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Cue > Dilanchian enewsletter, June 2007
2007-06-28 15:23:00
Cue, is the name of our enewsletter for clients, collaborators and colleagues. Today's broadcast includes our Library articles and blog posts published in June 2007. Cue delivers a monthly abridged list of our Lightbulb law blog posts and Library articles. Some find this suits them rather than our RSS feed (component/option,com_rd_rss/id,1/), which delivers all such content.
More About: June 2007 , Chia

The cooks, the critics, the restaurant proprietors and their court cases
2007-06-27 11:00:00
On 14 June 2007 the High Court of Australia ruled a restaurant review can be liable for defamation. This is not new law, but it is a serious reminder of how risky speech is in Australia. Freedom of speech is not enshrined in Australian law. Speech is risky because of defamation law.
More About: Restaurant , Cases , Crit , Critics

42 Hints to Secure a Great Trade Mark Monopoly
2007-06-26 17:48:00
If you Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=the+answe r+to+life%2C+the+universe%2C+and+everythi ng) “the answer to life, the universe, and everything” (without the quotes), the Google calculator produces the answer “42”. It’s a cheeky reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_ to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Everything) to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. In light of this, 42 is a particularly good number for a list of hints to secure a great trade mark monopoly. As with such general rules and guidelines, they are not necessarily universal in their application to every situation. So whilst the list might not be the answer to “life, the universe and everything”, following the tips will help you avoid 90% of common problems and pitfalls in trade mark registration, use and management.
More About: Great , Trade , Hints , Mark , Secure

Spam fines in Australia and legal compliance FAQ
2007-06-26 13:29:00
This month the Australia n Communications and Media Authority (http://www.acma.gov.au/ACMAINTER.1638528 :HOMEPAGE::pc=HOME) (ACMA) added to its list of major businesses fined for spam. The fines were for SMS spam by direct marketers. The ACMA calculates that SMS spam (photo credit: Big Mouth Media (http://www.bigmouthmedia.com/)) now accounts for 20% of all complaints to it. The increase is confirmed by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (http://www.tio.com.au/make_a_complaint.h tm). The ACMA took action against the Pitch Entertainment Group (http://www.pitch.tv/), trading as Splash Media. The ACMA's press release (http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD//pc= PC_310389) states that Pitch sent over one million commercial SMS messages to mobile phones without a functional unsubscribe facility.
More About: Spam , Legal , Fine , Compliance

Cue Business Law and IP Articles
2007-06-26 10:50:00
RSS feed (component/option,com_rd_rss/id,1/), which delivers all Lightbulb law blog and Dilanchian Library content. Recently, Business Law Artic les (http://www.justweb.com.au/business-law/a rticles.html). justweb excels in search engine optimisation and Web development for small and medium-sized enterprises. This development prompts this guide for the Dilanchian Website Library.
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Starbucks settles coffee trade mark law dispute
2007-06-23 06:37:00
In Coffee brand values (content/view/237/) we assessed coffee economics and trade marks. It was triggered by a dispute between Starbucks and Ethiopia. The dispute is now resolved. The background is that In 2005, with assistance from Light Years IP (http://www.lightyearsip.net/), Ethiopia filed trade mark applications.
More About: Trade , Mark , Buck

Venture capital, start-ups, Web 2.0 and Wall Street
2007-06-21 14:24:00
Dear entrepreneur, Now that I have your attention, I want to recommend an hour's worth of reading to you. To improve your awareness of what's important in building and running a business read the informative posts listed below from a new blog. The blog is by the co-founder of a company sold for US$4.2 billion in 1998 and another with a market capitalisation of US$1 billion.
More About: Venture , Wall Street , Venture Capital , Street , Start

Trade Marks in the World of Tomorrow
2007-06-21 11:00:00
Most people think of trade marks as simply words and/or logos. Whilst this may be the practical reality for many organisations and businesses, the scope of the Trade Mark s Act 1995 (Cth) in Australia extends beyond this into other dimensions. These dimensions are the future and the future is here. We continue to move towards greater use of multimedia and digital technology where sounds and colour are of ever-increasing importance in marketing goods and services. In the battle for these colours and sounds the stakes are high because the system serves those who come first and can reward them perpetually. With limited exceptions no other intellectual property monopoly right can exist forever as simply and easily as trade mark rights can. Just think of what the trade marks register will be like in 10 years, or even 25 years. That's one crowded register!
More About: World , The World , Tomorrow

