2 2 February 2000

News:

e-comlaw.com was launched this month as the on-line site for E-Commerce Law & Policy. Subscribers are able to access a password protected, comprehensive, full text, searchable database of every article ever published in the newsletter.

The Distance Selling Regulations, which will come into force on June 4, ‘may stifle the development of e-commerce within the UK’ claims the mobile network operator Orange.

Online gambling is becoming the focus of national governments fears about losing regulatory and financial control of e-commerce.

Features:

‘On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog’, used to epitomise the anonymity people believed was an integral feature of the web. No more. Now not only do some people know you are a dog, but what breed, how old , your address, what you like to eat. read and buy. What is more, they are willing to sell on this information to whosoever wishes to buy their services.

Using Internet ‘cookies’ to enhance the way some websites operate is not new. Many websites use them for purposes such as customising the pages presented to each visitor or allowing regular users to bypass cumbersome identification procedures.

Well known websites, such as Yahoo and Amazon, have suffered denial of service (DoS) attacks recently. Such an attack occurs when a website is bombarded with requests for information which appear to the servers to be genuine because they originate from different addresses or servers.

The Government has stated that it believes that mobile access to the internet will be the next significant area of development within the converged telecommunications/information society environment. This view is to be welcomed especially if one considers that within the UK and Europe mobile technology is approximately two years more advanced than mobile technology within the United States.

Developments in the domain name field have been many and rapid recently. This article seeks to cover the recent history and to assess whether the balance between trade mark owners and domain name owners is now correct.

Amazon have recently sued their direct competitor, Barnes & Nobel (‘B&N’), for infringing their US ‘411 patent’. If Amazon win their case in the US courts, we may see a dramatic change in the development of e-commerce with young start-ups possibly becoming a thing of the past.

Bolero is a contractual framework designed to replicate as far as possible within an electronic environment the way in which paper transactions are conducted in the international sale, finance and transport of goods. The two leading players behind Bolero are SWIFT, the international banking co-operative, and the TT Club, a leading shipping P&I Club, whose partnership aims to reduce the overhead costs of paper trade.

The purchase of health related products online is set to soar, with e-healthcare soon to become a billion-dollar business. US consumers alone are expected to spend $10 billion annually on health related products online by 20041. Certain health related products, such as vitamins, do not present any particularly unique problems so far as e-commerce is concerned. But the sale of pharmaceuticals is more controversial, and presents more legal pitfalls. This is because in most countries, a complex set of regulatory rules and requirements govern the manufacture, advertisement, distribution and sale of pharmaceuticals. The main objectives of such rules are to protect consumers and to minimise the cost of pharmaceuticals (particularly in countries with state run health care systems). The various regulatory regimes throughout the world are by no means harmonised, resulting in a compliance minefield for those wishing to sell pharmaceuticals worldwide by means of the Internet. This article will consider the specific issues which are relevant to the online sale of pharmaceuticals and will also consider a number of general e-commerce issues in so far as they relate to pharmaceutical products (intellectual property infringement and product liability).

The US lead negotiator in the EU-US data protection talks, David Aaron will give up his role in March. His departure will put added pressure for a quick resolution of the ongoing dispute between the EU and the US over data protection.

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US online toy retailer EToys.com has agreed to drop its action against Geneva based art group site etoy.com . EToys also agreed to pay $40,000 towards the etoy.com costs.