Austin Technology Law Blog : Texas Technology Lawyers & Attorneys for Copyright, Trademarks & Software Licensing in Houston, Dallas & Austin TX

You will recall that we mentioned in February that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was proposing opening up the top level domain game to everybody.  ICANN has now approved that move by a vote in Singapore on June 20.  Applications for positions as new top level domain registrars will be accepted for a three month period beginning on January 12, 2012.

So, anyone with $185,000 and an infrastructure for doing registration acceptable to ICANN can get their own top level domain registration business.  As we mentioned before, this will greatly expand the present .com, .edu, .net scheme to anything you could imagine and that ICANN will approve.  This could include names relating to common interests (.badminton, .skiing or .coins), society segments (.democrats, .gay or .baptist), individual company or brand names (.ford, .ibm or .dell), professions (.doc, .law or .cpa) or any else that can be envisioned and approved.

Get your applications ready.

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We will be leading a discussion on "Ten Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing Agreements" at Austin RISE Week 2011 tomorrow at 4:00 pm at the PeopleFund offices at 207 Chalmers Avenue in Austin.  If you need something to do during that awkward time between afternoon coffee break and happy hour, come on out and share it with us.

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A few things for your consideration:

1.  The White House's proposed budget includes the authority for the USPTO to charge a surcharge on patent applications.  The proposed budget would provide $2.7 billion for fiscal 2012 with one of the stated objectives to reduce the backlog of 720,000+ applications.

2.  By Executive Order 13565 of February 8, 2011, the White House established two I.P. committees.  One is the Senior Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committee, which will facilitate the formation and implementation of each Joint Strategic Plan, which will be be developed by the other committee established, the Intellectual Property Enforcement Advisory Committee.  As is evidenced by their names (i.e. Senior and not Senior) the Senior Advisory Committee will be comprised of cabinet level members or their designees and the Enforcement Advisory Committee will be comprised of representatives from the USPTO, DOJ, Department of Commerce and others.

3.  Health and Human Services through its Office for Civil Rights has assessed its first ever civil penalty for violation of HIPAA.  The penalty was $4.3 million against Cignet Health of Prince George’s County, Md.  Cignet failed or refused to provide health records to at least 41 patients and then apparently stonewalled the patients and requests from the Office for Civil Rights to the extent that the Office for Civil Rights obtained a default judgment against them.  Cignet also apparently was uncooperative in the investigation into this affair.  The penalty was $1.3 million for failure to provide access to the records and $3.0 million for being uncooperative.

4.  Microsoft was successful in getting a patent infringement suit originally filed in the Eastern District of Texas transferred to the Western District of Washington on the grounds of forum non conveniens.  For some strange reason, there are a lot of patent infringement suits and class actions filed in the Eastern District of Texas.  The plaintiff here, Allvoice, was an U.K. company with an office in the Eastern District of Texas but with no employees there or anywhere in the U.S.  Calls there were transferred to their office in the U..K.  Allvoice was incorporated in Texas but had done so 16 days before the suit was filed.  Forum shop much?  The Circuit Court of Appeals issued a writ of mandamus compelling transfer to Microsoft's home court even though Microsoft had also petitioned to move the case the Southern District of Texas.

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Cyber security experts are scrambling to assess the past effects and the potential of a recently detected malware that has targeted utility systems primarily in the Middle East (beginning in Iran) and the United States. Microsoft has named the Trojan intruder “Stuxnet”.

On a very basic level, here is what Stuxnet does:
1. So far, it has targeted a Siemens system (SCADA) used primarily in the operation and control of electric power plants;
2. It has been carried on USB sticks that, when attached to a computer, automatically executes without any further action by a user, even if the AutoRun function is disabled;
3. The Trojan then seeks out and copies certain database information, including power plant designs;
4. Stuxnet exploits a flaw in the shortcut links files in Windows.

Microsoft has issued a work around that essentially turns off the shortcut function and changes the shortcut icons appearance on the screen.

So, if this only targets utility companies, unless you are a utility company or have one as a client, why should you care? Experts surmise that this was created to carry out industrial espionage but the same technique can be used for other targets. It could be used to target other trade secrets, personal financial information, medical records, etc.

We talked to a local security expert and there are reports that Stuxnet or variants are “in the wild” and could be delivered by a manner other than USB sticks via networks and remote web servers.

McAfee alleges that it has a defense against Stuxnet as does Symantec. As we noted in earlier posts (see here and here), these are examples of blacklisting. CoreTrace has demonstrated effectiveness against the intruder by using the whitelisting capabilities of its product Bouncer. See the YouTube video here:  http://bit.ly/bFCEdc.

This attack seems to be much more targeted and much more sophisticated that most of the prior threats and may herald a new age of malware menace.

So, it’s a dangerous cyber world out there. Use protection.
 

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One of initiatives contained in the newly passed healthcare reform bill is the move towards electronic health records.  This will obviously have a tremendous impact on data management by IT departments everywhere.  This article discusses some of the changes that we can expect after the "deluge of data."

"As the impact of the new law works its way through the healthcare system, Mark Bowker, analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said he expects to see more data center consolidation, greater challenges around database management and an uptick in desktop virtualization adoption.

Earlier this year, an ESG report found that the total 2010 healthcare IT spend will increase by 67 percent compared with last year. There also will be a 50 percent increase in new IT staff positions in 2010, ESG said."

The bill also contains potential IT opportunities in a number of other areas. 

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