The Supreme Court of Canada (‘SCC’) recently addressed the difficult issue of when a court should assume jurisdiction in cases involving online defamation. The case demonstrates the difficulty that borderless communications continue to pose to the application of traditional common-law principles. / read more

Two recent cases have seen the High Court of England and Wales issue injunctions to tackle cyber attacks by ‘persons unknown,’ which includes the first known worldwide freezing order issued against persons unknown. / read more

Two cases - one at the Supreme Court of Canada, and another at a lower court but following similar reasoning as the Supreme Court in the earlier case - involving the right of a plaintiff to launch a privacy class action in the plaintiff’s province appear to indicate a trend of Canadian courts refusing to enforce forum selection clauses in the terms of use of free online services in Canada. One result of these decisions is increased uncertainty for foreign businesses looking to offer their online services in Canada. / read more

In the combined cases of Tele2 and Watson, the Court found that Member State laws mandating bulk retention of particular metadata generated by electronic communications using public communications networks would only be lawful if carried out with suitable checks and balances to protect individuals and, in particular, their fundamental rights to privacy and to protect their personal details. This applies even where the retention is to combat serious crime or for national security under local Member State law. / read more

The Federal Supreme Court has recently decided on a number of cases involving the upload of copyright works on file sharing websites and specifically the secondary liability of the provider of the Wi-Fi used to share such copyright works. / read more

The General Court dismissed both cases regarding whether the Danish Gambling Duties Act is in accordance with EU rules on State Aid. / read more

Most Chinese users of Apple products were not aware that the "official" owner of the App Store is ITunes S.A.R.L, until recent cases decided by Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate Court between eight Chinese authors, Chinese All (plaintiffs) and Apple Electronic Products Trade (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and Apple Inc.(defendants), and ITunes S.A.R.L. / read more

The two cases mark the first time search engines have been held to be publishers of defamatory material in Australia; highlighting that the ‘innocent dissemination’ defence may only protect search engines up until they receive a takedown notice. / read more

The US Federal Trade Commission declared its intention to increase scrutiny of data brokers and screening companies in March, and has enacted this statement through two cases in which it investigated violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act respectively. / read more

Judges in EU and US courts respectively have applied the idea, expression dichotomy tool to reach an outcome in cases involving software copyright, reaching verdicts that place concepts such as ideas and methods of operation outside the realm of copyright protection. / read more