On May 8, 2012, the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling that merely viewing child pornography on the internet is not a criminal act under the New York Penal Code. The People v. James D. Kent, Index 70, NYLJ 1202552838004, at *1 (Ct. of App., Decided May 8, 2012). The rationale behind the decision of the state’s highest court bears discussion on a much broader scale due to its potential bearing on the legal definitions of procurement, possession and control of digital property.

The key question under consideration was the evidentiary significance of temporary internet files (or cache files) that are automatically created and stored on a the hard drive of a computer while the user is browsing the internet. The Appellate Court concluded that the act of viewing a web image alone does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement.

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Trade dress insurance coverage is alive and well. At least in Wisconsin. In Acuity v. Ross Glove Company, 2012 WL 1109035 (Wis. Ct. App. April 4, 2012), the Wisconsin Court of Appeals held that an insurer’s duty to defend was triggered under advertising injury liability coverage where the underlying complaint set forth allegations of trade dress infringement.

In the Acuity case, Ross Glove purchased a commercial general liability policy from Acuity, which included advertising injury liability coverage. The policy at issue defined “advertising injury”, in part, as “infringing upon another‘s copyright, trade dress or slogan in your advertisement.”

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The following article was co-written by my Health Care Department colleagues Sal Rotella and Bill Conaboy. Thanks guys!

Rick

On March 13, 2012 – almost 30 months after becoming one of the first entities to self-report a breach under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act – BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST) agreed to pay the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a record setting $1.5 million civil monetary penalty (CMP) for failing to safeguard protected health information (PHI).

The HITECH Act and HIPAA Enforcement

HHS adopted the interim final rule for HITECH’s breach notification requirement only a few weeks before the BCBST breach. The final rule requires covered entities to notify HHS following a breach of unsecured PHI. If a breach affects 500 or more individuals, the covered entity must report the breach electronically “without reasonable delay and in no case later than 60 days from discovery of the breach.”

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The following article was first published by our colleague Michael Schmidt on his blog, Social Media Employment Law Blog. It is part of our continuing effort to keep Cyberinquirer readers on top of decisions relevant to Social Media in the context of litigation. Thanks for the reprint, Mike.

Two weeks ago, I discussed the California case of PhoneDog v. Kravitz, where an employee, who used a company Twitter account as part of his job duties, left the company and continued to use the same Twitter account and tweet to the same followers. The (former) employee claimed that he had the right to continue tweeting, and PhoneDog responded that he was barking up the wrong tree (best I could do at the moment). As I mentioned in my last post, the court had denied the employee’s attempt to dismiss the entire case at inception, and allowed the company to amend its complaint to provide more specificity on some of its claims. Time for an update.

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The following article, written by my colleague Nicole Moody, first appeared in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Thanks to Nicole for allowing us to republish it here.

Rick Bortnick

Many of us have been there. Sipping our morning coffee, signing into our Facebook accounts, waiting to see what notifications will greet us. We are intrigued to see that we have a friend request.  Who could it be? An acquaintance from the past? A new colleague who we met at work? Whoever it is, we know that by accepting the request we will be granted access into this individual’s life and will know more about them in five minutes than we would know in a lifetime of small talk.

Due to the use of usernames and passwords, there is a belief that information shared on Facebook is confidential unless publicly shared. However, courts around the country are now addressing just how private this information really is.

In cases nationwide, litigants are asking courts to grant unfettered access to other parties’ Facebook or other social media accounts. Inevitably, in the age of status updates and hashtags, poking and friending, the lines between public and private information have become blurred. This trend has become increasingly prevalent in the insurance industry as insurance companies have realized the usefulness of social media in litigation. 

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The following article was first published by our colleague Michael Schmidt on his blog, Social Media Employment Law Blog. It is part of our continuing effort to keep Cyberinquirer readers on top of decisions relevant to Social Media in the context of litigation. Thanks for the reprint, Mike.

What would you do if your employee continued to use your company’s Twitter account after he stopped working for you?

What if your (former) employee claimed that he, not your company, actually owned the rights to the Twitter followers?

Ever thought about it?

