Amended Privacy Law in Australia

AUSTRALIAN PRIVACY AMENDMENT BILL. The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 has now passed both houses of Parliament, and will be presented to the Governor General for assent.  The amendment adds substantial penalties  for serious or repeated breaches of the Australian Privacy Act.

Domain Name Disputes

With the recent introduction of "direct registration" in the Australian domain name space (e.g. anyone with a connection to Australia can register domain names such as lawprofessor.au or telstra.au), I predict that there will be a sudden uptick of auDRP disputes.  Even though .au did not launch until October 2022, as at today, three auDRP complaints have already been lodged: cointre.au, rockypoint.au and magnaflow.au.  

Some law firms are specialising in this area, such as Cooper Mills.

Law Firm Phishing

A good article about how a NY law firm (Debevoise) attacked a phishing website but attacking the domain name.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/debevoise-fries-phishers-cyberpiracy-case-take-heed-law-firms-2022-08-31/

Some WIPO decisions regarding Australian law firms:

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2017/d2017-1721.html

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2015-1452

Google not a publisher of newspaper article that is indexed in search engine results

Google LLC v Defteros [2022] HCA 27, decided 17 August 2022 by High Court of Australia.

 

The High Court decided that for the purposes of defamation law, Google is not a publisher of a newspaper article when providing a link to the article in search engine results and a short summary of the article.

 

"The question which arises here is whether providing search results which, in response to an enquiry, direct the attention of a person to the webpage of another and assist them in accessing it amounts to an act of participation in the communication of defamatory matter. ...

 

It is not suggested that [Google] itself communicated the defamatory matter in the Underworld article, which appeared on The Age's website. Unlike the defendants in the innocent dissemination cases, [Google] did not do so by selling, distributing or otherwise disseminating the matter complained of. ...

 

The question of whether the appellant could be said to participate comes down to the assistance provided by the hyperlink to move to another webpage. This is not a strong basis for liability and it finds no support in existing authority in Australia or recent cases elsewhere." 

Facebook Data Leak

An interesting detailed article about the Facebook data leak:

https://www.digitalshadows.com/blog-and-research/the-facebook-data-leak-explained/

The leak took place in 2019.

"Initially, attackers offered the data at quite a steep price. As the data began circulating in open and gated cybercriminal forums in 2020, a listing on Russian-speaking cybercriminal forum XSS in August 2020 advertised the sale of this data for “only” USD 25,000 (see Figure 2). Listings were identified across several other forums, such as Raidforums. The sheer size of the data leakage and the wide geography it covered (106 countries) made the data a gold mine for cybercriminals. Therefore, these listings often caught the interest of multiple threat actors."

Proposed Digital Services Act

An Australian senator proposes a Digital Services Act relating to blockchain technology.

https://www.andrewbragg.com/post/address-at-blockchain-week-2022

NY NFT Trademark Lawsuit by Hemmes regarding Birkin bag NFT art

A decision from Judge Rakoff from the SDNY regarding a motion to dismiss in a case involving NFTs.  See https://images.law.com/contrib/content/uploads/documents/389/164932/Hermes-v.-Rotschild.Rakoff-order-on-MTD-1.pdf

 The court denied the motion to dismiss.

Mr Rotschild, the defendant, created a digital image of the Hermes Birkin bag, with a baby fetus inside the bag.  It sold for $23,500.  He also created images of faux fur Birkin bags, and 100 numbered NFTs that sold for about the price of a real world Birkin bag.

Hemmes sued Rotschild for trademark infringement.  Rotschild says the NFTs are art that have First Amendment protection.  He also said that his use of MetaBirkin for the title of his art had First Amendment protection.

The court said that there were too many factual issues to determine (e.g. is the NFT art?) to dismiss the case against Rotschild without having a trial.

The Top Ten Developments in US Patent Law over the past 50 years

Professor Don Chisum is a leader in U.S. patent law.  He has recently written this excellent article:

Fifty Years of Patent Law: The Top Ten Developments

https://chisum-patent-academy.com/wp-content/uploads/ChisumTop10in50Article6July2022.pdf

Well worth reading if you are interested in patent law and the business of patents.

Lawsuit in Victoria against Google over false reviews for artifical plant company

The Age newspaper has this story regarding false reviews of an artificial patents business, that alleged were posted when the business had a dispute with a moving company.

See https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/david-and-georgina-had-a-dispute-with-their-removalists-four-years-later-they-ve-taken-google-to-court-20220707-p5azub.html

Interestingly, they are suing Google.

Similar story to the Titan Sheds dispute that ended up in the Federal Court in Brisbane a few years back.  There are about 3 court decisions.  One involved trying to get evidence from Google, but because Google was offshore, this was difficult.  See Note

OSC enforcement against crypto asset trading platforms

The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) announced this month the outcome of two successful enforcement actions against non-compliant crypto asset trading platforms.

ACCC to Review Facebook, Google and other large digital platforms

The ACCC is seeking views from consumers, businesses and other parties on options for legislative reform to address concerns about the dominance of digital platforms.

A discussion paper, released today, outlines options for addressing harms to competition, consumers, and business users in a range of areas dominated by large digital platforms, including social media, search, app marketplaces, general online retail marketplaces and ad tech.

Read more