IN THIS ISSUE
US say Yah Boo to French over Yahoo - Legal Hitlist to return - Insider archive on CD - All change in legal publishing - UK digs broadband hole - AOL in hot water over version 6.0 - Legal news in brief - Utility worth visiting - Keystone rolls out new system - Branded email the next big thing - Marks & Clerk design warning - Industry & Professional news - Next issue: 15.11.2001

US SAY YAH BOO TO FRENCH OVER YAHOO! AND THE NAZIS
A US federal judge this week ruled that the First Amendment protected Yahoo! from a French court order seeking to force the internet portal to prevent users from viewing Nazi memorabilia or else pay a $13,000 a day fine.

Granting summary judgment Judge Jeremy Fogel, of the US Northern District Court of California, said it was not a question of French sovereignty or the moral acceptability of promoting Nazism. At issue, he said, is whether the French order, which transcends American borders, is consistent with US law.

"Under US law it is preferable to permit the non-violent expression of offensive viewpoints rather than impose viewpoint-based governmental regulation upon speech. The government and people of France have made a different judgment based upon their own experience... Ideas and information transcend borders and the internet in particular renders the physical distance between speaker and audience virtually meaningless."

Yahoo! had argued it was technically impossible to comply with the French order without violating the First Amendment rights of its US customers. Lawyers for Yahoo! said Fogel's decision helps extend the First Amendment to cyberspace while Yahoo! international corporate counsel Katherine Wirth described the decision as "a victory for everyone who operates a web site large and small. This really does mean foreign courts cannot impose their laws on a web site just because it's accessible in their countries."

LEGAL HITLIST UK TO RETURN NEXT WEEK
As reported last time, New Media Lawyer has currently suspended its Hitlist survey of the UK's busiest legal web sites because we are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain reliable user traffic statistics from web site operators. However we are now finalising testing of a new system which will be going live next week. Because this will use objective rather than subjective data, the new chart promises to be controversial - loved by some and hated by others. More news next week.

ALL CHANGE IN THE LEGAL PUBLISHING WORLD
Are legal publishers finally stirring themselves and about to prove that the phrase "dynamic legal publisher" is not an oxymoron?

Within the last week LexisNexis in the US has agreed to acquire the CourtLink Corporation, the leading provider of web-based services for electronically filing legal documents and accessing and monitoring court records. The transaction is subject to, among other things, approval by CourtLink shareholders. CourtLink chairman, president & CEO Henry Givray has indicated that he will leave the company when the transition period ends in March 2002.

And, over in the UK two parts of the Thomson publishing group - Sweet & Maxwell and GEE Publishing - are merging to form what they are calling a "powerhouse" in the legal and regulatory market place in the UK and Ireland. The new organisation, to be known as the Sweet & Maxwell Group, will employ 700 employees. GEE is best known as provider of business and regulatory information to the HR, health & safety and finance sectors.

UK GOVERNMENT GETS INTO A DEEPER HOLE OVER BROADBAND AND ANALOGUE
Confirming the widespread suspicion that what the British Government knows about new media could be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave plenty of room for the glue, the powers that be have spent the last week digging themselves into a fresh series of holes.

It began with Prime Minister Tony Blair telling the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference that he wanted to encourage a high tech "knowledge economy" and singing the praises of broadband technology. He also said that the switch over from analogue to digital television during the period 2006 and 2010 "remains achievable". Unfortunately this appeared to coincide with "Whitehall insiders" briefing political correspondents to the effect that there was now "no chance" of meeting the 2006 deadline and that even 2010 "would be really tough". Currently only about 40 percent of UK households have digital TV.

Clearly not speaking from the same song sheet, the British Government's "e-envoy" Andrew Pinder told the same CBI conference that he was encountering growing difficulties in obtaining Treasury backing for the roll out of broadband services. He also criticised public sector bodies, including government departments, for failing to promote the uptake of online services. Pinder said the real test was not to provide all government services online by 2005 as it was "easy to do that crudely to meet targets" but to ensure the online services available were actually used by the public. "If they are not, we will have pissed away a huge amount of public money," he warned.

AOL GETS IN HOT WATER OVER ITS BROWSER SOFTWARE
Judge Howard Matz in the Los Angeles District Court last week ordered AOL to stop shipping AOL 6.0 while it continues to include AOL Media Player. The case was brought by PlayMedia, the company behind the AMP MP3 player engine.