I have posted several times about how social media has not created new causes of action, but rather has provided a new application for traditional claims. One of the areas that I surmised would develop in time was the interplay between social media and post-employment competition and trade secret rights. According to two new decisions, that time has apparently come.

In PhoneDog v. Kravitz (Northern District of California), the company gave its employee (Kravitz) use of a Twitter account as part of his employment. Kravitz tweeted information to promote the company’s services, and generated approximately 17,000 followers. Kravitz left the company, and, while he changed the account “handle”, he continued to use the same account to tweet to the same followers. PhoneDog sued Kravitz for continuing to use the Twitter account, claiming that the “compilation of subscribers and the password used to access the account” constituted company trade secrets. Valuing each of the 17,000 followers at $2.50, the company sought damages of $340,000 for “stealing” each of those followers for 8 months.

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The following article first appeared on Mike Schmidt’s Cozen O’Connor blog, socialmediaemploymentlawblog.com. Thanks to Mike for allowing us to republish it as a follow-up to our December 2, 2011 post, Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Facebook Posts Closer, which addresses a Pennsylvania trial court’s ruling that ”plaintiff’s Facebook information is discoverable, provided the defendant has a good faith basis for seeking the material,” and our October 16, 2011 post, Facebook: Everything You Want to Know and More… Just a Discovery Request Away, where we comment on how easy it actually is to obtain information posted on Facebook.

Needless to say, the discoverability of social media posts is an important issue for litigants on both sides of the “v” and will continue to be the subject of fiercely-litigated motion practice. We will monitor the issue and post updates as courts across the country rule on this imporant, oftentimes substantively dispositive, issue.

Rick Bortnick

One of the high-profile battles being fought in the social media world continues to be over the ability of one party in a lawsuit to compel the other party to produce messages, posts, pictures, and other “private” things done over a social networking site like Facebook.   The trend continues to reveal that courts are willing to compel disclosure in the right circumstances, and the most recent decision issued by a New York appellate court is no different.

In Patterson v. Turner Construction Company (New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, October 27, 2011), the plaintiff sued for personal injury damages that included physical and psychological injuries that he claims to have suffered.   During the lawsuit, the defendant asked the court to direct the plaintiff to provide an authorization allowing defendant to obtain “all of plaintiff’s Facebook records compiled after the incident alleged in the complaint, including any records previously deleted or archived[.]”   The plaintiff, obviously, fought that request.

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As regular Cyberinquirer readers know, on October 12, 2011, the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance published “suggested” Guidance on public companies’ disclosures of their cyber risks and exposures. I published a personal perspective on the implications of the Guidance in an October 29, 2011 post (here). Since then, our friend John Doernberg of William Gallagher Associates in Boston has written an excellent, thoughtful article which adopts a more technical approach. As many of you may know, John is a Vice President at William Gallagher and focuses on privacy, information security and risk management issues. Before becoming an insurance broker in 1995, John practiced law at leading firms in New York and Boston. The following article first appeared at John’s own site, http://blog.wgains.com/?s=Doernberg, and is being republished here with his permission. Thanks John!

Rick Bortnick

Increased corporate reliance on computer networks and electronic data has brought a corresponding increase in risks associated with breaches of their security. Such breaches have become more frequent and severe. With these Guidelines, the Division has indicated that public companies and their advisors should focus greater attention on how disclosure obligations under the federal securities laws may be affected by the potential financial and operational impact of cybersecurity breaches.

The Guidelines note that cybersecurity breaches (generically referred to as cyber incidents) can be malicious (cyber-attacks) or unintentional. The Guidelines provide something of a rogue’s gallery of cyber malice: the gaining of unauthorized access to steal or corrupt sensitive data or to disrupt operations, denial of service attacks, sophisticated electronic circumvention of network security, and social engineering techniques such as phishing to extract passwords or other information that will enable the gaining of access.

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“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” That is the Facebook mantra, as displayed on its homepage, and the opening line of a recent – and extremely thorough! – Pennsylvania trial court decision regarding the discoverability of a plaintiff’s relevant Facebook information. The court’s conclusion: a plaintiff’s Facebook information is discoverable, provided the defendant has a good faith basis for seeking the material, because there is no confidential social networking privilege under Pennsylvania law and because the Stored Communications Act only applies to internet service providers. The take-away for Facebook users: be careful what you post – it’s not as “private” as you think!

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The following article was written by my good friend, Scott Godes, a policyholder attorney with Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, D.C., and first appeared on his personal site, Corporate Insurance Blog. Cyberinquirer neither ratifies nor necessarily agrees with the opinions stated below, which are Scott’s exclusively and not those of Cyberinquirer or Dickstein Shapiro. Responsible comment will gladly be published (promptly…). Please feel free to forward them to me at your convenience.

Rick Bortnick

On October 27, 2011, CNN.com posted:

A massive cyberattack that led to a vulnerability in RSA’s SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.

The Krebs On Security blog posted:

Security experts have said that RSA wasn’t the only corporation victimized in the attack, and that dozens of other multinational companies were infiltrated using many of the same tools and Internet infrastructure.

This is in line with comments from others, including this quote from Digital Forensic Investigator News, that “2011 has quickly become the year of the cyber attack.“  Would your insurance policies cover those events?  Beyond the denial of service attacks that made news headlines, a shocking “80 percent of respondents” in a survey of “200 IT security execs” “have faced large scale denial of service attacks,” according to a ZDNet story.  These attacks and threats do not appear to be on a downward trend.  They continue to be in the news after cyberattacks allegedly took place against “U.S. government Web sites – including those of the White House and the State Department –” over the July 4, 2009 holiday weekend.  The alleged attacks were not only against government sites; they allegedly included, “according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, . . . those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, The Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.” Themore recent ZDNet survey shows that a quarter of respondents faced denial of service attacks on a weekly or even daily basis, with cyberextortion threats being made as well.

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Its not often that worlds collide or that interests converge into one amorphous epiphany. But that’s exactly what happened to me recently, when the Division of Corporate Finance (DCF) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a Disclosure Guidance identifying the types of information public companies should consider disclosing about cyber risks and events that could impact their financial statements. Now, the DCF has cautioned that the Disclosure Guidance only represents its own views and “is not a rule, regulation, or statement of the Securities and Exchange Commission.” The DCF also emphasizes right up front that ”the Commission has neither approved nor disapproved its content.” Yeah, right. YOU be an officer or director or officer of a company that does not “comply” with the DCF’s  ”recommendations.”

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Businesses that necessarily require their customers to disclose credit card and personal information, beware.   Just five days ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that claims by class action plaintiffs for ”mitigation damages” arising from alleged negligence and breach of contract were viable.  Anderson v. Hannaford Brothers Co., Nos. 10–2384, 10–2450, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 21239 (1st Cir. Oct. 20, 2011). 

In Anderson, the electronic payment processing  system of a national grocery chain, Hannaford Brothers Co., was breached by hackers in 2007. This resulted in the dissemination of as many as 4.2 million credit card and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and security codes.  Hannaford Brothers was not notified of the breach until February 27, 2008 and subsequently contained the breach on March 10, 2008.  A week later, Hannaford released a statement regarding the breach and announced that over 1,800 cases of fraud resulting from the theft already had been reported. 

Following Hannaford’s announcement, several financial institutions immediately cancelled customers’ debit and credit cards.  Some financial institutions, which refrained from immediately canceling the credit card, monitored the accounts for unusual activity, cancelling the cards, in many cases, without notifying the customer.  Customers who asked that their cards be cancelled incurred fees from issuing banks for the replacement cards. 

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On October 17, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a much-anticipated decision addressing the scope of “Advertising Injury” (“AI”) coverage for patent infringement claims.  Dish Network Corp. v. Arch Specialty Ins. Co., No. 10-1445, __ F.3d __ , 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 20955 (10th Cir. 2011), rev’g, 734 F. Supp. 2d 1173 (D. Colo. 2010).  The court, applying Colorado law, reversed a decision from the District of Colorado in which that court granted summary judgment to the insurers.  In the underlying action, the plaintiff alleged that Dish Network Corp. (“Dish”) had infringed one or more of twenty-three patents by “making, using, offering to sell, and/or selling . . . automated telephone systems, including . . . the Dish Network customer service telephone system, that allow[s] Dish’s customers to perform pay-per-view ordering and customer service functions over the telephone.”  The Tenth Circuit concluded that the record was unclear about how Dish actually used the technologies at issue, but that some of the patent-holder’s most well-known innovations involved interactive call processing. 

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I recently attended a CLE that had a panel of social media experts who were discussing the role of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace in litigation. During a lull in the question and answer session, the Facebook attorney quipped: “you know, Facebook has already given you everything that you’ve ask for…” Immediately, the audience lifted their heads from their Blackberries and newspapers and started paying attention after this cryptic remark.

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I. Overview

Canada’s privacy regime can be described as a web of legislation at both the federal and provincial/territorial level. Some commentators express concern that this web has become tangled, lacks uniformity and actually undermines the predictability and consistency that, in their view, would exist under a single (federal) privacy regime. Canada has two primary privacy statutes: the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”). The Privacy Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. P-21 (Can.), took effect on July 1, 1983, and imposed certain privacy rights obligations on approximately 250 federal government departments and agencies by limiting the use and disclosure of personal information. The Privacy Act also gives individuals the right to access and, if necessary, correct personal information held by governmental organizations subject to the Act.

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I.                    Introduction

The Internet facilitates the widespread and instantaneous flow of information across international borders.  While the advent of this method of transnational communication has truly created a “global economy,” at the same time, it has engendered problems for companies and their insurers which seek to assess risk and implement information safeguards, particularly in the face of divergent data privacy laws which vary from region to region or may not even exist in certain jurisdictions.  The Asia-Pacific region typifies such a lack of uniformity.  At the same time, the emerging economies in this rapidly growing part of the world have generated promising targets for computer hackers. 

75% of Asia-Pacific enterprises have experienced cyber attacks in the past 12 months.  Perhaps not surprisingly, a 2010 study by Symantec reported that almost half of all Asia-Pacific-based businesses (and 67% in Singapore) ranked cyber risk and information security as their top concern—more so than natural disasters, terrorism, and traditional crime combined.  Cyber attacks and data breaches are on the radar of CEOs and risk managers for good reason: the average cost for a large company to remediate a data breach in Australia increased to nearly $2 million in 2010, which is slightly up from 2009.  See Ponemon Institute/Symantec 2010 Annual Study: Australian Cost of a Data Breach (May 2011).  Notwithstanding the prevalence of such attacks, it is far more likely that a cyber security program is managed as a part of a company’s traditional business risks, with traditional coverages being contorted to cover various components of cyber risk (i.e. property loss, liability to third-parties, business interruption, etc.), rather than by way of a dedicated cyber-specific insurance program.  Still, in light of recent developments, it is virtually certain that companies soon will begin looking to transfer such risk via more efficient and targeted technology insurance forms and policies.   

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First published on September 22, 2011 at e-Discovery Law Review
Monetary sanctions, attorneys fees, and adverse inference jury instructions are the more common type of sanctions imposed on litigants for the spoliation of evidence, or not producing relevant documents. Recently, however, a court has increased the severity and impact of sanctions by applying them not only to current litigation, but also to a party’s future litigation, with the effects lingering for years to come.

The Underlying Suit

“Any competent electronic discovery effort would have located this email.” These words were written in an opinion by a United States District Judge in the Eastern District of Texas in Green v. Blitz U.S.A., Inc., No. 2:07-CV-372 (E.D. Tex., Mar. 1, 2011) Green involved a product liability suit in which the requirement of a flame arrester was in dispute. The jury returned a defense verdict, and the plaintiff collected a low settlement amount as part of a high-low settlement agreement. During discovery in a subsequent case with the same defendant and plaintiff’s counsel, counsel learned of documents that were not produced in Green. The plaintiff then filed a motion for sanctions against the defendant in Green and a motion to re-open the Green case. While the court denied the motion to re-open because the statute of limitations had expired, the court did impose sanctions for the discovery abuse.

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The protracted copyright infringement class action by freelance writers seeking compensation for pieces published without authorization in various online databases has hit another roadblock.

In re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation involves claims for infringement of works as to some of which the copyrights are registered and the vast majority are unregistered. This detail – the registered/non-registered distinction – keeps stymieing resolution of the case. In 2007, after the parties had spent years negotiating a settlement and gaining district court approval, the Second Circuit threw out the settlement, holding that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to approve the settlement because many of the claims to be resolved were based on unregistered works, and registration is a jurisdictional predicate to a copyright infringement suit. The Supreme Court finally reversed in 2010, and the parties went back to the district court and again gained approval of the settlement.

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The ABA has issued a formal ethics opinion that provides guidance to lawyers whose clients use an employer’s email account to send or receive email from counsel.  In Formal Opinion 11-459, the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility urges lawyers to warn their clients that the confidentiality of electronic communications may be jeopardized if the employer or other third party, such as a hotel or library, has the potential to access email or other correspondence hosted on the third party’s computer system.

When clients use an employer’s computer, smartphone or other telecommunications device, or an employer’s email account, the employer may be able to obtain access to the communications and take advantage of that opportunity in various contexts, such as when the client is engaged in an employment dispute or when the employer is responding to a subpoena or document discovery in litigation.

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A recent Ninth Circuit opinion on class certification demonstrates both the potentially fact-intensive nature of class action “typicality” issues and the importance of substantive law in determining whether common issues predominate over individual issues.

In Stearns v. Ticketmaster Corp., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed several decisions denying class certification to various plaintiffs challenging an allegedly deceptive internet scheme involving Ticketmaster and its one-time affiliate, Entertainment Publications, Inc. (“EPI”). At issue is a link on Ticketmaster’s website to EPI’s Entertainment Rewards program, which allows members paying a monthly fee to download printable coupons.

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The following article was published in the September 1, 2011 edition of National Underwriter’s Property Casualty 360 website. 

I.     Introduction: Insurance Products for Cyber Risks

Increasing reports of cyber intrusions, data theft and computer system malfunctions have led a rapidly-growing number of companies to purchase insurance coverage to protect themselves from technology and cyber privacy risks. Indeed, as our technology-driven economy continues to evolve and businesses become more reliant on electronic communication and data storage, they are developing a heightened awareness that an unauthorized intrusion could endanger their tangible and intangible assets (including their intellectual property) and, in many cases, their reputations and abilities to conduct business. As such, prospective policyholders are becoming more cognizant of the necessity for insurance covering such growing exposures.

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The Clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently ruled that there is a heavy presumption that prevailing parties may recover certain e-discovery costs under 28 U.S.C. § 1920. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(d)(1) allows prevailing parties to submit bills of costs for certain expenses, enumerated in 28 U.S.C. § 1920, for taxation by the Clerk against the non-prevailing parties. For example, that statute provides for the taxation of costs related to obtaining copies of transcripts and printing. More significantly, the statute provides for the taxation of “[f]ees for exemplification and the cost of making copies of any materials where the copies are necessarily obtained for use in the case.” 28 U.S.C. § 1920(4). While the term “exemplification” is undefined, federal district clerks have traditionally awarded, as exemplification and copying costs, those costs related to the production of paper documents, photographs, models, maps, blow-ups, charts, and diagrams.

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In a recent decision, a Pennsylvania trial court concluded that no privilege exists to prevent access to non-public social website information of personal injury claimants. Rather, the “paramount ideal” of pursuing truth favors liberal discovery of relevant information on social media sites.

In Zimmerman v. Weis Markets, No. CV-09-1535 (C.P. Northumberland Cty., May 19, 2011), the court rejected a personal injury plaintiff’s objections to providing non-public portions of plaintiff’s Facebook and MySpace pages, after the defendant demonstrated that the public portions of those pages included recent photographs and comments that appeared to contradict the plaintiff’s claims of physical and emotional distress. The court agreed with the rationale stated in other recent cases holding that an individual who voluntarily posts photos and information on social networking sites does so with the intention of sharing, and thus cannot later claim any expectation of privacy. The court noted that the privacy policies of Facebook and MySpace disclose that any information posted may become publicly available at the user’s own risk.

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Just as lawyers now routinely conduct due diligence on opposing parties’ social media pages. some lawyers also are monitoring postings by jurors on social media sites.

