Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) introduced the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2001 (S. 1164) in the Senate. The bill, if passed, would require the Federal Communications Commission to pass rules to ...protect the privacy of customers of location-based services or applications. Location-based services include applications installed in cellular phones and automobiles that allow a service provider to detect and track the geographic location of its customer and to provide information and services, such as driving directions, based on its customer's location.
On September 5, 2001, the House of Representatives approved two bills (H.R. 1866 and H.R. 1886) aimed at encouraging use of the patent reexamination process. H.R. 1866 is intended to overturn a 1997 ...Federal Circuit decision that strictly interpreted the standard for initiating a reexamination, and H.R. 1886 provides a right of appeal to the Federal Circuit for a third-party requester in an inter-partes reexamination.
On August 2, 2001, Representatives Frederick C. Boucher (D-VA) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) introduced the Music Online Competition Act to the House of Representatives. The legislation seeks to increase ...competition among online music distributors by requiring dominant online music services to provide nondiscriminatory licensing terms to smaller Internet music providers. The proposed legislation also seeks to simplify the procedure for transmitting royalty payments for online services. The bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
A bill is being revived that would make patents for business method inventions more difficult to obtain. Critics allege that business method patents are obvious and pose a serious threat to the ...growth of electronic commerce.
The Copyright Office is adopting final regulations for filing royalty claims collected under the cable statutory license and the satellite statutory license. Under the statutory licenses, copyright ...owners are entitled to collect royalties for works that a cable system or satellite carrier retransmits.
On February 5, 2001, the US Patent and Trademark Office final rule implementing inter partes reexamination of patents became effective. The final rule permits optional inter partes patent ...reexamination by third-party requesters and thereby implements certain provisions of the American Investors Protection Act of 1999.
On March 27, 2001, Conrad Burns, Joseph Lieberman, and Ron Wyden introduced the CAN SPAM Act in the Senate. This bill makes it a misdemeanor to send commercial email messages after a person requests ...to be removed form a seller's email distribution list and to transmit email messages containing incorrect return addresses.
Several recent bills introduced in the House and Senate seek to extend the federal moratorium on taxation of Internet purchases until 2006, prohibiting multiple and discriminatory taxes on electronic ...commerce and all taxes on Internet access. Currently, retailers must tax online purchases from customers only where the retailer has a physical presences. Until lawmakers sort out solutions to the complex issues surrounding Internet taxation, consumers are likely to benefit from an extended moratorium on new taxes and the continued ability to purchase goods online virtually tax-free.
The Register of Copyrights at the US Office of Copyrights, established a position supporting that of freelance authors in a case pending before the Supreme Court, New York Times Co. v. Tasini. In ...Tasini, 6 freelance authors brought a copyright infringement suit against the newspaper and magazine publishers that regulary create collective works written by freelance authors.
The 1999 American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) amended Title 35 of the US Code to provide for a request for continued examination (RCE) practice. In view of the redundant nature of the RCE and ...pre-existing continued prosecution application (CPA) practices, the USPTO has proposed amending its procedural rules to eliminate the CPA practice as it applies to utility and plant patent applications.