Data visualisation and legal knowledge management
2007-06-19 11:00:00
I pinched myself when I read last month that Hitwise, an Australian Web traffic monitoring enterprise backed by Australian and United States venture capital, was sold for A$286 million. I listed the sale in the post: Billions made with Internet business exit strategies (content/view/285/36/).
More About: Management , Data , Legal , Knowledge , Knowledge Management

Special Collection: Business Valuation, Sale or Purchase
2007-06-13 23:20:00
Good deal making involves setting the right expectations and direction at the earliest stage in project planning and negotiations. It makes a lot of sense to speak to your lawyer early for major deals such as the sale or purchase of a business. Following is a list of articles or posts providing practical guidance for sellers and buyers.
More About: Business , Sale , Special , Chase , Purchase

E-commerce Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves
2007-06-13 11:00:00
I have great respect for gypsies, even tramps and on the rare occasion thieves. I expect this sentiment is shared by many Australians with a convict heritage. It may also be shared by the daughter of a refugee father, Cher (nee Cheryl Sarkisian LaPiere) who had a number 1 hit in 1971 with Gypsies , Tramps and Thieves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_ 1Q) .
More About: Commerce , E-Commerce , Comm , Merc

Business Models for Bands and Musicians 2.0
2007-06-12 00:40:00
In Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazi ne/13audience-t.htm?ex=1181620800 en=a53ce02a9b7c880a ei=5070%20), the New York Times last month followed the personal tale of Jonathan Coulton (photo credit: Jennifer Karady). In September 2005, he quit his job as a computer programmer and, with his wife’s guarded blessing, became a full-time singer and songwriter. He stepped on a treadmill of blogging, writing a song a week, uploading audio tracks to his website (http://www.jonathancoulton.com/), selling CDs online, and using site traffic statistics to select concert locations. Most of Coulton's songs are free-of-charge for listening online or as MP3 downloads.
More About: Business , Models , Bands , Musicians , Sine

Personal insights from Jobs and Gates
2007-06-11 02:14:00
We've been on an extraordinary journey for decades with Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/en/au/default.a spx) and Apple (http://www.apple.com/au/) and their leaders, Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Jobs . They arrived together for an interview on 30 May 2007 at the D: All Things Digital conference at Carlsbad, California. On stage they checked their coordinates for the past, present and future. Interviewing them were Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, writers with The Wall Street Journal which runs the D gig and althingsd.com (http://allthingsd.com/) news website.
More About: Personal , Person , Persona

Designer Chinese and IP in China are not contradictions
2007-06-08 15:34:00
Is this a contradiction? The People's Republic of China is a Communist state. China is also a centre of cutting edge design. Try this one, is it too a contradiction? China is infamous as a place for intellectual property piracy of international brands and copyright. China is also increasingly engaged in genuine intellectual property law reform at an international level, see for example International harmonisation of IP laws (content/view/272/36/).
More About: Chinese , Designer , Contra

Fair dealing for satire, but Tintin’s not laughing
2007-06-01 16:35:00
In Australian copyright law, a new fair dealing exception (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/c onsol_act/ca1968133/s41a.html) for the purposes of parody or satire was recently introduced into the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Perhaps unhelpfully “parody” and “satire” are given no definition in the Act. More helpfully, thanks to an imaginative cartoonist and a miffed copyright holder, the law may soon be tested. But first let's look at the law.
More About: Satire , Fair , Tintin , Inti , Ealing

DVRs and video on demand in Australia
2007-05-31 11:32:00
In today's issue of The Australia n Financial Review, Neil Shoebridge's excellent article, Seven and TiVo in distribution link, sets out statistics and observations on the growing Australian digital video recorder [DVR] market. This data is timely as all things video are hot topics in Australia and overseas. This is at a time when hot words or concepts include IPTV, Internet Television, Web TV and digital broadcasting. See for example Lost Remote (http://www.lostremote.com/) which has an interesting Archive section with articles relevant to IPTV.
More About: Video , Stra , Video on Demand , Demand

