More audits of defense contractors coming?

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Mikki Barry — 1 Comment ↓

If you’re a defense contractor involved with the rebuilding of Iraq, expect an audit sooner rather than later. Nearly two billion dollars are unaccounted for, which means that the Defense Department is going to want to know exactly where that money went.

A federal audit that found the Defense Department cannot account for nearly $2 billion in Iraqi funds is likely to fuel Baghdad’s interest in pursuing a claim against Washington for failing to handle its money responsibly, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen told National Journal.

An audit published on Sunday investigated the roughly $3 billion the Iraqi government gave the Defense Department to pay bills for contracts the Coalition Provisional Authority awarded before it dissolved in 2004. Most of these funds were deposited into an account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Even though DOD was responsible for maintaining the proper documentation, it could only account for $1 billion of the money.
[From Pentagon can't account for nearly $2 billion in Iraqi funds - Defense - GovExec.com]

Barry Law Firm, PC liked this post

Posted in Government Contracting

So, how much is YOUR data worth?

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

Way back in the ancient times of the Internet, and data collection and massive databases filled with personal information, several privacy advocates raised the issue of “who owns your personal data?” Does it belong to the individual, or to the group that collects it? Since personal information is unlike collecting cans and bottles to retrieve the deposit money, many argued that this information should belong solely to the person, and reselling it should entail a contract between the person and the collection entity, perhaps sharing any profits garnered from the sale of that information. While it seemed a logical concept, large data collection companies such as credit reporting agencies fought all attempts to give individuals any rights in their own data.

Fast forward to Facebook, a place where by using it, you not only opt into providing your personal data, but also allow them to sell it, providing it to third parties “for your convenience.” They are slated to make billions from their IPO. So what do you think?

Facebook, the vast online social network, is poised to file for a public stock offering on Wednesday that will ultimately value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion, cashing in on the fuel that powers the engine of Internet commerce: personal data.
[From Personal Data’s Value? Facebook Is Set to Find Out - NYTimes.com]

Posted in Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Misc

Personal Jurisdiction and Trademark

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Mikki Barry — 1 Comment ↓

The concept of personal jurisdiction has often be an interesting conundrum for those who wish to litigate. It is a highly complicated and technical concept of civil procedure; one we spent months on in law school. In a nutshell, a court must have the power to “reach” the person being sued. Each state has different rules, and the federal courts have other rules, but much of this comes down to the defendant’s “contacts” with the place where the court is located, usually a state. So if I have never set foot in, nor “purposefully availed myself of the benefits of” a location, say Nome Alaska for example, how could I be forced to travel there to defend myself against a lawsuit?

The Internet, with global reach, is likely available in Nome. So, if my website sells a widget for $1.50 to a person in Nome, and the widget causes damage to that person, is that enough for me to have to pack a bag and head for Nome to defend the 3 million dollar lawsuit filed against me? Maybe. Like much of the law, it comes down to many tiny little points that may or may not seem important to normal business people, but mean the world to the judge making the decision. No one can tell for certain what is going on in that judge’s mind, or what facets of high extremely complicated body of law and civil procedure she is going to choose to make her decision.

Although trademark law is not the same as Internet law, regardless of how domain names are handled, watching how some of the jurisdictional issues are decided can provide a bit of insight into how a particular federal circuit might rule in similar cases. National trademarks, like the Internet, reach across jurisdictions. So, if I violate a national trademark, and the trademark holder wishes to sue me in the forum most convenient for them, have I consented to that jurisdiction merely by infringing the mark anywhere in the United States? Have I “purposefully availed myself” of that forum? This court says “not so fast…”

Zero Motorcycles, Inc. v. Pirelli Tyre S.p.A., 802 F.Supp.2d
1078 (N.D. Cal. 2011)

Zero filed for declaratory relief against Pirelli seeking to
protect its use of ZERO and ZERO-formative marks. Zero makes electric motorcycles under the
ZERO MOTORCYCLES mark in many foreign countries, since 2007. It has US registrations for ZERO on electric
vehicles, namely motorcycles, as well as ZERO MOTORCYLES, ZERO DS, ZERO S, ZERO
SS, ZERO X and ZERO MX. Pirelli makes various products, including tires for
vehicles, and owns a number of trademarks which incorporate the ZERO mark. (There are a number of Pirelli companies; the
one that conducts business in California is Pirelli Tire LLC.)

[From Attacking national company's TMs doesn't create personal jurisdiction in California]

Barry Law Firm, PC liked this post

Posted in Trademark

Managers Slowly Adapting to Telework

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

Feds and contractors seem to slowly be evolving towards an environment where telework is an integral part, at least some of the time. This is great news for DC Metro area commuter, as the hope is that there will be fewer cars on area roads.

Telework Takes Hold
By Brittany Ballenstedtbballenstedt@govexec.comJanuary 30, 2012
Federal employees started off this week with their first snow-related delay of the winter season, and many feds are still concerned about what winter weather will mean for their commute and their ability to perform their jobs. The good news is that many government offices have adopted teleworking policies, according to a new report by Microsoft.
The report, which is based on a survey of 250 employees, 73 percent of which worked in government, found that 67 percent of respondents work remotely at least some of the time. Surprisingly, however, only 33 percent of teleworkers indicated that their job satisfaction and productivity have increased since telework adoption.
[From Telework Takes Hold -- GovExec.com]

Posted in Government Contracting, Misc

Not beating a dead horse. SOPA and PIPA live

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

PIPA is to be voted on this week. SOPA is still being “studied.” While there is no doubt that piracy exists on the Internet, these bills are definitely not the answer.

