Law and Innovation

More than a year ago, after the biggest Internet support ever against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Internet hacking group  Anonymous  calls for another Internet blackout on Monday April 22 nd . This time, it's against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), better known as the controversial law trying to control and censor the people. Before developing the reasons for this new online protestation, we should remember what exactly happened on January 18 th  2012 with SOPA. Based upon diverse concerns that SOPA would bypass the “safe harbor” protection of the DMCA, censorship the Internet, and violate the first amendment, for the first time in the Internet history, we saw a massive revolution from the Internet users and important Web 2.0 websites. The “Internet blackout” will certainly remain an example of the biggest Internet support ever. A few days later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the European Union...

J oaquin Almunia's circular picture is probably hanging in Google's EU Headquarter with a dart in the center of his nose... with the eyes the next potential target... More than two years ago, in November 2010, the European Commission  decided to open an antitrust investigation into allegations that the Internet giant has abused a dominant position in online search (in violation of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). Its core role is the regulation of monopolies. Although dominance alone is not an abuse, a company in a dominant position has a special responsibility to ensure that its conduct does not impair the competition. As of March 2013, in Europe , Google controlled 93% of the search engine market, over 97% of mobile search and 87% of search advertising revenue [1] . Even though I am a lawyer and I am not supposed to understand numbers (that's for engineers), it looks like Google nailed all the competit...

Google's next billion dollar acquisition:  WhatsApp! Rumor or truth? Founded in the heart of   Silicon Valley  in 2009, WhatsApp is today, without any doubt, one of the most famous mobile application (downloaded by over 100 million Android users alone since its debut... not too bad, right!). Like it or not, especially the (ring)tone on Android phones that you can hear all around you (and drives you sometimes really crazy!), this cross platform messaging app has almost (totally) killed the sms industry. Some rumors say that Google and WhatsApp have been in talks for over a couple of weeks and that the Internet Search Leader wants to buy it (and to combine it with its unified communication platform Babel) for $1 billion (only?!). In comparison to, YouTube was brought for $1.65 billion  in November 2006 . At that time, Youtube was a bit more than one year old. Today, 4 years later after its creation, WhatsApp has certainly a big ...

Welcome 'Home', Goodbye 'Apps'   The rumors that Facebook will announce its own smartphone on April 4th, an 'fphone' or 'Facephone' (or whatever you call it), to compete with the iPhone and the Galaxy S 4, were wrong. It's not a phone, it's not a new OS, or a fork of the Android operating system (like Amazon's Kindle fire), but its more than an app... it's an 'apperating system' (see Wired.com article ). It will turn your Android phone into a huge and simple social device. It's definitely easier to provide a free app for all the Android phones out in the world than selling phones... Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. This Home experience is definitely going in this direction... but perhaps too much? The Company created a new phone experience, to make it easier to connect, consume and share content with your family and friends in a way that you w...

Supreme Court of India, April 1st 2013. ABSTRACT The Supreme Court of India has rejected a plea by Novartis to patent a prima vacie updated version of a cancer drug Glivec. The court ruled that the new version was only slightly different (practice known as 'evergreening') from the  initial  one. This decision will allow generic drug-makers to continue to sell copies of the drug at far lower prices and ... saving lives. On the second page of the ruling, the Court was at pains to discuss the 'tension' presented in the case, i.e. ' to strike a balance between the need to promote research and development in science and technology and to keep private monopoly (called an ‘aberration’ under our Constitutional scheme) at the minimum. Arguments were made about India ’s obligation to faithfully comply with its commitments under international treaties and counter arguments were made to protect India ’s status as “the pharmacy of the world"'.   ...