Atlanteknology - Technology News for Atlantic Canada

Most of Your Workers Take Things… It’s True!

Here is an interesting article from Business Week online titled “Heading Off Trade Secret Theft”. The article notes a recent study which showed that 58% of office workers in the USA have taken office supplies for their personal use. However, along with such items as staplers and paperclips, employees admitted to stealing things that could be truly valuable – including classified information.

Companies must realize that their assets include non-tangible assets such as confidential information – customer databases and manufacturing processes included. Sometimes called “trade secrets”, the loss of such data can sometimes prove disastrous for business. Imagine if Coca Cola inadvertently disclosed the recipe for Coke.

While companies have the ability to sue current and former employees who disclose such information as a breach of fiduciary duty, it is also useful to have a written agreement between an employer and an employee. It is also useful for companies to have written policies that clearly describe the behaviour a company expects from an employee and their obligations to protect critical business information.

Nova Scotia - State of the Union

I attended the Premier's first "State of the Union" address today. I am sure the local papers will fully describe the contents of the speech tomorrow.

Two things struck me. The first was the Premier's commitment to Nova Scotians that all people in the province will have broadband internet access by 2009. A noble goal indeed and one that is quite achievable. I have blogged before about the use of power lines to deliver internet access and this approach would do the trick nicely. The technology has existed for some time and is now in use in several jurisdictions - for purposes exactly like this. Let us hope that this initiative succeeds. it would certainly be good for both the residents of the Province and businesses operating in rural areas.

Perhaps we will also see an initiative to create a broad wi-fi zone in the city of Halifax. Now that would be interesting.

Also relevant in the speech was a question from the floor concerning immigration. The Premier sidestepped the question which was - what is the Province going to do to improve the recognition of foreign credentials by professional bodies in Nova Scotia. For example, a doctor comes to this Province with 30 years experience as an orthopaedic surgeon and it told to go back to medical school. I read a while back that Quebec is solving the problem by passing legislation requiring professional bodies to put systems in place to recognise foreign credentials in a fair and reasonable manner by a certain date.

This is a fantastic idea in my view. Without prompting, professional bodies will not act, ever. It is not in their best interests to do so. However, it is certainly in the best interests of the residents of the Atlantic Provinces and of businesses - the former will receive the benefit of additional professionals (whether doctors or otherwise) and the latter will be able to tap into a pool of additional skilled labour as more professionals immigrate to the Atlantic Provinces.

To collect tax or not.....that is the question

In Dawn’s Place Ltd. v. Canada, a brand new case out of the Federal Court of Appeal, the court considered the issue of whether the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was payable when non-residents of Canada paid for subscriptions to an internet website operated by a Canadian company which provides its subscribers with adult oriented images.

The central issue in the case was whether access to an internet website operated by a Canadian company was a zero-rated supply (pursuant to the Excise Tax Act) to a non-resident recipient (who is not a GST registrant), because the recipient has the right to download and retain a copy of copyrighted material accessed on the website.

Put simply, was Canada Revenue Agency entitled to a cut?

The Federal Court of Appeal, overturning the decision the Federal Court, held it was.

The transaction was not one which could be characterized as a copyright license – ie. you pay to have the right to retain copyrighted images, but a transaction where the content provider granted access to the website for a fee. The downloading of the data (the images) was incidental to access of the website.

The service provided – access to a website – was a service which required the collection of GST.

GST/HST can be a tricky subject area and you should definitely get good advise before making decisions to collect or otherwise. If you should have been collecting GST and do not, I suspect that Canada Revenue Agency could knock at your door and ask for a cheque. Not a pleasant surprise. I have no idea what would happen if you collected GST when you should not have but again, I suspect you would have to reimburse your clients. That does not sound fun either.

I will keep you posted on this decision and any possible appeal.

Website owners - where do your hits come from?

A recent report reveals that many of the top websites on the web get most of their traffic from individuals from without continental North America.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. What is of interest (at least to me) are the opportunities (and pitfalls) for businesses which design and maintain websites whose viewers come from countries which do not have widespread broadband access and/or whose first language is not English.

This may not be a problem for companies like Google (indeed, Google has country specific sites for most jurisdictions in the world - very useful tidbit of information for those of you who do searches for goods/services in other countries) but it may be a problem for smaller companies.

If your company serves a wider audience, you should give consideration to website providers who are able or have the capability to make your web presence accessible or, more importantly, functional for people who live elsewhere.

Canadian Biotech and Life Sciences Database

Here it is. A comprehensive (or generally comprehensive) database of life sciences and biotech companies in Canada. You can search by sector, company name, or by full text. Quite a nice tool.

Chinese trade-marks in Canada

I recently read an article in Canadian Lawyer magazine discussing Chinese trade-marks here in Canada (article by Paul Jones of Jones & Co.).

The article described a recent Federal Court of Canada decision that revolves around the interpretation of trade-marks that have Chinese words/symbols as an integral part of the mark.

The facts are as follows: A business that operates nursing homes in the Toronto area registered a trade-mark that contained two Chinese characters as part of the design. The characters were transliterated in the trade-mark registration.

Subsequently the business discovered another business that was using the same two characters as part of its name. An action for passing off was started by the first business.

Part of the second business’s defence was that the only the Cantonese transliteration formed part of the registration, and not the actual characters themselves.

The whole mess will be determined at trial and the particulars of the decision (which was only an application for summary judgment – ie. that there was no defence and, as such, the plaintiff was entitled to a decision in its favour) are not all that relevant except to the extent that it appears a trade-mark registration of the characters themselves may have avoided the problem.

The migration of Chinese people to the Atlantic region is certainly not significant and, when compared to the migration patterns in Vancouver and Toronto, is positively insignificant. However, for businesses which identify the Chinese market as a growth area, the lesson here is to do appropriate due diligence in selecting a trade-mark agent (whether here in Canada or otherwise) when creating/registering trade-marks which have Chinese characters as part of the mark.