CommTech newsletter June 2008
Web sweep of the UK’s top retail websites
Internet shopping has brought about huge benefits to millions of consumers and thousands of businesses. Internet retailing is growing at about 30% each year and in 2007, it was worth over £30 billion.
In June 2007, the OFT published their market study of internet shopping, with one of the main findings being that consumers had little awareness of their rights when shopping online. Additionally, this study revealed that many businesses had a low awareness of online shoppers’ rights and that some were not even complying with the relevant regulations.
In December 2007, the OFT worked with Local Authority Trading Standards Services (TSS) to carry out a web sweep of the UK’s top retail websites with the aim of further increasing business awareness of online shoppers’ rights. The report assessed the extent to which these sites were complying with some of the key requirements of online shopping laws.
The results suggest that most large online retailers are complying with the key consumer protection requirements (the Distance Selling and E-commerce Regulations). However, the sweep also identified some areas for improvement, particularly in the area of cancellations and refunds, and contact details and transparency.
The OFT has published the key findings of the web sweep on its website. You can view a full copy of the final report by following this link: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft982.pdf.
Connection between Dr Who, IP Law and Knitting?
A Dr Who fan is currently in the middle of a row with the BBC after she published knitting designs for the sci-fi drama’s monsters on the internet. The knitting designs were removed from her website after the BBC complained that they breached its copyright. The woman responsible for the designs said that the BBC was “making an example of her.” However the BBC has said that they acted because the finished figures were being sold online on the auction website, eBay.
The Open Rights Group, a lobbying organisation which specialises in digital rights issues, have been publicising the 26 year old fan’s case. Executive director, Becky Hogge has said that in the offline world, the fan would not be doing anything wrong, but because what she was doing was online, which is a public space, it causes problems. She went on to say that the law in this area was very blunt because it did not recognise the difference between someone selling fake Louis VuittonR handbags and someone doing what the fan was doing.
A BBC spokesperson has said that their approach was not heavy handed and they had to act in the interests of the licence payers. The spokesperson also said that they appreciated that the fan only wanted to share her designs with other fans and her friends and family. However, some people took these patterns and used them on eBay to make profit for themselves and unfortunately the source of the designs was the fan’s website.
Set back for spammers
MySpace has recently won a £120 million legal judgment over junk messages sent to the members of the social networking site.
The judgment is thought to be the largest ever given against senders of unsolicited commercial email. Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer at MySpace said that the judgment will mean that anyone who is thinking of engaging in spam is likely to think twice.
The two junk mailers in this case worked together to create MySpace accounts or took over existing ones by stealing passwords. Messages were then sent to these MySpace members to make the mail look like it came from friends, but when the links to sites were followed, the spammers would be making money based on hits or trying to sell something.
The duo were said to have sent approximately 735,925 messages to MySpace members. MySpace argued that in sending the junk mail, the spammers cost it money and it generated complaints from hundreds of its members. Another concern was that some of the external sites to which members were directed to, contained pornographic material, potentially harming teenagers who use MySpace.
The two spammers concerned were also issued with injunctions barring them from similar activities in the future. However, anti-spam experts claim that MySpace will have a tough job of collecting the money and that in usual cases of spam mail; you cannot even know how to find the spammer. Nevertheless, this case is one small step forward towards combating internet abuse and preventing criminal cyber activity.
Patentability test for software inventions clarified
The English High Court has recently made an important decision which helped to clarify the controversial test for patentability of computer implemented inventions. One of the key criteria in the test is the requirement that a software invention provides a technical contribution.
Software inventions will be patentable only when they provide a “relevant technical contribution”, which is considered to be something more than merely loading a program onto a computer to run it. The UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) has adopted a strict approach to software inventions after having refused many claims on the basis that they lack a technical contribution.
In this particular case, Symbian Ltd V Comptroller General of Patents, the inventors had made the operating system of a cellular telephone more stable by providing a new software interface with more reliable mapping between the operating system files. The application was initially refused on the basis that the only “contribution” that was being made was the insertion of more coding into an already existing computer program and this type of subject matter was excluded from being patentable as it did not meet the technical contribution requirement.
On appeal, the UKIPO decided that the definition of “contribution” had been defined too narrowly and it should at least include a consideration of how the invention actually works to solve a problem or how much of an advantage is provided. In this case, it was decided that the appeal be allowed as the contribution was seen as being sufficient through the improvement in the reliability of the operating system.
This is a useful decision in that it clarifies that providing program codes which lead to performance improvements within a computer can now be acknowledged as a type of technical contribution that supports patentability. However, not all computerimplemented inventions make such contributions, particularly if there is not some fixing of a technical shortcoming in the computer.