Cue > Dilanchian enewsletter, May 2007
2007-05-29 11:00:00
Cue, is the name of our enewsletter for clients, collaborators and colleagues. Today's broadcast provides a useful reminder and overview on April/May 2007 Lightbulb law blog posts and our articles in our Website's Library section. This issue of Cue celebrates the 100+ Lightbulb posts we've made since August 2006.
More About: Chia

Australian wine industry clusters, economics and branding
2007-05-24 21:07:00
A recent US academic conference paper applies the cluster theory to the Californian wine industry and includes a very interesting graphic. It is a useful resource for decision makers in wine clusters in regional Australia, eg in the Hunter Valley, Yarra Valley and Margaret River. The graphic (reproduced below) can illustrate the point that wine regions gain competitive advantage when a cluster of industry participants work together to achieve vastly more together than they could working in competition individually. In economics and management literature this is known as the business or industry cluster theory. It was expounded most famously in 1990 in The Competitive Advantage of Nations, an 896 page book by Michael Porter (http://www.isc.hbs.edu/), the American economics and management academic.
More About: Economics , Branding , Wine , Industry , Australian

Billions made with Internet venture exit strategies
2007-05-24 11:00:00
This month's major spike in Internet , online new media and Web venture activity increased the heat in deal rooms in Australia, United States and Europe. There were many Internet mergers and acquisitions (M As), a fancy phrase for a business purchase or sale. There were also Internet venture IPOs and old media company reconstructions repositioning to take advantage from new media. The deal making blips during the month are overviewed in this post. To get our bearings consider the accompanying interesting map of the world.
More About: Venture , Strategies , Made , Lions

Use design briefs to shape your projects
2007-05-22 14:43:00
Many projects begin life in a brief. A brief defines project needs and sets the path towards a solution. A design brief helps in the document-intensive job of project definition and execution. The American design industry veteran, Peter L. Phillips, writes in a recent book that people use various terms as synonyms for design brief . They include creative brief , marketing brief , project brief or job ticket . In Europe, he says a common term is innovation brief .
More About: Design , Projects , Shape , Briefs , Brief

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours
2007-05-20 11:00:00
A recent New South Wales court decision provides a useful reminder on the benefit of having a clear date of contract and a good deal making and contracting process. The cast of entertainment industry characters either directly involved or mentioned in the case include Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, John Farnham, Leading Edge Events (a concert and event promotion company), and their respective agents, managers and directors. The case provides valuable lessons on the need to use proper deal making language and process whatever industry your deals are in. Combined with good documents the process protects legal positions for negotiations, deals and contracts.
More About: Signed , Sign , Elive , Liver , Deli

Use new media to collaborate more efficiently
2007-05-18 10:54:00
Following a great meeting today at a major law firm, the lawyer I met with, who is a long term collaborator with me (we share work), corrected me when I said to him in the foyer: You and I are specialists in intellectual property law for content . His correction was that the better brand to wear is that we are the Property Lawyers for the Digital Economy . Yes, we were both over-excited following a great meeting.
More About: Media , Collaborate , New Media , More , Rate

Mozilla: An Intellectual Property Monster Story
2007-05-16 11:00:00
It was Jamie Zawinski's idea. In the early 1990s he had been a student at the University of Illinois. It was his good fortune there to be in the team that developed the Mosaic browser. Mosaic was a leap forward compared to then existing browsers, but you had to know your way around it, it was not so user-friendly. Mosaic leapt from the World Wide Web platform invented a few years earlier. The Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, had created a text-based browser. Mosaic added graphics functionality.
More About: Story , Property , Mozilla , Intellectual , Monster

