements of Lou
Kerner (dotTV), Elana
Broitman (register.com), David
Short (IATA), Kenneth
Hansen (NeuStar), Leah
Gallegos (AtlanticRoot Network), Michael
Froomkin (Univ. of Miami), and Alan
Davidson (CDT). See also, statement
of Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA). |
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| New Documents |
USCA:
opinion
in In Re Boston's Children First re out of court statements by
judges, 2/5 (HTML, USCA).
MSFT:
letter
to USCA re opinion in In Re Boston's Children First, 2/8 (PDF,
USCA). |
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| Computer Crime |
| 2/7. The U.S. District Court (NDCal)
sentenced Richard Rood to 41 months in prison for unlawful
possession of child pormography
in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(5)(B). Rood also sent
and received images over the Internet, via e-mail, and
published many images to personal web sites. He was charged by
Information
on Oct. 20, 2000. AUSA Miles
Ehrlich prosecuted the case. See, release. |
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| About Tech Law Journal |
Tech Law Journal is a free access web site
and e-mail alert that provides news, records, and analysis of
legislation, litigation, and regulation affecting the computer
and Internet industry.
This e-mail service is offered free of charge to anyone who
requests it. Just provide TLJ an e-mail address.
Number of subscribers (as of Feb. 9): 781.
Contact TLJ:
202-364-8882.
E-mail.
P.O. Box 15186, Washington DC, 20003.
Privacy
Policy
Notices
& Disclaimers
Copyright 1998 - 2001 David Carney, dba Tech Law Journal. All
rights reserved. |
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| Internet Taxes |
| 2/8. Rep. Chris Cox
(R-CA) and Sen. Ron Wyden
(D-OR) introduced companion bills in the House and Senate to
permanently ban Internet access taxes and to extend for five
years the existing moratorium on multiple and discriminatory
taxes on the Internet. The bills are named the Internet
Non-Discrimination Act. Cox and Wyden sponsored the
Internet Tax Freedom Act in the 105th Congress, which
established the existing moratorium. In addition, Sen. Wyden
introduced a bill that would create a set of tax
simplification criteria that state and local taxing
authorities could use to implement less burdensome tax
collection systems for so-called "remote" sales,
such as Internet and catalog retail transactions. Once a
sufficient number of states have simplified collection,
Congress would work on an expedited basis to codify the new
system. See, Cox
release. |
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| IP Legislative News |
2/8. The House Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property
Subcommittee (which was previously named Courts and
Intellectual Property) is close to finalizing its organization
for the 107th Congress. This subcommittee has jurisdiction
over many high tech issues, including application of copyright
law to Napster style file copying, business method patents,
database protection, anti-tampering proposals, and oversight
of the USPTO. Howard Coble (R-NC)
will again be Chairman, and Howard Berman (D-NC)
will again be the Ranking Democrat. Bob Goodlatte
(R-VA) will be Vice Chairman. The subcommittee will be
expanded from 15 to 22 members. Also, many former members are
not returning. Hence, there will be many new members. The
returning Republicans are likely to be Coble, Goodlatte, Elton
Gallegly (R-CA), Bill Jenkins (R-TN), Chris Cannon (R-UT), and
Henry Hyde (R-IL) (who was an ex officio member). The
departing Republicans are James Rogan (R-CA) (who lost his
election to Adam Schiff), Ed Pease (R-IN) (who retired) and
Mary Bono (R-CA) (who moved to the Commerce Committee). The
new Republicans are likely to be Asa Hutchinson (R-AR),
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Joe Scarborough
(R-FL), John Hostettler (R-IN), Rick Keller, and Joe
Sensenbrenner (now ex officio). The returning Democrats are
Berman, Rick Boucher (D-VA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Bill Delahunt
(D-MA), Robert Wexlar (R-FL), and John Conyers (D-MI). The new
Democrats are likely to be Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Marty Meehan
(D-MA), and Maxine Waters (D-CA). There is likely to be one
more new Democrat -- either Anthony Weiner (D-NY) or Adam
Schiff (D-CA).
2/8. Intellectual Property
Owners Association (IPO) Executive Director Herbert
Wamsley told Tech Law Journal that the IPO's top legislative
priority for the 107th Congress will be ending the diversion
of USPTO
user fees to fund other government programs. He added that
he is hopeful, now that Rep.
Frank Wolf (R-VA) is Chairman of the House Appropriations
Committee's subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the USPTO.
