Dr. Guan Hong Tang is a lecturer at the School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. She was awarded a governmental scholarship in 1998 to undertake her Masters at Queen’s University Belfast, where she researched information technology (IT) and the law with focus on Chinese Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). She received her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. She is specialised in comparative IP law, with a particular interest in Chinese developments together with the influences of IT and culture. She is the founder of the Edinburgh University Confucianism Study Society and the co-director of the Asia-Pacific Institute for Cyber-law Studies.

Abstract

With its own characteristics, China has established a copyright system in its regime, within which the access public interest is highlighted on the one hand, and the authorship public interest has been imposed and taken further on the other. It also provides for public, non-criminal enforcement - copyright administrative enforcement. This will be explored in the light of an up-to-date case analysis in both actual and virtual enviroments.

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Tim Vollans is Principal Lecturer at Coventry Law School, Coventry University, England. He obtained his qualifying LLB law degree (with Honors) from Leeds University (UK), and subsequently qualified and practised as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, specializing in high value commercial and fiscal transactions. Retirement from practice enabled him to join Coventry University as a Senior Lecturer and to pursue his research interests at Birmingham University (UK) where he was awarded a LLM (by Research). Tim is a Register Practitioner in Higher Education (UK) and currently leads Coventry Law School’s new LLM in International Business Law and teaches on professionally accredited law and accountancy degrees. In addition, he undertakes advisory, moderation, and examining activities with a number of major organizations. Over the last 25 years he has published extensively in the professional and academic press.

Abstract

IT contracts often necessitate a myriad of contractual arrangements extending beyond the two principal contracting parties, and usually involving third party facilitation. In Imageview Management Ltd v. Kelvin Jack, the Court of Appeal (of England and Wales) has unreservedly confirmed that such facilitation does constitute agency, and unequivocally emphasised both the importance and the fiduciary nature of the consequential obligations and duties of the agent to the principal.
In particular, the agent’s receipt of a ‘secret benefit’ often falls short of a ‘bribe’ but may nevertheless constitute a breach of such obligations and duties. Moreover, it is often identified only retrospectively in the bitterness of the breakdown of the parties’ effective working arrangements. However, in determining the remedies applicable following a breach, the Court has evidenced only a slight preference for the twentieth century restitutional, rather than a Victorian penal, approach. That the penal approach remains in judicial contemplation necessitates careful management of contractual relationships, and documented disclosure of, and the principal’s consent to, both patent and obscured benefits.

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Paul von Nessen graduated from Duke University in 1971 and obtained his law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1974. After practicing law in Atlanta, Georgia, he obtained his LLM from Cambridge (1979) and relocated to Australia in 1980. In 2004 Professor von Nessen was awarded a Ph.D. on the use of comparative law in Australia.

Professor von Nessen has taught at Monash University, Macquarie University, the University of Melbourne, RMIT University, and the Queensland University of Technology. He has served as the Head of the Department of the Departments of Business Law at both the University of Melbourne and RMIT University and the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University, where he currently holds a predominantly research position. He also consults with McCullough Robertson, Lawyers, Brisbane.

Professor von Nessen has published widely in the areas of corporate law, commercial law and comparative law. With Professor Bill Lane and Mark Burden of Queensland University of Technology (co-authors of the paper presented at this conference), Professor von Nessen is currently involved in an Australian Research Council – funded project concerning the design and implementation of a data breach notification statute for Australia.

Mark Burdon is a PhD Candidate and Research Associate at the Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law.

Professor Bill Lane is the Clayton Utz Professor of Public Law at the Queensland University of Technology’s Faculty of Law.

Abstract

Advances in information and communications technologies during the last two decades have allowed organisations to capture and utilise data on a vast scale, thus heightening the importance of adequate measures for protecting unauthorised disclosure of personal information. In this respect, data breach notification has emerged as an issue of increasing importance throughout the world. It has been the subject of law reform in the United States and in other international jurisdictions. Following the Australian Law Reform Commission’s review of privacy, data breach notification will soon be addressed in Australia. This article provides a review of US and Australian legal initiatives regarding the notification of data breaches. The authors highlight areas of concern based on the extant US literature that require specific consideration in Australia regarding the development of an Australian legal framework for the notification of data breaches.

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Dr. Rolf Weber, Professor of Private, Business and European Law, is the Director of the European Law Institute and of the Centre for Information and Communication Law, Faculty of Law, University of Zürich. He is also a judge in Swiss and International Arbitral tribunals in commercial matters. Dr.Weber obtained his Dr.Iur degree from the University of Zürich. He was visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, visiting professor at the University of Hongkong and a partner in a law firm.

Abstract

The Internet of Things, an emerging global Internet-based technical architecture facilitating the exchange of goods and services in global supply chain networks has an impact on the security and privacy of the involved stakeholders. Measures ensuring the architecture’s resilience to attacks, data authentication, access control and client privacy need to be established. When establishing a legal framework, the four axes of globality, verticality, ubiquity and technicity should be taken into account. These four topics are best provided for by a regulatory framework established by an international legislator, which is supplemented by the private sector according to specific needs and thereby becomes easily adjustable. The contents of the respective legislation must encompass the right to information, provisions prohibiting or restricting the use of mechanisms of the Internet of Things, rules on IT-security legislation, provisions supporting the use of mechanisms of the Internet of Things and the establishment of a task force doing research on the legal challenges of the IoT.

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