In a recent ethics opinion issued by the New York County Lawyers’ Association Committee on Professional Ethics (No. 743, 5/18/11), the committee concluded that an attorney may review jurors’ postings on publicly available social networking sites during trial. But they must not “friend” or “tweet” jurors, subscribe to their Twitter accounts, or otherwise contact them, either directly or through others.

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It has become common practice for lawyers to mine social media pages of parties and witnesses for discovery purposes. The posts and photos may show a party to be lying about the extent of his or her claimed injury or disability, or they could undermine or support other claims. Facebook and other social media sites also have become fertile ground for cutting edge ethical questions posed to state Bar ethics committees.

In a recent ethics opinion issued by the San Diego County Bar Association, a lawyer asked if it was proper to “friend” request high-ranking employees of a company the lawyer was suing on behalf of a former employee pursuing a wrongful discharge case. The lawyer believed that these high-ranking employees were dissatisfied with the company and likely had been posting negative information on their social media pages that were accessible only to those persons who had been accepted as “friends”.

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During the last decade, individuals and business have changed the way they manage their data by moving this data management offsite – otherwise known as cloud computing. This differs from the old model of information management that, more or less, mirrored the pre-computing era, meaning that an employee’s file might be kept in a cabinet in a Human Resources (“HR”) office or stored on a company’s in-house server. With cloud computing, however, that same employee file may be stored hundreds or thousands of miles away from the HR officer who needs to review it – or the IT officer tasked with preserving that data for potential litigation.

As discussed more fully in Rick Bortnick’s prior posts (here and here), cloud computing outsources data and software management, migrating it from the local to the global by providing instant access over the internet. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, cloud computing has five primary characteristics: (1) “on-demand self-service,” or the ability to call up stored data or capabilities as needed; (2) broad network access through a variety of platforms; (3) pooling resources providing “location independence”; (4) “rapid elasticity” in the distribution of computing capabilities, and (5) “measured service,” or service-appropriate control and optimization by the cloud system manager rather than the local user. It is the pooling of resources and the measured service managed by third-parties that pose the greatest risks during e-discovery.
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“A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table.”  Jean Kerr

A new company out of Dallas, DivorceApps.com, is selling applications aimed at helping people navigate the legal waters of divorce. A Texas family lawyer, Michelle May O’Neil, started the company in March of this year. Two apps currently are for sale on iphones at a cost of $9.99 USD.  Applications that are currently available online are described as follows:

(1) Cost and Prep Application: A system that 1) tracks the information that will be required either by legal counsel or the other side of the case and 2) helps the user track the costs of divorce. For example, the “Divorce Cost” portion of the application provides a scroll down list of categories that enables the user to gain a better understanding of the costs of divorce. The “Scroll Down” component of the application allows the user to scroll through the categories of information to determine the documents and information that will be applicable to their case.

(2) Estate Divider Application: The “Estate Divider” is a system that purports to allow a user to work through the overall division of their Estate. The user can:

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Within the last week, two separate intellectual property search engines were launched, each of which has the potential to significantly palliate searches for patents, trademarks and other IP. http://www.wipo.int/wipogold/en/

Specifically, on June 1, 2010, the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) introduced a free online public resource, “WIPO GOLD”  which aims to facilitate universal access to IP information. It promises “quick and easy access to a broad collection of searchable IP data and tools relating to, for example, technology, brands, domain names, designs, statistics, WIPO standards, IP classification systems and IP laws and treaties..” The site also includes a helpful translation option, should users wish to search results in a language other than the default, English. The news report can be viewed here: http://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2010/article_0018.html

Meanwhile, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) separately announced on June 2, 2010 that it has entered into a “no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form.” Under the agreement, USPTO will provide Google with “existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge.” Examples of searchable items include: patent grants and applications; trademark applications and Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) proceedings; and patent classification information. The USPTO and Google also will work together to make additional data available in the future, such as patent and trademark file histories and related data, the office said. The bulk data can be accessed at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html.

In other words, as technology moves forward, so too does the ability to research and guard intellectual property ownership and interests… at least in the Western Hemisphere and other WIPO member countries. Now, if only the remainder of the world could come together to unify owners’ capabilities to globally protect their IP rights.

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