David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a practice focusing on technology issues and technology companies.
The Wall Street Journal has an article describing how the TJX data thieves broke into the TJX systems to steal the credit card data. It started with the interception of wifi signals.
And look at how much this will cost TJX – $1,000,000,000.
This is a must read for CIO’s, and anyone in charge of data security.
The Federal Government committee reviewing PIPEDA has released its report recommending 25 changes to the privacy law. Many of the changes are welcome, and many suggest adopting approaches taken in Alberta and BC provincial privacy legislation.
For the most part the changes can be considered housekeeping or clarification matters. There do not seem to be any fundamental changes.
One recommendation I was expecting was to make privacy breach notification mandatory. The report discusses the issue and the various suggestions made. Its recommendations are not for a direct disclosure, but to require disclosure to the privacy commissioner, who will decide if disclosure is necessary. I’m not convinced that middle ground will be effective or practical.
But these are just recommendations by the standing committee. The government now has to consider these, draft changes, and propose amending legislation. This ties into the priorities of the minority government – so expect it later rather than sooner.
Slashdot has a post that says that Business 2.0′s editorial system recently crashed, wiping out their June content. Seems their backup server didn’t do its job, and they had to redo it all.
The post points out the irony that this would happen to a publication that has written articles about the importance of backups.
The lesson is that unless you can actually restore from a backup, its not really a backup. The systems need to be tested to make sure.
The US Supreme court issued its ruling this week in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. that is being applauded. I’m certainly not qualified to opine on US patent matters, but in essence, to obtain a patent, the innovation cannot be obvious. Many patents have been criticised for being issued with too low of a threshold for obviousness. That’s a bad thing as it can lead to innovation chill.
This decision may mean that we will see fewer patents of questionable innovation being issued, and some existing patents being challenged.
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