A blog relating to Internet legal issues by Professor John Swinson, University of Queensland
The Federal Court of Australia has sided with the Patents Office and upheld a rejection of a patent application for an invention that improves the timeliness and accuracy of risk information. It was decided by the judge that the claimed invention was merely a business method or scheme for sharing and completing work place health and safety documents, and was thus unpatentable.
See Repipe Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Patents (No 3) [2021] FCA 31 https://jade.io/article/783336
Amazon was refused a patent in Australia on the grounds that the invention was not patentable subject matter.
See Amazon Technologies, Inc. [2021] APO 7 https://jade.io/article/785911
The patent application was directed to the field of computer resource virtualization. Providers, such as Amazon, manage large-scale computing resources that can be accessed on demand by their many customers via virtual machines. This allows various computing resources to be efficiently and securely shared by multiple customers.
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has recently published guidelines with examples for data breach notification under the GDPR.
The Guidelines set out common types of data breaches, such as ransomware, lost or stolen devices, social engineering attacks and the like, and set out case studies to clarify notification and remediation obligations.
The Australian Patents Office has decided that an AI machine cannot be an inventor for the purposes of granting a patent.
"Section 15(1) is inconsistent with an artificial intelligence machine being treated as an inventor, since it is not possible to identify a person who can be granted a patent."
Further, the person who operated the AI machine was also not an inventor:
"I have considered the alternative option that Dr Thaler is the inventor. It seems clear that Dr Thaler asserts that he did not devise the invention but merely acquired knowledge of the invention from the artificial intelligence machine. In the light of JMVB Dr Thaler would not be the inventor."
U.S. law firm Wilson Sonsini has a good summary of likely FTC priorities.
Potential key priorities:
Read in The Wall Street Journal: https://apple.news/AykpuzRwHQJeQWQoc3GPxyg
APRA speech by Geoff Summerhayes in late 2020 on APRA’s current focus on cybersecurity: https://www.apra.gov.au/news-and-publications/executive-board-member-geoff-summerhayes-speech-to-financial-services
Flight Centre organised a hack-a-phon in 2017, and gave those participating access to real customer data. This resulted in a breach of the Privacy Act.
Decision here: https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmr/2020/57.html
On U.S. Election Day, 3 November 2020, voters in the State of California overwhelmingly voted in favour of Proposition 24—a ballot measure that creates the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). The CPRA revises and expands the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), creating new industry requirements, consumer privacy rights and enforcement mechanisms.
The CPRA's new obligations for businesses will come into effect on 1 January 2023. At that time, the CPRA will effectively replace the CCPA. In the meantime, the CPRA requires that a new California privacy agency be established and that it adopts implementing regulations.
Listen to this podcast where I discuss how damages should be assessed in privacy and cybersecurity lawsuits. The Lawyers Weekly Show host J...