The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) will host an “exploratory” meeting Feb. 3-4 at PTO hq in Alexandria, Va., “to discuss substantive patent law harmonization and possible approaches for moving harmonization forward,” according to a PTO release. Talks on substantive patent law harmonization at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have been delayed until May 2005 as a result of disagreement among WIPO member states over the content of a proposed harmonization treaty and the best way to proceed with discussions.
Thomas Davin>, ex-Nasdaq, becomes vp-Software & Information Industry Assn.’s financial Information Services Div… , ex-SAS Institute, named PeopleClick chief people officer… NetStreams promoted to vp-international markets.
WiFi Wireless said a field test proved the value of its long-distance technology. One laptop with the company’s chip sent data to another 7 miles away and each used less than 1 w of power, WiFi Wireless said Tues. “This will surely change the whole ‘hot spot’ delivery for the Internet,” said Planetel CEP Gene Curcio, who attended the demonstration, according to the announcement. The date and location of the test weren’t given. WiFi Wireless said it planned more tests and demonstrations for Planetel’s S. Korean customers, which include the Agency for Defense Development and the Korean Veterans Assn.
The House Commerce Committee will keep jurisdiction over cybersecurity. Despite making the Homeland Security Committee permanent on Mon., the House approved an amendment from Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) that would keep cybersecurity mainly under Commerce Committee authority. The House Judiciary and Govt. Reform committees also have some jurisdiction. “Our computer networks are the new arteries of commerce, delivering jobs, growth and opportunity to millions of Americans,” Barton said: “The conference made a rational decision in keeping jurisdiction over cyberterrorism with the people who already understand what it is and how to deal with it.”
The RIAA can’t force ISPs to divulge the identity of customers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the U.S. 8th U.S. Appeals Court, St. Louis, ruled Tues. The ruling overturned a lower court decision, deciding whether section 512(h) of the DMCA can be used to subpoena names, addresses and phone numbers of illegal file sharers, said legal experts.
Skype is testing a voicemail service for spring launch, a spokeswoman confirmed Tues. Users of the company’s free PC-to-PC VoIP service who have tried recently to call users who were offline received a generic greeting in a woman’s voice soliciting a message, followed by a beep, Reuters reported. It noted that Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom had cited voicemail as the kind of paid service that would emerge this year to provide his company revenue and meet customer demand.
A man calling himself the “Spam King” will stop infecting computers with adware until a federal lawsuit against him is resolved, according to the FTC. The govt. alleged Sanford Wallace of Rochester, N.Y., used spyware to infiltrate computers and tried to sell programs he claimed would fix the problems his software had caused -- which the FTC alleged didn’t work. No trial date has been set, but presiding U.S. Dist. Judge Joseph DiClerico issued a temporary restraining order against Wallace in Oct. to prevent him from sending ads. Wallace told the AP he’s being persecuted “because of his past involvement” in spam. He headed a company called Cyber Promotions in the mid 1990s that the FTC said sent as many as 30 million spams daily, earning him the nicknames “Spam King” and “Spamford.”
Police in the U.K. charged a man with sending hoax e- mails to relatives of people missing since the Asian tsunami, saying their loved ones were among the 40 Britons confirmed dead. The man, 40, from Lincolnshire in northeastern England, claimed to be from the “Foreign Office Bureau” in Thailand and targeted people who had sought information about relatives and friends on the Web site for U.K. TV station Sky News. Police said the man was charged with malicious communication and causing a public nuisance.
Pro-content interests have created troubling inequalities in copyright law between the U.S. and Australia, said ISPs angry with the new Free Trade Agreement recently signed by the two countries. They say Australian laws regarding copyright protection were amended under pressure from copyright holders that saw the agreement as a chance to gain broader legal rights against service providers. ISPs said intellectual property (IP) interests may use the FTA -- which ends duties on about 97% of trade between the 2 nations and is seen by economists as a likely boost to both countries’ economies -- to bring American copyright laws into harmony with less ISP-friendly Australian laws.
Controversial adware company Claria isn’t as consumer-friendly in its disclosures and ease of removing its software as it lets on, a Harvard researcher said Tues. Ben Edelman said on his website that he tested claims made by Reed Freeman, company vp-legislative & regulatory affairs, in an interview last year. Although Freeman said Claria had an “intuitive and standard Windows uninstall process,” it’s harder to remove its software than others because the name doesn’t show up in Windows’ “add/remove programs,” Edelman said. Also nonstandard is Claria’s license prohibition against using “unauthorized” removal methods such as antispyware tools, he said. Freeman’s suggestion that it’s as easy to get rid of Claria as it is to accept it is belied by the one click required to install the program and the 8 to remove it, Edelman said. Freeman had also said the “key material terms” that the company “will track your online behavior and serve you advertising” are “disclosed in every download process in a way that is unavoidable prior to the consumer taking action.” But Claria’s disclosure is inferior to that of its competitors, including those of 180solutions, Edelman said. Claria’s notice that ads served to a user are “selected in part based on how you surf the Web” doesn’t convey that the company transmits data on user activities to its servers and then stores the information in its huge database, he said. In response, Freeman castigated Edeleman for failing to disclose in his research findings that he had been a paid expert witnesses for litigants against Claria, including for Teleflora in a pending federal case. “You can make a lot of money as an expert in litigation, and his ginning up reports like this is a good for him to advertise himself,” Freeman said. “It’s troubling that he doesn’t say where his allegiance lies and where his money comes from.” Freeman said he wouldn’t discuss the substance of Edelman’s findings, but then made an exception to accuse him of discussing Claria’s old end user license while omitting reference to a new one that Freeman said Edelman must have known took effect a few weeks ago. The new license, which doesn’t apply to users of longer standing, makes clear that Claria collects information on them, Freeman said. “He'll twist facts to achieve his ends,” he said.