Panel explains the meaning of the Net

OLSWANG and Simmons & Simmons staff staged a discussion panel on the legal repercussions of hotlinking and cacheing at the Internet World UK conference at the Olympia Conference Centre last week.

Olswang partners Andrew Inglis and John Enser joined forces with Simmons & Simmons' Jeremy Morton to discuss the legal framework surrounding cacheing, a way of 'copying' web pages to speed up the viewing process, and in-line framing, which allows information such as adverts to be embedded in existing pages. They also looked at push technology, a means of proactively 'pushing' information out to users when they click on a particular page.

In addition, the panel discussed the implications of the Shetland Times v Shetland News case, in which an application for an interim interdict resulted in a judgment which held that copyright had been breached by hotlinking, whereby users clicking on a page have an automatic link to another web site.