Can you own a colour, a name, or a sound? Those questions have been highlighted again in the UK, where there has been another outbreak of litigation about “Cadbury Purple”. Australian trademark law, like…
- Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra
It may be time to move beyond Facebook’s assurance of its trustworthiness and specifically restrict the company’s use of face recognition. Changes within Facebook Europe would seem to suggest so. For gullible…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard today launched a data centre in Sydney, as part of a broader push to see sensitive data stored in Australia. The government is proposing new legislation that would force telecommunications…
Having characterised advocacy for same-sex marriage as part of an attack on “our enduring institutions”, Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi has warned that recognising same sex relationships through marriage…
The ABC has found itself caught up in a copyright debate after it forced the removal of an application that enabled people to download and watch programs offered on its iview service. The Python-iview…
In every parent’s life there comes a time when it’s best to hand over the keys to the kids and treat them as adults. That time comes quicker if they haven’t been wrapped in cotton wool or reminded of inadequacies…
Earlier this month the Hon Nicola Roxon asked the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) to conduct an inquiry into the Government’s proposals for a major revamp of Australia’s…
If it involved the record industry we’d call it payola: undisclosed kickbacks to radio station executives, owners and disk jockeys to boost broadcasts and thus record sales. In the pharmaceutical industry…
In the “age of the social graph”, it is possible to profile people by tracking their relationships with friends and associates rather than by looking at the content of their communications. Debate about…
We’re in for another round of the biotech patent wars, with announcement the Productivity Commission will inquire into the compulsory licensing of patents. If adopted, compulsory licensing could increase…
In an era of under-resourced and sometimes rather timid regulators, it’s unsurprising that marketers obey the logic of the market, engaging in practices that provoke a response by consumer advocates. Regulatory…
Bioethicists, human rights advocates and criminal lawyers are watching another outbreak of the “circumcision wars”, after yesterday’s decision by a provincial court in Cologne, Germany, that circumcision…
Pills made from “wild krill” (apparently so much better for you than domestic krill)? Antioxidants from exotic plants, chlorophyll or the “Sicilian Blood Orange”? Promises of extra vitality, vim and vigour…
AUSTRALIA BY NUMBERS: Today, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the first batch of its 2011 census data. We’ve asked some of the country’s top demographers and statisticians to crunch the…
Amid indications that Fairfax is going into the corporate death spiral – ongoing disinvestment resulting in smaller market share - we’re asking the wrong questions about the future of the Australian media…
British novelist E M Forster famously offered two cheers for democracy. We might say the same about the national Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Bill introduced into Parliament last week…
One hundred years of rigorous scientific research hasn’t dented the faith of adherents of homeopathy. The complementary therapy is still centred on the notion that water has a therapeutic “memory” and…
George Orwell’s mordant satire of politics and bureaucratic doublespeak famously featured the slogan that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. Watching the brouhaha about…
The launch of a new internet service provider (ISP) in New Zealand isn’t something that would normally be worth mentioning. But the launch of FYX (pronounced “fix”) by established online services provider…
Yesterday on The Conversation, Timothy Smith from the Florey Neurosciences Institute argued that in order to improve genetics research, we need free and open access to genetic information. But while the…
What are we going to do about media regulation? This week saw release of the 81 page report of the Convergence Review, an Australian Government document that deals with broadcast regulation and offers…
When the report of the Independent Inquiry into the media and media regulation, aka Finkelstein inquiry, was released some time ago, it was denounced as sinister and – like the Leveson Inquiry in the UK…
The Australian Financial Review has published allegations that a “secret unit” within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation undertook a program of piracy against pay television operators in a bid to damage…
IDEAS AND OWNERSHIP: The concept of protecting ideas and innovation by legal means dates back to antiquity. But in the age of the internet and multinational business models, many of the existing laws are…
Santa has arrived early this year, with good news for consumers, lawyers, journalists and people who wonder about the legitimacy of Australian patent law. Yesterday, the Australian Federal Court released…
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