Apparel retailers embrace the Web
2007-05-15 20:04:00
The year 2006 marks a turning point in e-commerce in the United States. In 2006 more apparel was sold online in the US than computers in terms of value. This is reported in the 14 May 2007 issue of the Washington Post (Online Sales Shift: Appa rel Outpaced Computers in '06 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051301263.h tml)). It states: Consumers spent $18.3 billion on clothes, accessories and shoes in 2006, up 61% from the previous year. Computer hardware and software sales totalled US$17.2 billion, up 20% from the previous year. Total online retail spending, excluding travel, grew 25% to US$146.5 billion. The source of this data is said to be Forester Research which surveyed 174 online retailers.
More About: Embrace , Tail , Retailers

Use formats and genres to answer copyright questions
2007-05-15 11:00:00
How much can you copy? Filmmakers repeatedly ask this question when they are inspired by the plot, characterisation or other elements of a prior film. Being inspired is one thing, infringement is another. The copyright law limits to copying involve many considerations. For example, the limits are narrower than the ethical concept of plagarisation. They are also harder to apply even though the Australian Copyright Act lists them in sections on fair dealing . The US fair use concept is comparable, but wider than fair dealing .
More About: Questions , Answer , Right , Quest

New Media Legal Knock-On
2007-05-11 15:03:00
National Rugby League CEO David Gallop Gallop was recently a guest lecturer at the University of Technology. The topic: Sport and the Law. Lightbulb imagines Gallop wouldn’t have been stuck for things to talk about. The NRL is currently in the middle of a difficult legal stoush involving its major sponsor and pay TV broadcaster. We’ve been watching the story unfold with interest, especially given rights over new media lie at the core of the dispute.
More About: Media , Legal , New Media , Knock

New Media Distribution
2007-05-11 11:00:00
Writing in The Australian Financial Review (10 May 2007, p. 50) Lyndall Crisp notes the increasing use of digital distribution mechanisms in the performing arts: “The Sydney Symphony ... has a relationship with Telstra Bigpond, which webstreams 10 live concerts to more than a million subscribers.” Crisp notes The Met (http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/) in New York live broadcasts (http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/b roadcast/hd_events.aspx) performances into cinemas across the USA, Canada, Japan, and several European countries. (content/view/234/)
More About: Media , Distribution , New Media , Tribu

US publicity rights clearances are essential
2007-05-10 19:49:00
Do you have products you wish to export to the United States, a film or book you want distributed there, or a website seeking US customers? Do you also use images or other identifications of famous people without consent in your product, film, book or website? If you answered Yes to both questions you should seek legal advice on whether you need to obtain consent, permission or clearances before you export or publish in the US. This is because of the laws in the US known as publicity rights . While ultimately specialist advice may be needed from a US attorney, this article is an introduction to publicity rights. It is illustrated by a New York court case involving the estate of Marilyn Monroe. The court described the case as a tortuous series of [legal procedural] events ... over Marilyn Monroe, perhaps the most famous American sex symbol of the twentieth century... . It ruled there are no Marilyn Monroe publicity rights.
More About: Rights , Publicity , Esse , Right , Clear

Innovation fatigue and its causes
2007-05-09 21:19:00
The 2007 special report World Most Inno vative companies (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/di_ special/20070503mostinnovat.htm) was published last week as a cover story by US publication, BusinessWeek. Compared to 2006 there was not much change in the top three in the list of companies perceived as leaders in innovation. Globally Apple is at the top, again. Google is second, again. Toyota moved up a notch to third place. But reading on there are new developments. This is BusinessWeek's third annual report on the topic and involved a survey of 2,500 senior executives in Asia, Europe and North America.
More About: Innovation , Causes , Cause , Nova

Is your company's knowledge about IP woeful?
2007-05-09 18:06:00
A 60 page preliminary report has recently been released in the UK revealing the answers by UK companies to 29 questions in a survey about IP. Some survey results evidence a woeful level of knowledge in UK companies about intellectual property protection, management, licensing, valuation and enforcement. Responses to the survey were received from 1,709 firms of all sizes and in all sectors of UK industry. The report was prepared by the UK Intellectual Property Office and The Institute of Intellectual Property. It is titled UK Intellectual Property Awareness Survey 2006 (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipsurvey.pdf) . It's a very useful report fully illustrated with photos of flowers, hence our graphic here by Dr Robert Thornton, the 18th and 19th century English artist and illustrator of flora.
More About: Knowledge , Know , Edge , Compa