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December 3, 2003

European court allows trademark Fur Elise

According to the European Court of Justice, music can be deposited as a trademark in Europe. This is the outcome of a test-case instigated by the Dutch trademark agency Shieldmark. The founder of the company Shieldmark formally sued his father, founder of the trademark agency Kist, in order to get a European trademark on part […]

December 3, 2003

French provider wins lawsuit about website

The French provider RAS does not have to remove a website from the trade-union SUD-PTT. On 24 November a Paris court rejected the claim from 2 telemarketing companies that the website was both hurtful and defamatory. The rejection is technical; the companies should have chosen 1 single argument for their complaint. The contested remarks state […]

December 3, 2003

Statement on human rights in the information society

Early in November independent experts from all regions of the world met in Geneva to discuss about the fundamental human rights in the information society. The meeting was supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the European Commission, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Government of Mali, […]

November 22, 2003

FIPR workshop on snooping-laws in the UK

On 22 October, EDRI members FIPR and Privacy International held a public meeting to assess proposed government legislation to retain and snoop on information about the phone and Internet activity of everyone in the UK. Speakers from the government side tried to convince a sceptical audience that the plans were a necessary and proportionate response […]

November 19, 2003 · Blogs

EDRI-gram – Number 22, 19 November 2003

November 19, 2003

Vote on IPR enforcement delayed again

The vote on the Draft Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, originally foreseen for the meeting of the Judicial Affairs Committee of the European Parliament last Monday, has been postponed again. The Rapporteur, Janelly Fourtou (Conservative, France) had to give in to a request for delay supported by a majority composed of Social […]

November 19, 2003

Commission holds Microsoft antitrust hearing

The European Commission has concluded a three-day hearing against Microsoft. Several competing companies made presentations to the Commission during the hearing. RealNetworks and Sun Microsystems, as well as the Computer and Communications Industry Association have accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the market. The hearing, which took place on 12, 13 and 14 […]

November 19, 2003

UK House of Lords approves snoopers' charter

On 13 November, the UK House of Lords unexpectedly approved a very controversial ‘Snoopers’ Charter’. The three pieces of secondary legislation approve a ‘voluntary’ data retention scheme, and give a long list of government agencies self-authorised access to phone and Internet logs. Throughout the debate it appeared that the government’s proposals to place every UK […]

November 19, 2003

EU court of justices rules against personal data on website

Pointing to different persons on a website and making them recognisable by naming them or in any other manner is an act of processing of personal data and must therefore be dealt with under EU Directive 95/46/EC. That’s the substance of a recent judgement of the European Court of Justice (reference number C-101/01; case Bodil […]

November 19, 2003

Big brother awards presented in Hungary

On 6 November the Hungarian Big Brother Awards were presented to the police office of Budapest, to the small company Szabo Gardentechnics and to the under-secretary of the ministry of internal affairs. With the Big Brother Awards governments, companies and people are named and shamed for large scale privacy invasions. The Budapest police earned the […]

November 19, 2003

RFID-blocker wins German idea-contest

The German civil rights and privacy-organisation FoeBuD is the winner of an idea-contest for a national awareness campaign about the infringement of civil liberties through new technologies. With the price of 15.000 Euro, FoeBuD wants to develop a ‘Dataprivatizer’, a tool to detect RFID’s, minuscule spy-chips that are increasingly built into consumer goods. RFID (Radio […]

November 19, 2003

French study warns against spam via Plaxo

The ad-hoc French organisation ‘halte au spam’ (stop spam) organised a successful forum on spam in Paris on 3 November. The forum was attended by more than 200 people, including 25 journalists. During the forum an interesting new study was presented about the privacy-dangers of social internet-tools like Plaxo. Plaxo’s service invites you to upload […]