American and French Perspectives on Trademark Keying: The Courts Leave Businesses Searching for Answers

Trademark owners in America and Europe are attacking the lucrative practice of selling search results and advertising linked to searches based on product names and trademarks, which is known as trademark keying. From makers of luxury products to travel companies, and insurance companies to home décor vendors, companies have sued Internet search providers to stop this practice that they believe amounts to trademark infringement. Recent cases against search engine companies in American and French courts reflect divergent views on the legality of the practice at this early stage of the debate. This Article evaluates recent rulings in both jurisdictions which illustrate the challenges that search engines and trademark owners face as they try to protect their interests

The FACT Act of 2003: Securing Personal Information in an Age of Identity Theft

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (“FACT Act”) makes incremental progress toward its goal of improving the protection of consumers and businesses in an age of increasingly sophisticated scams and cons. Congress enacted the FACT Act in order to further address the problems of identity theft, improve resolution of disputes over consumer credit information, enhance accuracy of consumer credit records, further regulate use of credit information, and broaden consumer access to credit information. The FACT Act imposes new business practices on companies that handle personal consumer information by requiring them to share with consumers information about data that has been collected and reported about them, as well as how and when that data is being used. Consumers and businesses may benefit from these changes if some harm has already occurred and, in any case, consumers should find that the accuracy and accessibility of their credit information has improved. However, they will find that prevention of future acts of identity theft was not the principal aim of the FACT Act and that other legislation and initiatives are necessary to adequately address these crimes

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead