Don’t Pan My Book, Buster! NYU Prof and Editor of the European Journal of International Law Accused of Libel for his OK of Uncomplimentary Book Review

Two highly esteemed German Law Professors write book reviews about the same book, authored by a Senior Law Lecturer domiciled in Israel.

ONE of the German profs writes a favorable review, but the OTHER prof pans the book. Ordinarily this is a “ho hum” situation on planet Earth. Your average academic book is read only by specialists in the field and has a small circulation – to our knowledge 250 sold books is already good. Who really cares? But in this case, there is a joker in the deck.

It is time to polish once more that tarnished old saying that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned….”

At Slaw.ca, Simon Fodden in Libel Accusation from a Book Review outlines the case:

“A professor of law at NYU and the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear in French criminal court to defend himself against a complaint of criminal libel lodged by … a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel. The basis for her complaint? Professor Weiler approved the publication of a review of her book … [a review] written by [an esteemed German professor of law], a review with which she disagreed and which [the professor] declined to withdraw upon her complaint to him.”

Read the full slaw.ca posting here, and take a look at the .pdf of the correspondence regarding this case between the author of the book and editor of the journal which published the book review.

Normally, we would favor the underdog, since we are not great friends of the peer-review “crony system” and because academics in writing reviews can sometimes be scornful pundits – we are not saying that was the case here – but it does happen. In the instant case, the book review in question is not our cup of tea – but, then again – when do we ever agree with the mainstream critics? Books and their reviews are always a matter of opinion – everyone knows that. And we all have a right to our opinon.

However, after reading the statements of the book’s author in the .pdf cited above, we are not on the side of the book author at all. Her statements and actions have far more greatly stained her reputation in our eyes than any possible negative statement in a book review.

See in this regard, Opinio Juris, Criminal Libel for Publishing a Critical Book Review? Seriously? by Kevin Jon Heller. We agree.

Our question to close is whether the problem here is the book author’s overzeal
or rather an antiquated French legal system which is thus far permitting this circus.

Consider that the case involves:

1) a book published in the Netherlands
2) authored by an Israeli who studied in France (who may be a French national?)
3) a book reviewed by a German national
4) which review was published by an American
5) in a European Journal
6) whose main contact address is in Italy.

Read in this regard Book Reviews, Criminal Libel, and the Jurisdiction of French Courts at ConflictofLaws.net by Gilles Cuniberti.

World Financial Crisis – The Worst is Over Says Blackstone’s Schwarzman

World Financial Crisis – The Worst is Over Says Blackstone’s Schwarzman

Jason Kelly writes:

“February 26, 2010 from Bloomberg — Blackstone Group Inc., the world’s biggest private-equity company, paid Chairman Stephen Schwarzman a salary of ….

Schwarzman, 63, told investors yesterday that “the worst is over” as markets stabilize and buyout managers are able to sell some assets and make deals.”

Apricots?

Apricots?

Did the Federal Circuit Misapply the Transformative Standard in Bilski in Prometheus Labs v. Mayo?

I had been meaning for quite some time to comment on what appears in this quarter to be a clearly erroneous holding on the law in the Federal Circuit’s ruling in the Prometheus case (Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services), currently on petition for certiorari as follows:

No. 09-
In the Supreme Court of the United States

MAYO COLLABORATIVE SERVICES (D/B/AMAYO
MEDICAL LABORATORIES) ANDMAYO CLINIC
ROCHESTER,
Petitioners,
v.
PROMETHEUS LABORATORIES, INC.,
Respondent.
__________

Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
__________

PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
__________

JONATHAN E. SINGER
JOHN A. DRAGSETH
Fish & Richardson P.C.
3200 RBC Plaza
60 South 6th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402
(612) 335-5070

EUGENE VOLOKH
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095

STEPHEN M. SHAPIRO
Counsel of Record

TIMOTHY S. BISHOP
JEFFREYW. SARLES
Mayer Brown LLP
71 South Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 782-0600

Counsel for Petitioners

QUESTION PRESENTED

The Federal Circuit, reversing the district court, upheld Prometheus’s patent claims covering a process for correlating the level of certain chemicals in a patient’s blood with the patient’s health. By those claims, Prometheus seeks to monopolize the use of blood tests in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, such that a physician violates the patent merely by thinking about the correlation between the test results and the patient’s health or treatment. This Court granted certiorari to determine whether basic scientific relationships may be monopolized in this way in Laboratory Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Metabolite Labs., Inc., 548 U.S. 124, 135 (2006) (“LabCorp”), but dismissed the writ for lack of adequate issue preservation. Dissenting from dismissal, Justices Breyer, Stevens, and Souter explained that such patents are invalid under this Court’s precedents, and that resolving the issue presented in LabCorp was of great importance to innovative scientific inquiry and effective medical research and treatment.