Media Player is essentially a modern version of WinAMP, developed after AOL bought Nullsoft however the complication is PlayMedia originally licensed Nullsoft its AMP MP3 code and granted the WinAMP maker the right to sub-license AMP. That right, says PlayMedia, did not convey on AOL a right to use AMP in its own online access software, even if AOL did buy Nullsoft. And, to prove its point, PlayMedia sued AOL for copyright infringement last April.

Judge Matz' ruling grants PlayMedia a preliminary injunction against AOL until the company's case has been heard. The ruling prevents AOL from shipping AOL 6.0 - either directly or through third-parties - while it contains AMP code, though it is permitted to ship the MP3 decoded in WinAMP. Equally, it has to block any AOL 6.0 user whose installed version of the software contains AMP - though said users are allowed access to the AOL service in order for the company to remove the offending code through its Live Update mechanism. AOL denies the copyright infringement charge.

LEGAL NEWS IN BRIEF
REPLAY TV FACING LAWSUITS - Three US entertainment companies - Viacom, Disney and NBC - have filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles District Court against SonicBlue Inc, the makers of the ReplayTV digital video recorder which, it is claimed, allows viewers to automatically delete TV commercial and transmit copies of the programmes they have recorded to other viewers over the internet. The three companies allege these features will violate their copyrights on video programming. Lawyers for SonicBlue say people already use email to forward copies of videos and they claim the auto delete feature is really no different to the fast forward controls on conventional VCRs. Interestingly, SonicBlue's main competitor TiVo said it took a conscious decision not to implement similar features on its own system because it did not want to antagonise media companies.

ICANN TO DELAY PARTICIPATION DECISION - ICANN, the de facto governing body for the internet, is expected to delay taking any decisions on opening up its deliberations to greater public participation until next year. ICANN was expected to discuss this issue at its meeting in Los Angeles next week but, in the light of September 11, this meeting will now focus on computer and cyber security issues. A decision on greater public participation is now expected until its March 2002 meeting in Ghana.

BACS REVIEWING WEB PAYMENTS - Computer Weekly magazine in the UK reports that the BACS bank clearing house organisation is considering a major restructuring of its operations to make it easier to work with third-party systems houses on the development of real time web-based payment systems.

SAVE OUR COOKIES - The UK Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is claiming that proposals by the European Parliament to ban the use of cookies could cost UK businesses £187 million a year by deterring consumers from using the web because they would have to reregister every time they revisited some sites.

UTILITY WORTH VISITING
Check out Martin Samson's Internet Library of Law and Court Decisions which contains extensive analysis of over 250 court decisions shaping the law of the web. The Library covers a broad array of topics, including trademark and copyright infringement, use of meta tags, links and framing, click and shrink wrap agreements, domain name disputes, jurisdiction, the legality of gambling on the Internet, licensing requirements for the operation of online pharmacy, the legality of keying, use of e-mail in the office, and First Amendment issues arising out of governmental regulation of the internet, among others. Samson is an attorney with Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim & Ballon in New York and the site can be found at www.phillipsnizer.com/internetlib.htm

KEYSTONE TO ROLL OUT NEW WEB SYSTEM
Keystone Solutions is claiming a major 'first' as it begins shipping this month a fully internet architected version of its flagship practice management software Keystone Professional. Kaye Sycamore, managing director of Keystone's application development centre in New Zealand, says the new version - Keystone Professional 2001 - is the culmination of more than two years intensive development. In addition to the new internet architecture, this latest release also delivers the features and functionality required by North American law firms interested in implementing Keystone.

The new software release is available to existing Keystone Professional customers free of charge. Keystone has made available two versions of the 2001 software Ð 2001/1 is its final client-server only version, and 2001/2 offers both internet-architecture or client-server deployment. In a related development, US top 20 law firm Foley & Lardner recently became the latest North American practice to purchase the Keystone Net Results real time business intelligence and financial analytics software.

BRANDED EMAIL THE NEXT BIG THING ?
Speaking at the recent LegalTech London conference Jay Jaffe, the head of the US business development consultancy Jaffe Associates, described branded email as "the closest thing I have seen to being the digital Holy Grail of law firm marketing".

Jaffe told the audience that his excitement is based on the ability of the HTML added email to drive recipients to senders' web sites. Branded email technology, such as the LetterMark application developed by FullSeven, allows an HTML signature to be included in an email message without many of the drawbacks of standard HTML email such as HTML incompatibility and unwanted email attachments.

