1.0 NEW MEDIA LEGAL NEWS + COMMENTARY
1.1 LEGAL NEWS IN BRIEF
West country estate agents Day & Peirce were fined £1000 by Bath magistrates after Bath trading standards officers successfully prosecuted them for displaying misleading photographs of a property in set of particulars published on the agency's web site.
Linda Tripp, one of the more controversial characters in the whole Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton saga, has launched a "defense fund" web site to raise financial support to help her fight the various legal battles that have arisen from her original decision to tape and leak Monica's confessions about Bill, the cigar and the stains on that dress. Tripp is currently suing both the White House and the Pentagon for invasion of privacy, while she herself faces criminal charges for alleged wire-tapping offences.
http://www.lindatripp.com
Romania, which currently has no laws against Internet crime, has been embarrassed by hackers who recently tapped into the Romanian government finance ministry's web site and not only altered the official exchange rate for the Leu (the national currency) but also amended other information published on the site so it appeared that the country had introduced a new tax on stupidity.
The international publishing group Reed Elsevier has filed a lawsuit in New Jersey against Microsoft and its newly listed Expedia Internet travel company for an alleged breach of contract involving Reed's Cahners Travel Group unit. Reed's lawyers Millstein Felder & Steiner claim that under a contract agreed in 1998, Cahners was granted exclusive rights with respect to providing hotel directory advertising sales for the Expedia web site.
The US House of Representative has passed a Bill making digital signatures legally binding for business and consumer contracts concluded over the Internet.
The US Securities & Exchange Commission has granted two new Internet start-up companies - DoctorSurf.com and YouNetwork - permission to give away SEC-registered shares to surfers signing up to receive their services. This is the first time the SEC has authorised a free-share scheme for registered shares. Previous schemes, which the SEC has tried to curb, have involved largely valueless unregistered shares.
Seattle law firm Garvey Schubert & Barer has successfully acted for the Williams tennis-playing sisters Serena and Venus after it was discovered that two other lawyers had registered cyber-squatting domain names. Southern California attorney Dale Young had registered "serenawilliams.com" to promote his views on sexism and racism, as well as to advertise his law practice. While Minnesota lawyer Blessing Rugara was offering to sell the domain name "venuswilliams.com" to Williams for US$ 20,000. Both cases were settled out of court with the defendants transferring the domain names to the tennis stars at no cost.
US federal authorities have handed down criminal indictments against two individuals believed to be auctioning pirate Adobe software on eBay auction site. Ralph and Elizabeth Sumlin of West Virginia were named in one-count indictments alleging they willfully infringed
Adobe copyrights. If convicted both face a maximum exposure of five years imprisonment and a fine of US$ 250,000. Adobe corporate counsel Batur Oktay says the company has found that "the vast majority" of Adobe software sold on auction sites is pirated.
US web auctions group eBay has threatened AuctionWatch.com with legal action, citing several objections including alleged violation of eBay's intellectual property rights, if it continues to search the eBay site. AuctionWatch.com, which is being represented by the Silicon Valley offices of Perkins Coie, runs a service that allows Internet users to search for products across a range of auction sites.
In the latest example of Internet companies turning to patent law to protect their position in the market, web advertising specialist DoubleClick has filed a suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia alleging that the advertisement serving and tracking software used by one of its commercial rivals, L90 Inc, infringes DoubleClick patents.
1.2 RESPONSIBILITY FOR WEB SITE CONTENT - NEW DEVELOPMENTS
In the latest developments in the Godfrey -v- Demon Internet case, Demon has decided against appealing against Mr Justice Morland's preliminary ruling that an ISP may be responsible for the defamatory material posted on its web site. However Demon has now successfully applied to amend its defence to include, in mitigation, particulars of Godfrey's conduct.
These include allegation that Godfrey is a regular newsgroup user who has in the past posted deliberately "provocative, offensive, obnoxious and frequently puerile comments" with a view to provoking others to trade insults which he then claims are defamatory and uses as the basis for vexatious libel actions. The Demon case is at least his eighth libel action. The full case is expected to be heard next April.
Meanwhile James Hulbert of Hull has written to the European Court of Human Rights to complain that his right to free expression has been infringed, after his ISP Kingston Internet Webmaster closed down his web site. The site, which contained material criticising a number of judges involving in his long-running legal battle for compensation, arising from an earlier claim for false imprisonment, was closed after lawyers for the Lord Chancellor's Department wrote a letter to Kingston and "brought to their attention" the site's content. Kingston said Mr Hulbert had breached its terms and conditions of use, which include banning a site's use for "obscene, menacing, threatening, offensive, abusive, indecent or defamatory" material.