The question presented is as follows:

Whether 35 U.S.C. § 101 is satisfied by a patent claim that covers observed correlations between patient test results and patient health, so that the claim effectively preempts all uses of these naturally occurring correlations.

Eugene Vokokh writes at the Volokh Conspiracy:

“As we argue in the petition,

Prometheus’s claims … attempt to exclude the public from using the results of basic human metabolic testing in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. They do so by claiming protection for the process of recognizing a correlation between the level of certain chemicals in the patient’s blood and the patient’s health…. [T]he claims are silent as to what should be done with such correlations and as a result purport to cover and thus preempt all possible uses of the biological correlations….

Prometheus’s broad patent claims attempt to turn a physician’s thought processes into infringement…. Importantly, Prometheus’s claims do not recite what is to be done once the physician recognizes the correlation [based on blood test results]. As a result, the claims cover and preempt all such uses. They begin and end with observation of the test results. What the physician might do with that observation is irrelevant because simply thinking about the subject suffices to infringe the patent. As Prometheus’s expert testified, if the physician reads an email with the test results, it would not matter if she “crumples it up, throws it away, reads it, acts on it, doesn’t act on it, any assumptions you want to come up with.” The physician infringes the moment she recognizes the correlation. “

As previously noted, I wanted to comment this case already before the petition for certiorari, but I did not get to it. However, I was once again jogged into action recently when I ran across the following posting by Eric W. Guttag at CAFC: Method for Calibrating Drug Dosage Is Transformative | IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law where he writes inter alia:

“In reversing the district court’s ruling in Prometheus, Judge Lourie, writing for the Federal Circuit panel, was faced with the unenviable task of trying to reconcile the “natural phenomena” prohibition with the Bilski “machine or transformation” test. First, Judge Lourie concluded that the “administering” and “determining” steps of the patented drug dosage calibration method were “transformative.” Specifically, the “transformation is of the human body following administration of a drug and the various chemical and physical changes of the drug’s metabolites that enable their concentrations to be determined….

With all due respect, Judge Lourie’s opinion in Prometheus is clear evidence of how tortuous it is to apply the Bilski “machine or transformation” test objectively to drug dosage calibration methods like those in Prometheus. In fact, the earlier non-precedential 2008 per curiam decision in Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. v. Biogen Idec presaged how arbitrary the Bilski test can be when applied to such drug/medical dosage calibration techniques. Classen, which came out not long after Bilski, is astounding for its brevity (one paragraph of 69 words), or as Kevin Noonan poignantly observed, the claimed method for essentially calibrating an immunization schedule for a treatment group, relative to a control group, was longer than the opinion by 20 words. But more significantly and as I commented when it came out, Classen is ghastly for completely failing to explain how this “new” Bilski test was applied to the claimed immunization schedule calibration method. And while Prometheus does far more than Classen to explain how Bilski should be applied to such drug/medical dosage calibration methods, I still see much “straining” in Judge Lourie’s opinion in trying to reconcile the “natural phenomena” prohibition with the “machine or transformation” test.”

Read Guttag’s full posting here.

We agree that the Federal Circuit opinion is “strained”, to put it mildly. Judge Lourie’s patent decisions do not bear the good seal of the future in our book.

Guttag’s reasoning reminded us of the core logic in Lab Corp v. Metabolite Labs, where certiorari was dismissed as improvidently granted. The Fire of Genius wrote about that:

“Reviewing LabCorp’s brief on the merits, as well as a number of amicus briefs, Crouch reported in December 2005 that “[a]ccording to LabCorp, the claim involves ‘no actual invention beyond the scientific discovery it recites.’ The claimed correlation is a scientific principle or law of nature, and its discovery alone cannot be patentable,” according to LabCorp.”

In view of the upcoming Supreme Court decision in the Bilski case, it is most certainly instructive to look at the Federal Circuit’s confused decision in Prometheus, where the holding, to again quote Guttag, was as follows:

“[T]hat the “administering” and “determining” steps of the patented drug dosage calibration method were “transformative.” Specifically, the “transformation is of the human body following administration of a drug and the various chemical and physical changes of the drug’s metabolites that enable their concentrations to be determined….“

EVERY legitimate medication or diagnostic test – patentable or not – will in some manner affect the human body, so that the impact of any medication or diagnostic test on the human body is, in our view, NOT the transformative element required by Bilski. All medicines and diagnostic tests by their very nature are intended to cause changes or measure changes in the human body, but the human body is not thereby “transformed” but remains the fundamental human body that it is. Standard blood tests are not a “transformation”. Nor can it be that any medication or test is transformative simply because the patent claimant claims that it affects the human body.

Rather, the medication or the diagnostic test must itself involve a physical transformation of the invention vis-a-vis prior art. A needle that takes human blood for blood testing can be improved in form and function – THAT is an invention, but such a needle can not claim a monopoly on blood-taking. Similarly, a well-calibrated thermometer can be improved in its physical technology to measure the not always constant human temperature by various means and at various locations on or in the body, but it can not thereby claim a monopoly on calibrated thermometers to measure human temperature or reserve certain areas of the body as monopoly zones. Similarly, radioisotopes or – less effective – dyes are injected into the human body as aids in finding lymph nodes nearest to tumors, but no one should be able to claim an exclusive monopoly on using these methods for diagnosis. Particularly the latter example is closely analogous to Prometheus because the injected material is used for diagnosis and the human body is “affected”, i.e. “marked”, by the injection. That is not the transformation that Bilski is talking about.

On petition for certiorari, Mayo correctly asks the Supreme Court, as noted at Patently-O:

“Whether 35 U.S.C. § 101 is satisfied by a patent claim that covers observed correlations between patient test results and patient health, so that the claim effectively preempts all uses of these naturally occurring correlations.”

Obviously, the answer is no, and we hope that the SCOTUS is wise enough to so find.

As the Federal Circuit wrote – without, however, holding accordingly – this is an attempt to patent methods – rather than a physically transformed invention:

“Prometheus is the sole and exclusive licensee of the ’623 patent and the ’302 patent. The patents claim methods for calibrating the proper dosage of thiopurine drugs….”

Naturally occurring correlations viz. processes in the human body – if the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) correctly decides the matter – can never serve as the basis for a transformative patent claim. Otherwise, this would grant ANY medication or diagnostic test monopoly rights on the respective affected naturally occurring correlation in the human body that is being medicated or diagnosed, and no other medication or diagnostic test would be able to impact or test those correlations or processes without violating somebody’s patent.

Medical devices or diagnostic test kits that test naturally occurring correlations or processes can be patented, but the correlations or processes themselves can not be subject to patentable monopoly claims. That seems so elementary as to defy legal rebuttal.

As the – wrongly over-ruled District Court – had already correctly decided (we quote from the Federal Circuit opinion):

“The court stated that the inventors did not “invent” the claimed correlation; rather, “6-TG and 6-MMP are products of the natural metabolizing of thiopurine drugs, and the inventors merely observed the relationship between these naturally produced metabolites and therapeutic efficacy and toxicity.” Invalidity Opinion, 2008 WL 878910, at *7.”

Hence, the Prometheus case must be reversed and the Bilski standard must be clarified to point out that the transformative test must apply to the physical invention – here a diagnostic test – itself, not to its impact on human beings. Nearly EVERYTHING we make impacts human beings, one way or another. That is not the transformation Bilski is talking about.

In the instant case, Invention A – let us say Test Kit A – can test the metabolites X and Y and Invention B – a completely different Test Kit B – can test the metabolites X and Y, but Invention A can not bar any other inventions that test metabolites X and Y just because they test them. Rather, the physical test kit itself – if it is an invention – must be infringed for patent infringement to be present. Conversely, Test Kit B, if later in time to Test Kit A, must involve a physical transformation – which it does in this case – as the Mayo Kit – as opposed to previously existing Prometheus Kit – is intended to use different – and we presume, improved – calibration levels to determine toxicity. That’s progress. As the Federal Circuit wrote:

“Prometheus marketed a PROMETHEUS Thiopurine Metabolites test (formerly known as the PRO-PredictRx® Metabolites test) that used the technology covered by the patents in suit. Mayo Collaborative Services and Mayo Clinic Rochester (together, “Mayo”) formerly purchased and used Prometheus’s test, but in 2004, Mayo announced that it intended to begin using internally at its clinics and selling to other hospitals its 2008-1403 own test. Mayo’s test measured the same metabolites as Prometheus’s test, but Mayo’s test used different levels to determine toxicity of 6-TG and 6-MMP…. Mayo rescinded its announcement shortly after the lawsuit was filed and still has not launched its test.”

As it stands, there is no transformative difference between the Prometheus calibration test and the hedge fund method that was found non-patentable in Bilski. Prometheus is not trying to get a monopoly on an invented medical device or to protect a patent on a particular invented Test Kit – it is trying to get a monopoly on a diagnostic method and is trying to prevent others from using that method anywhere, in any way and in any form, to the detriment of the health of everyone, and only for the sake of their own pocketbook.

REVERSED.

LawBrain – A Collaborative Forum for Legal Knowledge

LawBrain:

“LawBrain is a project of FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business, that is the world’s leading provider of online legal information and Internet marketing solutions for law firms. LawBrain was launched in December 2009 as a collaborative forum to pool legal knowledge and create an interactive online space for discussion of legal topics and terms.”

It’s Moot, It’s Smoot

Julianna Smoot announced as White House social secretary:
by Anne E. Kornblut at 44 Politics and Policy, Washington Post

We originally wanted to title this post It’s Moot – only, but we figured nobody would get it.

European Commission – Education & Training – External Programmes and Policies – Study In Europe

Want to study in Europe? This website can help.

European Commission – Education & Training – External Programmes and Policies – Study In Europe

“There are more than four thousand higher education institutions in Europe, from top-level research establishments to small, teaching-focused colleges. Europe itself is no less diverse, extending from the Arctic Circle to the coast of Africa, where tiny principalities sit side-by-side with many of the world’s leading economies.

A fascinating destination, but which country should you go to? Which university should you choose? What do you need before you leave? What will happen when you arrive? These are just some of the questions you’re probably asking yourself already.

Study in Europe is here to help. We provide up-to-date information on thirty-two European countries, their universities and what it takes to live and study in them.

Use Study in Europe to find the university that suits you best. A well-informed decision will make your time abroad even more valuable.”

Cross-country study: Economic policy challenges in the Baltics – ECFIN – European Commission

Cross-country study: Economic policy challenges in the Baltics – ECFIN – European Commission pdf [2 MB]

(European Economy. Occasional Papers. 58. February 2010. Brussels. Internet only. 106pp. Tab. Graph. Ann. Bibliogr. Free.)
KC-AH-10-058-EN-C ISBN: 978-92-79-15024-1 ISSN: 1725-3187

Summary for non-specialists pdf [70 KB]

“The study reviews the process of economic transformation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the early years of these countries’ regained independence to the current downturn. In particular, the study examines macroeconomic and budgetary developments and policy, real and financial integration with the rest of the EU and medium-term challenges to optimise growth prospects. The emphasis lies on inferring policy lessons for small open economies undergoing rapid real and financial convergence, including the positive contribution which pursuing prudent policies over the medium term can make, also at a time of a crisis.”

doi:10.2765/39481″

ePractice.eu : eGovernment and eInclusion in Europe

Here is a useful site for government facts and doings in Europe: ePractice.eu.

“ePractice.eu is a portal created by the European Commission which offers a new service for the professional community of eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth practitioners. It is an interactive initiative that empowers its users to discuss and influence open government, policy-making and the way in which public administrations operate and deliver services.

ePractice.eu involves practitioners from all 27 Member States, EU-member candidate states and EFTA countries. Practitioners from other countries outside the EU are also welcome to join.”

