HHR New Media, Entertainment and Technology Group

The proliferation of Internet use by children has undoubtedly challenged online service providers and technology providers alike.  Protecting children from the various risks posed by Internet use has been, and continues to be, a major concern, as safety issues including sexual solicitation, online harassment, bullying and exposure to illegal content become more and more prevalent.

On Wednesday, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, led by The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, issued a report entitled “Enhancing Child Safety & Online Technologies.”  The report was compiled at the request of the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking, comprised of 50 state Attorneys General.  The task force includes representatives from several well-known Internet social network and online service providers, including Google, AOL, Facebook and MTV Networks/Viacom.  The report, which was a year in the making, sought to determine the extent to which currently-available technology could help to address online safety risks to youths in the U.S., with a primary focus on social networking. 

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Earlier this week, in a decision that could have implications for the many media and technology companies providing streaming and on-line subscription services, the Federal Circuit upheld a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of RealNetworks in a patent infringement suit brought by Friskit, Inc.  The decision relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in KSR Int’l v. Teleflex, a case that substantially altered the framework to assess the patentability of inventions.  (HHR filed amicus briefs on behalf of a number of large technology companies in KSR at the certiorari stage and at the merits stage.  For a more detailed discussion of the KSR decision, here is an eAlert we prepared shortly after that decision was made.) Continue Reading »

What’s new in digital media?   Subscribe to digitalhhr.com to receive updates of the latest news:

• E-commerce sites, especially Amazon, the biggest of them all, got some bad news as the New York Supreme Court upheld the validity of a law requiring e-tailers to collect state sales tax. Amazon and Overstock.com sued based on a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that a company had to have a physical presence in the state to collect taxes.  Appeals are likely but for now, it looks likely that sales tax on e-commerce is inevitable.  More information is here.
• A task force has been formed by four Madison Avenue trade groups, with the support of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, to develop industry guidelines for new forms of online behavioral advertising and to lobby the government regulators and policymakers on the benefits to consumers.  The initiative is in response to potential government regulations that would limit new forms of online user targeting.  More details here.
• Reports out of Washington say that Julius Genachowski is being considered to take the chair of the Federal Communications Commission.  Although he was a former general counsel at the FCC and knows the agency well, he is better known as a digital media veteran, a longtime executive at InterActiveCorp and founder of a D.C.-based VC firm which has invested in numerous Web companies.  Here’s a piece from all things digital.com discussing the proposed appointment and industry reaction.
• Two consumer groups are set to appear before the FCC to seek an investigation into mobile ads.  The Center for Digital Democracy and US Public Interest Research Group claim that mobile ad firms don’t fully disclose the extent of the information they collect from consumers.  Here’s an article from the San Francisco Chronicle detailing the debate.

Probably the most critical set of provisions in a technology development contract is the one that defines the parties’ respective rights to use and exploit the developed technology–and its individual components–outside of the relationship formed by the contract.

At its core, the relationship between the developer and “developee”–the entity who is need of development assistance–has certain natural tensions and the parties’ interests are somewhat in conflict from the outset.  To better understand, let’s look at the hypothetical relationship between a “developee”–who we’ll call ACME, and the developer–who we’ll call JCN Corp. Continue Reading »