Five reasons the Internet’s still protesting SOPA and PIPA
Posted by Brad Plumer at 10:44 AM ET, 01/18/2012
Over the weekend, it seemed like the anti-SOPA forces had won. The House temporarily shelved the Stop Online Piracy Act. The Senate sponsors of the Protect IP Act agreed to review the most controversial provisions. So why’s the Internet still so mad? Here are five
[From Five reasons the Internet’s still protesting SOPA and PIPA - The Washington Post]

Posted in Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Trademark

SOPA and PIPA are not dead. More action needed

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

Despite recent hearings in which sponsors admitted that more research is needed, these bills are far from dead and are still being pushed hard by special interest groups. Make no mistake, these bills require content filtering and blocking of certain sites at the DNS level based on allegation alone. Please read the below article, which brilliantly distills the issues and indicates why these bills are so dangerous.

In China you can’t get to some Internet sites: no Facebook, no YouTube, no Twitter. Search engines can’t find the “Falun Gong” or “Tiananmen Square massacre”. We would never do that kind of blocking here in the US, you say. Well, not so fast. If either House bill SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or Senate bill PIPA (Protect IP Act) or something in between passes both houses of Congress and is signed by the President, Internet censorship, unreachable websites, and forbidden searches will be the law of this land.

The Arab Spring has been enabled by the inability of some governments to block Internet communication. SOPA and SIPA both require that Internet blocking tools be developed and deployed here. Maybe we trust our own government not to misuse these (I don’t!); but do we really want to be responsible for the proliferation of censorship and blocked communication?

Why, you ask, would our Congresspeople want to impose censorship anywhere? Why would they want to slow down the most vigorous parts of the US economy?

The answer, at least, is simple. These are bills that Hollywood wants to protect its movies from online piracy, and Hollywood makes mega-campaign contributions and even gives Congresspeople bit parts in its movies. There is nothing partisan about campaign contributions.
[From Fractals of Change: SOPA and PIPA are Bipartisan Bad Policy, Really Bad Policy]

Posted in Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Trademark

Perhaps We’ll See New TLDs After All

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

Despite a last ditch effort by various special interest groups to delay the release of new gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains such as .com), ICANN seems to be standing fast in its plan to move forward with the plan. Many trademark owners have been under the mistaken impression that they would have to “protectively register” in all of these new domains in order to maintain trademark protection, and had turned that fear into opposition to new gTLDs.

With a week to go before his group rolls out a program that could dramatically increase the number of Internet addresses available to the public, the chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers says he sees no reason to delay despite growing calls to slow down the process.
“What value would a delay (serve)?” ICANN Chairman Stephen Crocker asked National Journal in an interview on Tuesday. He added that critics have yet to identify a “specific loose end where time was needed to work out the details.”
The program will allow for the introduction of almost any new Internet address, also known as a generic top-level domain name, as long as the applicant has the financial and technical means to successfully operate it. This includes ponying up $185,000 for the application fee alone. ICANN will formally begin accepting applications for the new gTLD names on Jan. 12. Almost any word would qualify, offering the potential to extend the familiar dot-com, dot-net field of 22 choices — .xxx is the latest — to include dot-anything.

[From ICANN chairman sees little value in delaying new domain-name program - Nextgov]

Posted in Intellectual Property, Internet Law, Trademark

Top App of 2011 – And it’s not a game…

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

Anyone else find it interesting that the top mobile app of 2011 is a file sharing program set up to share files over multiple platforms? Kinda sorta a little like NFS/Share from 1990. Pretty cool how the more we do with computers, the less the fundamentals change.

Today’s winner is an app and service that should be on everyone’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC — Dropbox. The Dropbox iPhone app (free) pulled in 38.6 percent of the votes form TUAW readers, topping Evernote (free), which came in second with 28.0 percent.

Dropbox provides 2 GB of synced cloud storage to everyone at no cost, 50 GB at $99.99 per year, or 100 GB at $199.99 annually. There are team account options as well.

Barry Law Firm, PC liked this post

Posted in Misc

Government Manipulation of Social Media?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

If this is true, even in part, the implications for targeting and destroying the reputations of individuals are enormous. Imagine a scenario in which opinions are systematically targeted by people working on behalf of the US government. This topic is worth watching

Almost as disturbing is that the information leading to the lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to release documents regarding this program, were seemingly obtained through hacking. This very twisted fact pattern is great fodder for law school exams.

Privacy advocates are suing the Homeland Security Department to obtain information on a program that monitors the social media interactions of citizens following a federal vendor’s private sector plans to sabotage certain groups’ online activities with similar technology.

Homeland Security officials have expanded an ongoing initiative that tracks public online communications in the interests of public safety, according a February DHS notice.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center on Tuesday filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act that seeks all government communications with contractors related to the program. The request was prompted by a leak of planning emails from government contractor HB Gary describing project proposals for a private firm to monitor and discredit the online activities of Americans, such as labor union leaders. Other emails in the cache showed that an HB Gary executive was planning a special training session with Homeland Security officials. Hacker activists from the loosely organized collective Anonymous released the communications.

[From DHS program to monitor social media users draws lawsuit - Nextgov]

Posted in Misc

Apple V. Android Patent Wars

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Mikki Barry — No Comments ↓

In a ruling that could have an impact on fundamental features of smartphones and mobile apps, the US International Trade Commission has decided that Apple patents cover common (and dare I say obvious) technologies.

Subscribe: Home Delivery / Digital Log In Register Now Help
A federal agency ruled on Monday that a set of important features commonly found in smartphones are protected by an Apple patent, a decision that could force changes in how Google’s Android phones function.

The ruling, by the United States International Trade Commission, is one of the most significant so far in a growing array of closely watched patent battles being waged around the globe by nearly all of the major players in the mobile industry. These
[From Apple Wins Partial Victory on Patent Claim Over Android Features - NYTimes.com]

Posted in Intellectual Property