They have a very useful set of factsheets at “An overview of the eGovernment and eInclusion situation in Europe“:

“The ePractice eGovernment and eInclusion factsheets aim to provide an overall picture of the situation and progress of eGovernment and eInclusion in 34 European countries: EU Member States, EU Candidate countries and EFTA countries. Local editions of the ePractice eGovernment factsheets are being produced in cooperation with local organizations. Print copies of the ePractice eGovernment factsheets are available upon request and stock availability. For more information about print copies please contact idabc@ec.europa.eu”

Xerox Files Patent Suit Against Google and Yahoo for Various Alleged Search Method Infringements while Congress Twiddles and Bilski Festers at SCOTUS

And now comes Xerox, the xeroxing document company,
who we all know invented “search”.
Hah!
You have to love the absurdity of the U.S. patent system – CHAOS.

Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek, February 23, 2010, reports that Xerox [has filed a] Patent Suit Against Google [and] Yahoo claiming triple damages – of course – and claiming that various elements of Google and Yahoo search violate Xerox patents on methods and apparatus for integrating information and knowledge.

But what else can we rightly expect, given the state of the current patent law?

As Claburn notes at the end of his article in connection with this suit:

“The most recent proposed legislation, the Patent Reform Act of 2009, has been sitting in committee in the Senate for almost a year.”

And we ask of the U.S. Supreme Court – will their upcoming now long-festering decision in Bilski put an END to the PATENT MADNESS?

We doubt it.

Take a look at this Federal Circuit decision from February 25, 2010 (yesterday) in which many brilliant human legal minds – perhaps we exaggerate – are involved in supremely important cogitation on the crucial patent invention (?) of “static” prices not found (?) in prior art – that’s what the jury determined folks – surely experts on the matter, we presume, but fear not, for the dynamic “re-centering” of “price levels”, such as could not be disabled by the user, was declared as a significant “non-static” element of the exculpated non-infringing competition, who were thus dynamically “in motion”. That’s what the courts found, more or less, broadly described, tongue-in-cheek.

What sane man would believe that the USPTO ever issued a patent for essentially that?
Static prices in any inventive context as an “invention”….?

Not in our world, but perhaps we do not live in the same world as the USPTO?

You see, we view the world like this. Prices can be either static or dynamic in ANY context and any invention or method can USE that non-inventive phenomenon to their advantage or disadvantage, but they can not INVENT that phenomenon in the context of any method. Prices are not a transformed element and can not be used as a material basis for obtaining a patent. Why do legislators and courts not understand the difference?

Progress on Patent Reform in the European Union (EU)

James DeGiulio writes at Patent Docs in Europe Takes Step Closer to Single EU Patent and Patent Court that:

“On December 4, 2009, the European Competitiveness Council unanimously adopted a legislative package designed to create a single EU patent and EU patent court….

The reform proposal still needs to undergo an official review by the European Council and the European Parliament … [and] the European Court of Justice has yet to deliver an opinion on the compatibility of the patent court and draft agreement with EU treaties. This opinion is expected at the earliest by summer 2010.”

Also in the EU, the wheels of patent legislation turn slowly.

US Patent Reform Agreement Allegedly Finally Achieved in the U.S. Congress

Diane Bartz for Reuters reported from Washington on February 25, 2010 at Tentative US patent reform pact reached [acc. to] Sen. Leahy writing that:

“Leading U.S. lawmakers have reached a tentative agreement to reform the nation’s patent system, said Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a leader in the effort.”

That report was updated by Bartz with more details at UPDATE 2-Tentative US patent reform pact reached-Sen. Leahy where she writes:

“[S]ources working on the issue said that the bill would require judges hearing patent infringement cases to play a gatekeeper role in helping identify appropriate damages.

The measure also gives the patent office the authority to set its own fees, said the sources, who asked to speak privately since they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

One has to be cautious about expecting anything this field since a nearly identical report of Congressional progress was made nearly one year ago, with little result.

The wheels of “comfortable” government and Congress itself sometimes seem to move slower than USPTO patent applications, and THAT is slow.

Administration Asks For Public Input On Intellectual Property Enforcement | Techdirt

Administration Asks For Public Input On Intellectual Property Enforcement | Techdirt

Court in Italy Convicts 3 Google Execs in Absentia for Privacy Violation Due to Delay in Takedown of Previously Flagged Objectionable Online Video

Italian Court Convicts 3 Google Executies in Absentia for Privacy Violation Due to Delay in Takedown of Flagged Online Video

Via Sylvia Poggioli at npr.org, the Associated Press informs us that:

“An Italian court convicted three Google executives of privacy violations Wednesday because they did not act quickly enough to remove [an objectionable] online video….

