Billy Barnes ← Innovation Law Blog

Google patents Doodle

Mar

2011

The Google Doodle is a themed version of the Google logo which appears on the main page of the Google search engine. Originally reserved for special occasions, it now changes daily and Google has a permanent staff devoted to designing new Doodles. Today, the USPTO granted a patent application for the Doodle that was filed ...

Digital locks and ownership

Billy Barnes

Mar

2011

The anti-circumvention, or digital lock, provisions are arguably the most controversial aspect of Bill C-32. Arguments on both sides of the debate dominate the dicussion of the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act. In this article, I suggest a different way of looking at the problem of technological protection measures and an approach to legal ...

MPEG-LA preparing patent attack on Google’s WebM

Billy Barnes

Feb

2011

MPEG-LA, the patent collective that licenses the popular h.264 video codec, has issued a call for patents that may underlie Google’s competing WebM codec. Google released the codec license-free shortly after acquiring it last year. However, it is widely expected that Google may not have acquired all relevant patent licenses. MPEG-LA says that it hopes ...

Android app reads RFID transit cards

Billy Barnes

Feb

2011

Eric Butler, creator of FireSheep, has released an Android app that can read RFID fare cards used on some major US transit systems. The app is not designed primarily as a tool for revealing private data or, as was the case of FireSheep, to raise awareness. However, it does demonstrate how simple it can be ...

California Supreme Court rules that police can search arrestee’s cell phone

Billy Barnes

Jan

2011

In 2007, Gregory Diaz was arrested for attempting to sell drugs to a police informant. When he arrived at the police station his cell phone was seized and his text messages searched. The California Supreme Court recently held that the search was constitutional, comparing the messages in the cell phone to heroin tablets in a ...

VLC and the Apple App Store

Billy Barnes

Jan

2011

On Friday, Apple removed the open source VLC media player from the App Store. It is believed (though not known for sure) that this happened as the result of a copyright complaint made two months ago by a developer named Rémi Denis-Courmont. A professor told my class last week that if we ever wanted to ...

US Supreme Court split on parallel import ban

Billy Barnes

Dec

2010

The US Supreme Court released their ruling on Omega v. Costco today, affirming the 9th Circuit ruling in favour of Omega. The case considered whether the first sale rule applied to copyrighted goods manufactured outside the United States (a previous case, Quality King, held that first sale applied to goods manufactured in the US, exported, ...

Google Search subject to EU anti-trust investigation

Billy Barnes

Dec

2010

The European Union has announced that it has opened a formal investigation into allegations that Google favours its own properties over competing services in search results. When a user searches for something, hotels for example, Google displays prices and reviews from it’s own travel service as the first result while links to other travel sites ...

Utilities may place DRA for police without warrant

Billy Barnes

Nov

2010

In R. v. Gomboc, released last week, the Supreme Court considered whether the police violated the accused’s s. 8 rights by asking his electrical utility to install a digital recording ammeter to monitor his electrical usage. The majority held that it did not for various reasons (4 held that there was no expectation of privacy ...

Amazon, free speech, and privacy

Billy Barnes

Nov

2010

It’s almost rote to state that the difference between privacy in Canada and the United States is that the Canadian regime is broad and general while the American is sectoral. At the federal level, Canada has a single overarching law, PIPEDA, while the US has a health privacy act, a video rental privacy act, a ...