LawFont.com

Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock announced yesterday the appointment of Andrew Greenwood as a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia. Greenwood is currently a partner of law firm Minter Ellison, where he leads their Competition and Regulatory Policy practice in Brisbane. He also has experience in the areas of intellectual property law and commercial litigation.

Greenwood is currently Queensland Chair of the Intellectual Property and Trade Practices Committees of the Law Council of Australia, and is an Adjunct Professor in the fields of intellectual property and competition law at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. Greenwood is replacing Justice Richard Cooper, who passed away earlier this year.

Yesterday, the Australian Federal Court refused to stay proceedings brought by Australian company QSPX against Ericsson. It had been alleged that the proceedings were infected by ‘champerty’.
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…which I thought was kind of interesting. And no, I’m not talking about the religious theme (warning, disturbingly twee photo of Alexander Downer behind that link).

Rather, I’m talking about the technology theme. And not just down in the technology section of the page. Up on the sidebar, quite high up, We have stories about the continuing sales of iPods, about the rise and rise of podcasting, and about digital TV – a story about how the BBC is launching an internet service allowing people to download its TV shows for later viewing, which will use a proprietary piece of software called the BBC Interactive Media Player (iMP), which apparently will use P2P (peer-to-peer) file-sharing technology.
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The New York Times reports that business is booming for manufacturers of cheap DVDs. An increasing number of titles, typically old films and cartoons, are being priced in the US$0.99 to US$1.99 range, the low price a reflection of the fact that these works are no longer protected by copyright.

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The Supreme Court of the US has handed down its decision in the Grokster case. Kim has a good summary at Weatherall’s Law. In brief, the Court has reversed the 9th Circuit decision, in which it held that Grokster could not be liable for P2P file-sharing technology with substantial non-infringing uses. The case has been remanded for trial. The record companies that sued Grokster will have another chance, it seems.

GrokLaw recently posted a list, sorted by case name, law firm, and lawyer, of the litigation monitored on their website. It’s a handy list, at least for those of us interested in such things as SCO and open source.

Not everyone is very happy about Google these days. The Association of American University Presses believes that Google’s plan to digitise the libraries of Oxford University and others will result in widespread copyright infringement. And a journalist at Wired.com has warned readers that Google is doing its best to collect more and more information on its users, noting that “Google is big, bad, ubiquitous, and whipping Microsoft, the dominatrix of the desktop.”

Have things really become that bad? I for one do not mind the targetted advertising that I see when I check my Gmail account. If Google has a little information on me that it uses to create advertising, I don’t mind so long as it’s discreetly displayed on the side of my screen. It is certainly a far sight better than the pseudo-pornographic spam that I receive at Hotmail.