In the first such criminal trial of its kind, Judge Oscar Magi sentenced the three in absentia to a six-month suspended sentence and absolved them of defamation charges….

Google Italy, which is based in Milan, said it took down the video two hours after being notified by police, as is required by law. Prosecutors argued that viewers had flagged it well before police contacted Google, and the fact that it shot to the top of a ‘most entertaining videos’ list on the Italian site, had 5,500 views and 800 comments during the two months it was online meant it should have been noticed sooner. [emphasis added]

Thanks to the footage and Google’s cooperation, [the young criminals responsible were] identified and sentenced by a juvenile court to community service. The events shortly preceded Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube.”

Read the full story here.

There is a saying in jurisprudence that hard cases often make bad law and this is such a case. No normal person wants to condone the online publication of the type of objectionable material in question, but there are no laws on the books – also not in Italy – that Internet providers have to pre-screen material posted to the Internet, nor are they required by law to screen such material within a given time period if such material is “flagged” by users as objectionable, nor are there standards in place for what kinds of “flagged” material must be taken down – or not. Who is to play the role of the “judicial God” in such cases?

Indeed, as noted in the posting cited above:

“In the United States, the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally gives Internet service providers immunity in cases like this, but no such protections exist in Europe.”

One reason for that of course is that the European Commission and its EU lawmakers are still asleep on many critical issues of Internet governance and competent leadership should be found in Brussels to move things forward.

The Italian judge in this case of course rightly wants to put an end to the uploading of this kind of material, but imposing criminal sanctions on executives of Internet providers is most certainly not the right legal path to do this, as it inflicts punishments upon those who are totally unaware – given the state of the laws – that they are committing a crime (within the definition of the law). That of course is an absurd result, legally seen.

Using the criminal law against Internet providers in court is also a flagrant violation of the basic rules that apply to the imposition of criminal sanctions. See Herbert Packer and The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. The criminal law is not a cure-all for all social ills.

It is up to the legislatures – and NOT the courts – to remedy the Internet situation by legislating appropriate – reasonable – standards. It is simply not the job of any judge to MAKE “his” law in a case such as the one at issue here, even if that judge might wish that the law on the books supported his well-meant intentions in this particular case.

This appears to be an instance which must soon be corrected by the legal system in Italy because it erodes the basic foundations upon which the entire Internet is built. One can not make Internet builders or their lawful representatives criminals in the courts just because of the many criminals out there in society who criminally use the new technologies that they have devised. That – my dear judge in Italy – can NEVER be the law.

Otherwise, we might as well shut down the entire mobile communications of the world because it is known by everyone that mobile (cell) phones are used for criminal purposes, also in the political sphere. Making executives of mobile communications companies criminally liable for such use would be as equally absurd as the Italian decision in this case.

The fault is not with Google. The fault is with Italy. Get your laws straightened out folks. Present the companies of the world with clear legislative standards in your jurisdiction and those companies will abide by them, simply as a matter of good business practice.

Outsourcing and Data Protection in the European Union: EU Standard Contract Clauses Must Be Changed Regarding Overseas Transfers of Personal Data

Out-law.com alerts us to the fact that a recent formal Decision of the European Commission requires that Model clauses for overseas transfers of personal data be updated, writing

“Outsourcing companies outside the EU will now have to get written permission to subcontract the processing of personal data after the European Commission changed arrangements permitting the export of such information.

The EU’s data protection regime limits the export of personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) which comprises the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

A small handful of countries have proved their data protection regimes the equivalent of the EU’s and so are permitted to receive personal data without further steps (Switzerland, Canada, Argentina, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey), while the US has a special arrangement, the Safe Harbour scheme, under which participating US companies can receive data if they promise to abide by rules over and above US law.

For transfers to all other countries there must be specific data protection contractual arrangements in place before the personal data of EU residents can be sent to companies based there for processing. The European Commission produces standard clauses that are used in such contracts.

The Commission has changed the terms of those clauses to allow companies in non-European Economic Area (EEA) countries to sub-contract work, but only with the explicit permission of client companies.” [emphasis added]

Read the full article here for more details and a link to an Out-law.com guide to overseas transfer of personal data.