NDPSC CHALLENGE AND PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE THERAPEUTIC GOODS ACT
by Janice Hirshorn
In Roche v National Drugs and Poisons Schedule Committe [2007] FCA 1352 , Roche unsuccessfully challenged the NDPSC's decision to remove Xenical from Appendix H of the Poisons Standard. An unexpected consequence of the case has been proposed amendments to the Therapeutic Goods Act 198 (Cth). Justice Branson concluded that the NDPSC's decisions are legislative rather than administrative in character, and therefore the Poisons Standard could be considered to be a legislative instrument, although it had not previously been treated as such. The new legislation will regularise the situation and will also mean that sponsors' grounds of review of NDPSC decisions will be limited to those available under the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), rather than the more extensive grounds available under the Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act 1977 (Cth).
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CAN A FEW LINES OF CODE BE A "COMPUTER PROGRAM"?
by Martin Squires
A recent Federal Court case considered whether a few lines of code from within a much larger computer program can, by themselves, be a "computer program" under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). A programmer was alleged to have copied two files from a computer program called "WebStable". WebStable consisted of approximately 225,674 lines of code. The two files amounted to 497 lines of code.
One of the plaintiff's claims was that the copied files, considered in isolation, were "computer programs" (and thus entitled to copyright protection as a literary work). The Copyright Act defines a computer program as "a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result". The Court found that the files did fall within this definition. The instructions in each file were related by function, location and utilisation, and therefore constituted a “set of instructions”, thus copying those few lines of code amounted to copyright infringement, even though the few lines of code did not make up a substantial part of the larger program.
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CHANGES TO PROCEDURES FOR PATENT LITIGATION MATTERS
by Melissa McGrath
A meeting of the Sydney Judges and Registrars with Barristers and Solicitors, who represent parties in patent matters in the Federal Court, was held on 10 March 2008 to discuss proposed changes to procedures for patent litigation matters, to make it less expensive. Several proposals were made including: the introduction of a Patents list judge; the limitation on instances where an excuse that instructions are being sought can be relied upon; procedural mediation be undertaken by the parties to narrow the issues; amendment of pleadings after experts have been retained may only be made where viable grounds become open; a requirement that experts give a 15 minute oral statement explaining their written evidence to the Court before undergoing cross-examination; affidavits to be filed simultaneously, rather than having the applicant’s affidavits being filed before the respondent.
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Partner Profile
Patrick Sefton
Brisbane
Patrick practises in the areas of information technology procurement and implementation, intellectual property licensing and commercialisation, intellectual property and technology dispute resolution, and privacy and freedom of information law. Patrick has joint qualifications in information technology and law, and before commencing his legal career worked for several years as a professional software engineer, including in development of a legal expert system for the Commonwealth Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
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