And in the United States Philadelphia lawyers Hecker Brown Sherry & Johnson, acting for Bob Dylan and Sony Records, last month had to resort of contempt of court proceedings to get James Damiano to remove the content of his web site. The proceedings arose when it was spotted that Damiano had posted onto his web site the full text of discovery material arising from his unsuccessful court action in 1996 when he claimed that Bob Dylan had stolen his song lyrics. At that time the documents were made the subject of a confidentiality order as it was feared that Damiano would try to commercially exploit his allegations against Dylan.
1.3 MEDIATOR APPOINTED IN MICROSOFT CASE
In a surprise development in the Microsoft anti-trust case, on Friday 19th November US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appointed Richard Posner, a widely respected chief judge for the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, to act as a mediator to oversee "voluntary" settlement talks between the government and Microsoft.
Mark Murray, a spokesman for Microsoft, described the appointment as "potentially a very positive step toward resolving the case without the need for more litigation. We look forward to working with Judge Posner to try and reach a fair and reasonable resolution of the case." While US Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona said Judge Posner "is a highly respected jurist. We look forward to meeting with him to discuss ways to address the serious competitive problems identified in the court's findings of fact. The court has always been willing to seek a settlement that would promote competition, innovation and consumer choice."
On November 5th Judge Jackson issued his finding of fact that Microsoft had a monopoly power over much of the computer industry through its Windows operating-system software. He also found the company had repeatedly used its power to hurt competitors and stifle innovation in ways that hurt consumers. The ruling left little doubt that he would find against Microsoft in the next phase of the case. If no settlement is forthcoming, Judge Jackson is expected to issue a final ruling as early as February. If the judge rules against Microsoft, as is widely expected, there will then be further hearings to determine what remedies should be imposed. Microsoft has also warned that it is considering an appeal against the judge's findings of fact.
1.4 COMMENTARY - GOVERNMENT UNVEILS NEXT GENERATION E-COMMUNICATIONS BILL
Immediately following its announcement in the Queen's speech on 18th November, details were published of the British Government's plans to introduce the latest incarnation of the Electronic Communications Bill.
Those of you who have been following the Bill's progress will find little that is new. Any concerns that you may have had that the government would amend the Bill to take account of the many suggestions and recommendations made by industry representatives can similarly be put aside. The substance of the Bill remains unchanged.
The only significant amendment is the removal of the controversial Part 3 - Investigation of Protected Electronic Data. This gave the police wide powers in connection with the investigation of electronic data. It received strong criticism and many expressed concerns that its inclusion in the original Electronic Communications Bill could slow the Bill's progress through Parliament. These provisions will now appear separately in a new Interception of Communications Bill, which was also announced in the Queen's Speech.
The second key concern expressed by many of those who responded to the government's consultation process was the extent to which powers had been reserved to the Secretary of State to be dealt with by secondary legislation. In the Summary of Responses to 'Promoting Electronic Commerce' it is recognised that the Secretary of State's powers are "potentially incompatible with the desired 'light touch approach' to regulation in this area."
There have been suggestions that key escrow may be re-introduced by the back door although the clear statement in Clause 13 of the Bill makes this prospect unlikely. However until the government has convinced industry that it has a clear understanding of the issues
involved, one must be cautious in welcoming these broad measures.
Patricia Hewitt has boldly announced that the government's goal is to "make the UK the best - and the safest - place in the world to do e-commerce." In her view the government's current legislative agenda will achieve these goals. I suggest you may care to form your own opinion.
Commentary by Stuart Nuttall, Internet & Technology Law Group, Jeffrey Green Russell
1.5 COMPUSERVE CONVICTION OVERTURNED
After listening to appeals for acquittal from both the defence and the prosecution, the Munich District Court last week overturned the May 1998 conviction of Felix Somm, the former head of CompuServe in Germany, for failing to block access to child pornography sites on the Internet. The appeal court accepted that the original verdict by a Munich Administrative Court was flawed because, as the offending material had originated in the United States and was not stored on CompuServe's network, there was no way in which Herr Somm could have blocked access to the offending sites in Germany.
1.6 TIL WEB DO US PART
Mike Carson has become the first person in Britain to obtain a divorce using the Internet. It cost him a total of £59.99 (compared with an average of £400 using a High Street solicitor) to download a D-I-Y undefended divorce kit from the Freeserve Desktop Lawyer web site. Carson will be speaking at the E-commerce in the legal marketplace event in February.