His district is in northern Virginia. "He is interested
in high technology," said Wamsley, and "he has
patent attorneys and Patent and Trademark Office employees in
his district." |
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| BSA Agenda |
| 2/7. The Business Software
Alliance (BSA) sent a letter
[PDF] to President Bush advocating strong copyright
protection (both domestically and internationally), free
trade, math and science education, and H1B visas.
The letter elaborated that the U.S. should negotiate trade
"agreements for countries to improve their efforts in
enforcing copyright laws against piracy." The letter was
signed by Andy Grove (Intel), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft),
George Semanuk (Network Associates), Eric Schmidt (Novell),
John Thompson (Symantec), and heads of seven other software
companies. See also, BSA
release. |
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| Microsoft Case |
2/8. Sun Microsystems
Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy stated that the
government should pursue its antitrust case against Microsoft.
He gave a luncheon address at the National Press Club in
Washington DC. The U.S.
Court of Appeals (DCCir) will hear oral arguments in the
case on Feb. 26 and 27.
2/8. The U.S.
Court of Appeals (1stCir) issued its opinion
in In Re Boston's Children's First on Feb. 5. This is a school
case. However, the issue on appeal was whether a sitting
district court judge should have recused herself after
commenting publicly on the case. She spoke with a newspaper
reporter about the merits of the case while the case was
pending. The extent of her contacts were less than those of
Judge Jackson in the Microsoft antitrust case. The
Appeals Court held that it was an abuse of discretion for her
not to recuse herself. Microsoft's attorney, John Warden,
promptly brought this opinion to the attention of the U.S.
Court of Appeals (DCCir) in a letter
[PDF] on Feb. 8. |
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| IP Litigation |
2/8. The U.S.
Court of Appeals (FedCir) heard oral argument in Imatec v. Apple,
an appeal from a final judgment of the U.S. District Court in
a patent infringement case. The claimed inventions
measure the colors and tone of a screen image and matches them
to what is produced by a printer. Plaintiffs allege that
Apple's ColorSync software, which is incorporated into Apple
operating systems, infringes the patents. The trial court
dismissed for lack of standing (plaintiffs do not own the
patents in suit) and for non- infringement.
2/6. The U.S.
Court of Appeals (2nd Cir.) issued its short opinion
in Hapco Farms
v. Idaho Potato Commission, a trademark and
antitrust case against a state agency that was dismissed by
the trial court on 11th
Amendment grounds. The Appeals court affirmed.
2/8. The Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) announced that Matthew
Oppenheim will become head of its Litigation Department.
Prior to joining the RIAA in 1998, Oppenheim worked at the law
firm of Proskauer Rose.
Oppenheim replaces George Borkowski,
a litigation partner at the Los Angeles law firm Mitchell Silberberg and Knupp,
who has been on loan to RIAA as the acting Director of Civil
Litigation since Steven Fabrizio left.
2/8. The Software and
Information Industry Association (SIIA) settled its copyright
infringement lawsuit against Julian Kish. The SIIA filed a
complaint
in U.S. District Court (NDIll)
on Jan. 25 on behalf of Adobe, SGI, and Macromedia. The
parties settled for an undisclosed payment from Kish, a letter
of apology from Kish, and a consent order barring Kish from
future copyright infringement. See also, SIIA release. |
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| IP Crimes |
1/30. Jeffrey Stockton pled guilty in U.S. District Court (DOr)
to criminal copyright infringement. Stockton admitted
that he willfully infringed copyrights of Adobe for purposes
of private financial gain and that the commission of this
offense resulted in a retail loss to Adobe of $490,644. He
sold the infringing software over the Internet. Sentencing is
scheduled for April 17, 2001. Stockton graduated last August
from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism.
See, DOJ
release.
1/30. The U.S. District Court (EDMich)
sentenced Brian Baltutat to three years probation for criminal
copyright infringement. Baltutat offered approximately 142
software programs for free downloading on a website called
Hacker Hurricane. In addition to probation, the Court
prohibited him from engaging in Internet activity without
approval of the Probation Department. AUSA Krishna
Dighe prosecuted the case. See, DOJ
release.
1/29. The U.S. District Court (DMd) sentenced
Roger Bynum to 24 months in prison for conspiring to
distribute bootleg videotapes of motion picture recordings and
CDs of music recordings. He had been indicted for both conspiracy
and copyright infringement, but was allowed to plead
guilty only to the charge of conspiracy. The evidence included
23,892 videocassettes and 58,975 CDs seized by local police in
Maryland. AUSA Rod
Rosenstein prosecuted the case. See, DOJ
release. |
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