Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article from Forbes , the American business magazine, and TechCrunch , about Google's location history Browser "mapping" your movements:  "A recent story on TechCrunch highlighted a little-known feature of Google's mapping services; the ability to record and display a daily history of your whereabouts  [emphasis added]. The service is called  Location History and is available via a web browser when you’re logged into your Google account. What you get is a Google Maps display that includes a calendar to specify the date for which you want to review your travels. An hourly graph is displayed below the map so that you can mouse over a specific time to see your location at that hour. Google even provides a play button that will automatically scroll through the timeline for you.  This location data is coming from your smartphone or tablet, of course. Google’s apps have the ability to periodically track your location, rega...

Fresh and interesting article from Health Issues India about the next fighting front in the war over intellectual property: Hepatitis C in India: "In recent weeks, the international non-governmental organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that it supports the ‘patent opposition’ which has been filed recently at India’s Patent Office by the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK). The application aims to prevent US pharma company Gilead/Pharmasset from gaining a patent in India on sofosbuvir, a drug for hepatitis C, which will be launched here soon. Sofosbuvir is the first of several oral hepatitis C drugs expected to come to market in the coming year. It cures hepatitis C in a much shorter time period than today’s available treatment. Gilead is expected to charge around $80,000 for one treatment course of sofosbuvir in the US. As mentioned in this article in the Times of India, even if offered at a fraction of this price in dev...

Fresh and interesting article from Business Insider  about the war between the two tech Giants: Google Inc. and Apple Inc.  "This is an excerpt from "DOGFIGHT: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution" by Fred Vogelstein, published in October 2013 by Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. By 2010 Apple and Google were attacking each other on every possible front: in the courts, in the media, and in the marketplace. Android's surge in popularity was astonishing, and Andy Rubin, Eric Schmidt, and the rest of Google made no secret of their glee. It seemed that every chance they got during 2010 they would expound on how many monthly activations Android had racked up and how mobile devices were going to change the future of Google and the world. In an April 2010 interview with the New York Times, Rubin even predicted that Android was going to rule the entire mobile universe. The year before he had been worried ...

Belgium is not only famous for food (such as french fries, chocolates, waffles), beers and the statue of a little boy peeing in a fountain. We also have a Belgian boy reporter: Tintin! (and Snowy, of course).  In general, a copyright law prevents the unauthorized copying of a work of authorship. It is about protecting authors by rewarding them for their creative efforts. A copyright law grants certain exclusive rights (such as the right of reproduction and distribution) to the owner of a copyright in a work, for instance, a book. As it is the case with every right, the question is: how long should it last? The duration of copyright protection is the life of the author plus 70 years. As you will read in this article, Hergé died on March, 3 1983. Therefore, the copyright protection will lapse on March 3, 2053 (1983 + 70).  This fresh and interesting article is about a possible future copyright protection saga concerning Tintin character (from the IPKat ): ...

Fresh and interesting infographic about IP Theft from i-Sight: Copy(right) Cats: How Intellectual Property Theft Affects Everyone, Including You from i-Sight

Fresh and interesting article from Reuters about  U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging (IM) accounts around the world: 'The collection program intercepts email address books and "buddy lists" from instant messaging services as they move across global data links, the newspaper said in an article posted on its website, citing senior intelligence officials and documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The Post said analyzing that data lets the NSA search for connections and map relationships among foreign intelligence targets. The data collection takes place outside the United States, but sweeps in the contacts of many Americans, the report said, citing two senior U.S. intelligence officials. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, said the agency is focused on discovering and developing intelligence about foreig...

‘Inadvertent disclosures’ happened (Samsung’s counsel [1] ). Inadvertent (Adj.): failing to act carefully or considerately; inattentive (Collins Online Dictionary). A couple of days ago, F. Mueller IP expert (FOSS patent) published an interesting article about Samsung’s illegal disclosure of confidential information related to the secret Nokia-Apple patent license. In this case, the United States District Court (Northern District of California) seemed to be very ‘angry’ with Samsung and its outside counsel (Quinn Emanuel). From the start, the tone was set: ‘(…) Letting Samsung and its counsel investigate without any court supervision is unlikely to produce satisfactory results’ said Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal. What are the consequences of such a disclosure and what sanctions on Samsung’s actions might be taken by the Court? Unfortunately, it’s still hard to predict... The mere facts of this new  Apple Inc. (and Nokia) vs. Samsung Electronics Co . case...