The National Intellectual Property Researchers Association (NIPRA), whose members “serve as the world’s main concentration point for IP information disseminated by the USPTO,” have sued the USPTO in District Court for the ED of Virginia. Their action was precipitated by the USPTO’s project to transition from a paper document collection to an online access system. Audits of the program indicate substantial data error and loss associated with scanning documents for the new database, rendering the records incomplete and often unusable. See my previous posting on these problems here.
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Daily Archives: January 8, 2003
FTC's New Fraud Website
The FTC announced the launch of a new website on cross-border fraud. The site states, “This website has information to help consumers spot, stop and avoid cross-border fraud. You also can review the Federal Trade Commissions recent law enforcement actions against cross-border scam artists, and learn how the agency is working with law enforcement agencies… Continue Reading
Praise for the Relaunched HotBot Search Engine
Poynteronline’s two part review of the new HotBot is worth noting. Part I is here, and Part II is here. The author praised the new engine’s capabilities, and feedback from readers championed Google as far superior. Continue Reading
Teen Found Not Guilty in DVD Case
On January 7, teenager Jon Lech Johansen was acquitted by a Norweigan criminal court of charges related to creating a utility (DeCSS) that descrambled the code for DVD players, and publishing it on the Web. For other articles on this decision, see CNN, The Register, BBC, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Continue Reading
New Operator for Top Level Domain
ICANN announced that effective January 3, 2003, the non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR) is now the registry operator for the important .org domain. Continue Reading
Boucher First to Intro Tech Bill in 108th Congress
Rep. Boucher of Virginia was the first to introduce a tech-related bill in the 108th Congress. The bill, called the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (H.R. 107), is a twin to H.R. 5544, which he introduced on October 3, 2002. See my previous posting for a section-by-section description of H.R. 5544. H.R. 107 amends sections… Continue Reading
