A. TECHNOLOGY
1. Soccer club pilots 'smart scarf' to collect real time fan reaction
Manchester City, a football club operating in the top flight of English football, has partnered with CISCO Technologies to release the pilot of Connected Scarf, a "smart scarf" armed with sensors that the organization says will enable it to gauge fan emotions. According to the official Manchester City press release, the club has been piloting the accessory with six fans thus far and has recorded "over 120 moments of interest across the 90 minutes of a match." The scarf records a range of physiological measures, including heart rate, body temperature, and emotional arousal—and will enable the club to use the collected data to make "curated, customized experiences," for fans.
2. PDPC publishes guidance on blockchain design, cloud security
Singapore's Personal Data Protection Commission released new guidelines for data protection associated with deploying blockchain applications that process personal information. The guidance seeks to cover data-protection-by-design principles and potential accountability management measures to ensure safeguards within blockchain apps. The PDPC also published an infographic for cloud service providers containing best practices for data security in the cloud. This document intends to guide organisations in making these choices when storing personal data on a blockchain network.
3. Centre aims to make Big Tech pay for using content from news publishers:
The Central government is currently discussing a potential revision of the IT regulatory regime in India, to make Big Tech platforms (Google and Facebook) pay digital news publishers for using their content on their respective platforms. This follows from the policy moves in Germany, Australia, and Canada over the past 2 years to ensure digital news publishers are compensated for the use of their original content on Big Tech Platforms. Google is presently under investigation by the Competition Commission of India, for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the online news media market, over its advertisement revenue collection and distribution policies.
4. Joint study to analyse the IP impact of NFTs
The United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that they would be conducting the study, responding to a recent request by two lawmakers to establish how NFTs will change the IP field soon. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) formerly requested last month that the USPTO and Copyright Office work together on the study. The two offices also revealed that they would involve other stakeholders from the NFT industry and the two legislators.
5. Police Are Using Newborn Genetic Screening to Search for Suspects, Threatening Privacy and Public Health
A public records lawsuit filed in New Jersey this month details how police subpoenaed a new born blood sample to investigate a 1996 cold case. The State Police had re-opened an investigation into a "cold case" of sexual assault that had occurred in 1996 and had genetically narrowed the suspects to one of three brothers and their male offspring. By serving a subpoena upon the Newborn Screening Laboratory, the State Police allegedly sidestepped its constitutional obligation to develop probable cause and obtain a warrant "so that it could obtain a buccal swab from OPD's client to perform an analysis of his DNA". Typically, blood samples are collected from babies in the immediate hours after their birth, to test for a panel of potentially life-threatening inherited disorders. However, there is no uniform national policy for how new born screening is conducted, and such regulation is left in the hands of state governments. The lawsuit, filed jointly by the OPD and the non-profit organization New Jersey Monitor, now seeks to force the state of New Jersey to disclose information on the full extent of the practice.
6. CNIL closes Facebook cookie case
France's data protection authority, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, (CNIL) closed its case against Facebook regarding alleged cookie violations under the ePrivacy Directive. The CNIL gave the company three months to correct alleged consent issues related to the placement of third-party cookies on Facebook users that resulted in a 60 million euro fine from the CNIL in January. The regulator reserved the right to conduct compliance checks to ensure Facebook maintains its new practices.
7. Federal judge approves $92M TikTok class-action settlement
A US District Judge has approved a $92 million class-action settlement involving TikTok over a range of data protection violations, including of the Video Privacy Protection Act and Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The settlement resolves litigation stemming from 2019, which consolidated 21 complaints against the social media company. In addition to the monetary settlement, TikTok must avoid transmitting users' biometric or geolocation data on the clipboard within its application unless is discloses the data sharing in its privacy notice. It also requires the company to avoid sending user information to servers outside the U.S. without notice.
8. Artificial intelligence is not breaking patent law: EPO publishes decision
The EPO Board of Appeal has published its full decision on the question of whether a machine can be an inventor. The Board of Appeal had previously announced its decision to refuse two European patent applications naming an algorithm ("DABUS") as the sole inventor, within the patent application, at the end of last year. The decision demonstrates that the current patent system is more than capable of dealing with AI inventions when and if they arise, without harming innovation or treating the AI inventors unfairly. Under the EPC the inventor had to be a person with legal capacity. At least for this reason, the main request was not allowable.
9. Member States must prevent unlawful uses of GIs also in exports, says CJEU in Feta case
In its ruling delivered last week, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) found that Denmark had breached its obligations under Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012, by failing to stop the use of the Greek PDO "Feta" on cheese produced in Denmark and intended for export outside of the EU. The ruling originates from two complaints of the European Commission against Denmark over the production for exports of cheese under the name "Feta", that is: "Danish Feta" and "Danish Feta cheese". Greece claims feta as part of its cultural heritage because it has made the sheep and goat milk cheese for 6,000 years. Feta has been designated a traditional Greek product by the EU executive since 2002, giving it legal protection in the 27-country bloc.
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