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To: All Employees CC: Compliance Dept. From: CEO Subject: All Messages Will Be Stored * Ongoing investigations and the explosion of electronic communications are spurring great demand for technology that […]

Although pink slips are rapidly being delivered at most Wall Street firms, there is one post that is in high demand -- that of the anti-money-laundering chief. Every financial institution […]

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS THAT HACKERS from around the globe systematically pilfer credit card numbers and other personal consumer data from online merchants, which they then sell to the […]

Online fraud results in significant revenue loss for e-commerce sites each year. The best defense is a good offense. Identify and thwart fraudulent transactions before they take place. A September […]

"It could never happen here." Famous last words, but words that could end up costing financial-services firms millions of dollars and serious damage if taken lightly. This obviously flawed line […]

WHEN Thomas Fredell read about passage of the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000 (called the E-Sign Act) nearly two years ago, he expected to see […]

Wireless carriers face a variety of challenges in implementing Phase II E911 and location-based services. In many cases, innovations chosen years earlier to provide increased capacity, call security, or improved [...]

While the architecture of a DRM system may consist of familiar features like encryption and e-commerce, in setting one up, you must first answer some complicated questions. Before you build […]

ENRON, COCA-COLA, Union Bank of Switzerland, the Rose Law Firm -- what do these organizations have in common? All have been accused of destroying official documents and some have faced […]

The video codec known as DivX;-) is being used, illegally, to facilitate trading of copies of movies online, raising the question of whether DivX;-) will eventually be to digital video disk (DVD) what MP3 has already become to CD. The codec DivX;-) was originally hacked from Microsoft's MPEG-4 version 3 video code, with Microsoft's code being modified and combined with MP3.

Clear guidlines for e-mail monitoring may help avoid alienating employees, and informing employees about such policies can help protect against liability. According to the American Management Association (AMA), nearly 40 percent of major U.S. companies now, in the year 2000, monitor employee e-mail, compared to about 15 percent in 1997. Various reasons for doing so are cited, including added virus protection, protecting intellectual property, limiting liability and preventing inappropriate contrent from circulating on an organizations communications systems.

Chief information officers (CIO) should care about patents and trade secret protection for a variety of reasons. Failing to do so can impact a company's bottom line, and it can even happen that the company is forced to stop using mission-critical processes or applications. In some circumstances, violation of laws involving intellectual property can involve criminal liability.

Congress passed the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) in Nov 1999, aiming to thwart those who register Internet domain names that incorporate the trademarks of others. Domain names were being registered for $70 in hopes of making huge profits by reselling them to trademark owners. However, the ACPA is worded in a way that targets people who act in 'bad faith.' It does not, for example, apply to someone who is unaware of a trademark's status. This leaves shadowy areas where there is a potential for protracted, complicated legal disputes.

Intellectual property is the key to the modern company's economic success, replacing the past competitive advantages of raw materials and capital. This requires more differentiated systems to determine ownership of intellectual property, better protection of what is owned, and faster dispute resolution. There are no hard and fast rules about who owns knowledge and how to enforce ownership of knowledge, nor about how employers can control use of their intellectual properties when employees move on. Marginal changes to existing ownership rights will not suffice to protect businesses' intellectual property. A new system is required, but the people operating the current system have a vested interest in perpetuating that outdated system. Fundamental advances in knowledge must be distinguished from logical extensions of existing knowledge. Countries with varying levels of economic development will require very different systems of intellectual property rights.

Emulation is the practice of loading vintage video games on PCs, a common occurrence amongst gamers who crave retro games. There are emulators programs for nearly everything, including one to make a PC think it is a Atari 2600, or a Commodore 64. Unfortunately, the games being played on home computers are still under copyright and the Interactive Digital Software Association is waging a war on emulation.

What exactly is the Internet? I don't mean technically--a linkage of servers and that sort of thing. My question is, what is the Internet legally? The answers--and there will be […]

Copyright infringement is a hot topic in the On-line world. To the ordinary fans and hobbyists, the issue is one that the questions the very foundation of the Internet and World Wide Web. As use of the Web becomes more mainstream, copyright issues crop up more and more. The site developers that have copyrighted material posted on their sites claim that the legal owners of the material are benefiting from the use of the material, as it promotes the product in question. Also being questioned is the legality of the links Web site managers include in their Web sites.

Every few months, Curt Vinson takes time off from his usual duties as president of Lyme Computer Systems in Lyme, N.H., and flies to Washington, D.C., at his own expense […]

An early legal mentor of mine was fond of saying, "It all depends on whose ox is getting gored." This maxim means that if I go to court to institute […]

Sure, readying systems for the millennium is a huge, intimidating task. But getting started could help you speed other projects and get more funding. There is a bright side to […]

All users should be aware of the corporate e-mail policy. They may not know that a slip of the e-mail could come back to haunt them and the company. During […]

The local TV news recently ran a juicy story. Visually, it was nothing out of the ordinary - just a parade of beleaguered-looking individuals wearing jail jumpsuits being led into […]

If your company tends to bend the rules of software licensing, beware of the industry watchdogs. Software metering programs can help you keep the beasts at bay. "If you wanted […]

As I write, 1995 hasn't been kind to partisans of what's been called the look-and-feel approach to software copyright infringement. Only a few years back, look-and-feel proponents seemed on a […]

Data Security Trade in black-market data is a growing problem for both business and the law The new frontier of cyberspace represents vast opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and profit-making. But […]

In the last column (March 1995), we looked at the fair use defense as it has developed in U.S. law over the past century and a half, including some recent […]

I suspect that when Roy Orbison and William Dees penned the song "Oh, Pretty Woman," the furthest thing from their minds was that it would become the central piece in […]