"Branded email can be easily created and targeted to deliver extra messages every time you send an email. And, the cost is far less and can be more highly targeted than conventional direct mail or advertising," said Jaffe. "Also, in today's more dangerous world environment, the switch from paper to e-mail for legal documents and correspondence will clearly proliferate."

Jaffe also told the group that by the end of 2003 he fully expects at least half of the emails in his inbox to be of the branded variety. But, he pointed to a danger of focusing on graphics instead of strategy. "The branding still has to support a strategic focus," he said. "This is not about pretty pictures, it is all about using this new media to support business goals in an exciting new way."

MARKS & CLERK WARNING ON REGISTERED DESIGNS
Designers and businesses will face a double edged sword in the wake of changes to design laws in the UK, due to come into effect on 9th December, according to Marks & Clerk, the UK firm of patent and trade mark attorneys. Under the new law, designers will be able to increase the scope of protection for their designs. However, the changes will also cause considerable uncertainty due to the increased risk of accidental infringement.

Speaking at a recent seminar Marks & Clerk partner Keith Hodkinson said: "Both existing and new registered designs will enjoy wider protection under the new law. It will permit the registration of the visible features of almost anything, even goods previously only protected under copyright legislation. So handicraft items such as a one-off piece of jewellery or a piece of art will be registerable, as well as utilitarian designs.

"However, these changes are going to cause considerably uncertainty, even for companies trading exclusively in the UK. For the first time under UK law, designers will be able to wait for up to a year between disclosing their design and filing to register it, leaving others in the dark for longer to find out if any registered rights can be asserted against them. To infringe under the old law required products to be substantially identical but the new law merely requires that a design does not produce a materially different impression on an 'informed user'. The chances of accidental infringement will be significantly higher.

"The new law is being brought in to enact the EU's Directive on Harmonisation of Design Laws. This further compounds the issue for UK designers because the EU Directive leaves member states with options as to how implement the law. Legal solutions to design infringements may vary from country to country. In addition only registered design rights are being harmonised across the EU, leaving uncertainty over the validity of unregistered design rights from one member state to the next. The new law could bring considerable advantages to Britain's designers and businesses. But it is essential that designers familiarise themselves with the new law and how it will interact with copyright and unregistered design rights"

INDUSTRY & PROFESSIONAL NEWS
CONTEXT ROLLS OUT TWO NEW SERVICES - Electronic publishing specialist Context (020 7267 8989) has launched to new services designed to enable faster and more efficient legal research. The Justis Alerting Service allows subscribers to Context's Justis.com service to select topics they are interested in and then automatically receive email notification of any new documents relating to those topics. And, the new Justis Daily Cases service provides a daily summary of cases that will later appear as full reports in the Weekly Law Reports, The Law Reports and Industrial Case Reports.

MASON MOVES - Stephen Mason has moved from Fennemores in Milton Keynes, where he was their commercial and e-business specialist, and joined Ikan plc in London as their director of legal and compliance

DOING BUSINESS ONLINE - Palladian Law Publishing (01202 712935) has just published E-commerce Law - Doing Business Online by the Simmons & Simmons communication practice. Alex Brown headed the team of authors at Simmons & Simmons and the the book covers all aspects of e-commerce, from click wrap agreements and cookies , to EU law and deep linking. Doing Business Online (ISBN 1 902558 45 6) costs £55.00.

FULL FORCE NAME CHANGE - Full Force Marketing, the company behind a range of web based legal marketing services in the UK, including the www.accidentcompensation.com online referral panel for law firms, has changed its name to Matrix New Media.

CMS GADGETS GO ON TO LEXIS - The Solution 6 Group has just announced that users of the LexisNexis portal in the US can now access three of the CMS OPEN Gadgets. Gadgets are plug-in modules that embed components of diverse applications into a personalized portal page on the end user's desktop. The first three gadgets released are customizable CMS OPEN inquiries, designed to provide secure, real-time KPIs (key performance indicators) including timekeeper statistics, billing receipts and accounts receivable.

CONGRATULATIONS DELIA - Congratulations to Delia Venables for picking up a LOTIE (the UK Legal Office Technology Innovation Awards) for best legal publication in a new media format for her popular Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. Delia beat off the likes of industry giants Sweet & Maxwell to win the award.