Latest statistics from Epoch, the company behind Desktop Lawyer, reveal that during the 10 week period following the launch of the divorce kit in July, over six percent of the 30,000 divorce petitions filed in the UK during that period were online in origin. The majority of users were in their thirties - 43 percent - although there were also a plucky three percent of pensioners who decided to take the digital divorce plunge. And, men (78 percent) far outnumbered women using the kit to file for divorce.
1.7 WEB CREDITED WITH DIET PILL VICTORY
US lawyers acting for plaintiffs in the class action brought against American Home Products over alleged side effects of the diet pills Redux and Pondimin (known as "fen-phen") say their use of the Internet as a virtual forum undoubtedly contributed to last month's decision by the defence to settle out of court for US$ 3.75 billion. Described in the Wall Street Journal as America's "first big cybersuit", lawyers used the web to advertise for clients and swap intelligence until, in the words of attorney Don Bowen: "we knew the documents better than the lawyers for AHP".
http://www.leflaw.net/fenphen
1.8 PROBLEMS WITH PRIVACY
In what could be the first test of the recently amended Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, which now provides a private cause of action by computer users against the unauthorised accessing of personal data, three consumers have filed a class action suit in the US District Court in Philadelphia against RealNetworks, claiming their privacy was invaded by software from an Internet music site that secretly gathered information about their listening habits
The suit - Starrett -v- RealNetworks - follows a public apology by RealNetworks earlier this month when it was reported that its software, RealJukeBox, was designed to collect details about the preferences of those who downloaded music from it and to send that data back to the company. RealNetworks is now distributing a "patch" for to block the tracking technology.
Sony Music has apologised to subscribers of its InfoBeat online newsletter after it was revealed that it had been forwarding their e-mail addresses to advertisers. Not only were the addresses of readers who has specifically requested no advertising being passed on but advertisers were also forwarded readers' personal data, such as date of birth. Sony blamed the problem on software "flaws" it inherited when it acquired the US newsletter earlier this year and says the advertising practices complained of have all now been discontinued.
1.9 JERSEY'S LAWS GO ONLINE IN NEW PILOT
The Channel Island of Jersey's Legal Information Board has launched a pilot project to test the value of making all its legal information freely available on the Internet. At present it just covers the period late 1997-to-date and contains unreported judgments (available to registered users only), legislation enacted, regulations, practice directions, draft legislation and certain projects before the States (the island's government). However work is already underway to provide information prior to 1997 so that the whole legislative database is available and will, in due course, provide consolidated legislation with full hypertext linking. Access is free and the Board welcomes all comments on style, scope and substance.
COMMENT - Over the last couple of years there has been growing speculation about the merits of making "all the laws of the land"" freely accessible to the general public via the Internet, as well as the impact this could have on the traditional publishers of legal information. Given that Richard Susskind, the author of many of the proposals for making the law more accessible in the British government's CIVIL.JUSTICE consultation paper, is also involved with the Jersey pilot, the project must be viewed as not only an interesting development in the Channel Islands but also as a potential test-bed for the rest of the UK.
http://www.jerseyinfo.co.uk
2.0 NEW MEDIA LAWYERS, DEALS + INDUSTRY NEWS
2.1 PROFESSIONAL NEWS IN BRIEF
Kaltons in north London has established a team dedicated to Internet and e-commerce law. One of its clients is the new British Web Design & Marketing Association and the firm will be providing a legal advice service for BWDMA members when the association's own web site goes live in January 2000.
http://www.kaltons.co.uk
Barry Fishley has been made a partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse with responsibility for IT and online law.
Berwin Leighton corporate partner Quentin Solt has been invited to sit on the panel of the First Tuesday networking club for venture capitalists and would-be Internet entrepreneurs. Solt says that in appropriate circumstances the firm may provide advice in exchange for equity.
Associate Richard Eaton has left Watson Farley & Williams to become a partner in the London offices of Brobeck Hale & Dorr.
Instead of a conventional office, New York e-commerce specialist Stroock & Stroock & Lavan has opened what it describes as an informal "lounge" for clients and lawyers in Silicon Valley.
2.2 LATEST DEALS
Simmons & Simmons acted for HFC Bank in connection with its launch of the Marbles credit card for conventional and online use. The card is also linked to the Dixons' Internet subsidiary Freeserve, who were advised by Olswang and their own inhouse lawyers.
Corporate partner Andrew Drake of Boodle Hatfield advised the private Internet software company Computasoft e-Commerce on its joint venture with Computacenter to create the Biomni business-to-business e-commerce service.
