Atlanteknology - Technology News for Atlantic Canada

Clash of the Titans - IBM v. Amazon

IBM as plaintiff in a patent lawsuit? Strange, infrequent, but true. Yesterday IBM sued Amazon for infringing five patents IBM owns, all relating to conducting business online.

This will be an interesting case to watch. Internet based business method patents are controversial, and several of IBM's patents are, to say the least weak. Also, IBM itself has weighed in on the issue in favour of restricting/curbing internet based business method patents which have weak technology behind them.

If this case even sees the light of day (in the sense that it gets before a judge and there is a written decision) it will hopefully help clarify/guide businesses which rely on or are hampered by certain business method patents. I think the probably this will go "all the way" is relatively good considering that IBM has obtained licenses for the use of these patents from numerous companies and has been trying to crack Amazon for 4 years. It seems they  have a strong interest in this one.

Why not. IBM makes over 1 billion dollars a year in patent license fees. Imagine - the company could shut itself down and could still make enormous sums (until the patents run out of course). Robert Kiyosaki should use this as a case study in a book (if he has not done so already).

IE...What's that?

You might find this hard to believe but I can count the number of hours I have spent using IE (Internet Explorer) on one hand. Exclusively for those services which require it.

In the early days I used Netscape - it was always preferable to IE for various reasons, none the least of which was the ability to block cookies.

After that, I moved to Mozilla and now Firefox. I have a faithful user for many years now and it is, without question, a superior product to IE. I was keenly interested in the new version of IE, version 7, and what would happen to Firefox.

I need not have feared. Firefox 2 is out and the reviews I have read are glowing. To anyone who wants a secure and fun internet experience I recommend Firefox. To those who want to tweak their browser to the nth degree - Firefox should be your first stop.

Enjoy. Download here.

Hants County Nova Scotia - spotlight (of sorts)

Hants County in Nova Scotia has a number of interesting life sciences/biotech companies. These include BioMedica Diagnostics Inc. and Sepracor Canada Ltd.  The following ads appeared in a recent issue of Nova Scotia Open to the  World magazine:

Also located in Hants County are:

- BioSource Solutions Inc., of Elmsdale, a North American developer and manufacturer of biodegradable, biological consumer cleaning products. BioSource is a publicly traded company with over 60 products in the market.

- Bio-Tech Orthotic Design Inc., also of Elmsdale, designs and manufacturers custom orthotics from its store-front in the East Hants Industrial Park.

- NovaBioMed Inc., of Windsor (in West Hants), is a biopharmaceutical firm engaged in the production of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) Paclitaxel and Newer taxanes as anticancer agents, and in the development of novel small molecule anti-cancer and anti-infective agents.

Proof that yo don not have to live in [insert name of large city] to find/work for/start technology based companies.

PEI takes bold step

Last Thursday the provincial government in Prince Edward Island announced that bioscience companies with more than 10 employees and a $750,000 annual payroll will now be eligible to receive a full rebate on their provincial corporate income taxes for up to 10 years.

This is a bold step and is one which the provincial governments in the other Atlantic provinces should take heed of and emulate or improve on.

Good for PEI and its budding biosciences industry. Unfortunate for bioscience companies in the other provinces (unless they move - which is, I am sure, what the PEI government is hoping).

Worker loyalty - or not so much

The traditional (and stereotypical) view of Japanese workers is of loyal men and women, eager to please the paternal corporation in exchange for eternal job security.

A recent series of cases brings home a point I and probably many other lawyers make to clients and businesses with respect to the relationship between the company and the employee and the ideas those employees have while in the employ of the company.

The case are from Japan and this article set it out nicely. An enterprising chap, working for Hitachi, developed the technology to read CD's and DVD's in the early 1970's. He retired from Hitachi in 1996 and asked for about 2 million in compensation in 2004. Predictably Hitachi declined.

A few days ago the fellow was awarded the equivalent of 1.3 million in compensation. I have no knowledge at all about the laws of Japan, whether employment laws or IP laws but I suspect that there are going to be people in Japan examining the rights of employees in their ideas.

An employment contract should set such rights out explicitly in clear language. No contract? Here is hoping you never run into an issue - incidentally the issue need not be an employee who comes out of the woodwork to claims rights to something, it could be a lender of some sort doing due diligence in preparation for a round of financing asking for copies of the non-existent contracts, or a possible purchaser of IP asking for the same thing.

Can't catch me! Or can you?

I once read about a very nasty case where a Canadian couple purchased a property in Florida. The deal went bad and the Canadian couple walked away from it all thinking, wrongly, that they could not be touched here in Canada. The original claim was for some relatively small amount (I think it was around $50,000). The plaintiff sued the Canadian couple in Florida and obtained their equivalent of default judgment (where the defendant does not show up/file a defence). The plaintiff then used reciprocal enforcement rules to have the default judgment registered here in Canada (so they could go after property owned by the couple here in Canada). By the time all was said and done the judgment amount was over $500,000. The moral of the story is - do not avoid foreign court actions.

I just read about a similar case which involves web based businesses. The story goes like this - Click Enterprises Inc. is a Canadian company which operates various websites which provided assistance in the downloading of  copyrighted films (in the illegal sort of way). Now unfortunately for Click, some of the downloading occurred in the United States and Click was paid through Internet payment service providers located in the United States.

Even more unfortunate for Click was the fact that some of these movies were Disney movies. Ouch. Disney was displeased and sued Click in New York for damages for copyright infringement, unfair competition. Disney obtained default judgment against Click. (Sound familiar yet?)

Disney then applied to a court in Ontario for an order recognising and enforcing the New York judgment. The order was granted.

If you operate in one jurisdiction and someone sues you in another jurisdiction, do not assume you are immune. Ignore the foreign lawsuit at your peril.