The World Internet Forum, which will be holding its first major conference next September, has appointed London law firm Biddle to handle all its legal and compliance activities.
2.3 LIFELINE FOR LINK ?
Although legal publisher Legalease is still set to close its LINK online forum and e-mail service at the end of this month, there is a growing chance that an alternative service provider will be able to offer a comparable system for LINK enthusiasts still wanting to access the same type of facilities. Called Phoenix, the service is currently undergoing beta testing with a small core of users, with a view to going fully live during December.
The company behind Phoenix is also negotiating with Legalease on a number of issues including the transfer of LINK subscribers to the new service. Because Phoenix use the same SoftArc FirstClass software as LINK, the new service will have the same look and feel as the old service. There will also be a daily news service for subscribers. Phoenix will run on Version 5.5, the latest release of the FirstClass software, which is fully Y2K compliant and supports Windows 3x, 95, NT, 98 and Macintosh users. The subscription to Phoenix is expected to be £50 per year.
2.4 NEW LEGAL PORTALS & INFORMATION SERVICES
Legal publisher Waterlow Professional says it hopes its new ConnectingLegal site will become the "first stop on the Internet" for the UK legal world, thanks to a collection of services including news stories from the main legal weekly magazines, an online book selection and ordering service from Hammicks, access to Central Law Training's database of CPD courses, recruitment advertising from Legal Week and a searchable series of professional directories, including Waterlow's own range. Users can also take advantage of free Internet access via the ConnectingBusiness free ISP service run by Waterlow's parent company Wilmington.
http://www.connectinglegal.com
This week sees stock market information specialists Hemmington Scott launch Hemscott Legal, a new web site aimed at primarily larger commercial practices. Features include a legal recruitment service, an online bulletin board/discussion forum and a database of deal and dispute particulars intended to help inhouse lawyers research law firms' areas of expertise. The Hemscott Legal operation is headed by Pauline Lyle Smith, one of the founders of the DX service and a past editor of the Chambers legal directory. Lyle Smith says "an aggressive expansion programme is planned for the new portal over the next few months" as she aims to make it "the principal international platform bringing clients and law firms together."
http://www.hemscottlegal.com
The American Lawyer Media group and US legal web portal LAW.COM have launched LegalTimes.com, a new online daily news service reporting on the latest legal stories in Washington DC, including developments in Congress, the US Supreme Court, the Justice Department and key regulatory agencies.
http://www.legaltimes.com
The Datanet Group has launched Complinet, a new online news and information service for the compliance industry. The service's editorial board includes lawyers from Clifford Chance, Anheim Tite & Lewis and KPMG's Klegal.
http://www.complinet.com
The insurance data provider WIRE has launched WIRE Intelligent Quantum, a web-based database of personal injury claims, court rulings and negotiated settlements intended to make it easier for insurers to assess quantum of damages.
http://www.wire.co.uk
2.5 NEW BOOKS & ONLINE PUBLICATIONS
Butterworths in the UK has launched a new online service for intellectual property lawyers. Called "IP & Technology Cases", it is the latest online product to join the Butterworths Direct service and covers patents, design rights, trademark, copyright, passing off, media, technology and entertainment law. The consulting editor is Michael Silverleaf QC and case commentaries are by members of 11 South Square. Butterworths will also be publishing a monthly printed version of the service.
The Australian legal publishing and services group Excata has just launched a new web site intended to provide a "one-stop shop" for news and information for the Australia, New Zealand and Asia-Pacific legal markets. The site provides links to both European and Pacific rim legal publishers, news reports on the latest Australian commercial law deals and access to online services and research facilities of interest to Australian lawyers. This includes links to the new LegalMart system, which offers Australian law firms the opportunity to join a franchise scheme for selling legal services, including downloadable documents, directly over the web - in effect the Australian equivalent of Freeserve LegalDesktop service.
http://www.excata.com.au
http://www.legalmart.com.au
Butterworths has also published the second edition of Nick Holmes and Delia Venables' useful book "Researching the Legal Web" (ISBN: 0 406 92180 6), price £45. Sadly the URLs are not printed for the majority of the web sites mentioned in the book, nor do the publishers supply them on an accompanying disk.
2.6 GET AHEAD - GET A NAME
Internet names vendor Web Names is currently offering a range of pre-registered domain names for law firm web sites. These include uksolicitor.com, citylawfirm.co.uk and cybersolicitor.com. The company suggests the domains can be used either as a name for a new service or to help direct more traffic to a firm's existing web site.
http://www.webnames4sale.co.uk
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