Law and Innovation

L ast Friday, Google announced on its German blog that this summer the German Google News (hereafter "GGN") will change [1] (see here ). What are the consequences for German publishers? Does this new copyright law harm Google? Is Germany the only country against this product? Explanations. Google has (only) one mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. In other words, to serve hundreds of thousands of users and customers around the world.  Among the different (free) products/services created and proposed by Google to accomplish this mission,  Google News is certainly one of the most important one. Launched in September 2002, with the aim of selecting most up-to-date information from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm, “Google News has grown to 72 editions in 30 languages, and now draws from more than 50,000 news sources. The technology also powers Google’s news search. Togethe...

Did Facebook Small Team Work On a Big Idea?  Twitter's Vine vs. Facebook's Instagram Video App. T his morning, I read a couple of articles about the new Facebook's Instagram video app (check the video here ). It's still hard to know what people think about it in terms of comparison with Twitter's Vine... Some are upset about it ( for instance ). What is this new product exactly about? Basically, it's just another way to share your stories (what else can you expect from Facebook's mission?). " When you go to take a photo on Instagram, you’ll now see a movie camera icon. Tap it to enter video mode, where you can take up to fifteen seconds of video through the Instagram camera. (...) When you post a video, you’ll also be able to select your favorite scene from what you’ve recorded as your cover image so your videos are beautiful even when they’re not playing ", explained Instagram on its blog. Facebook was created to make the ...

Google Invokes First Amendment In The NSA PRISM Scandal  I t will not surprised me that Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo's Offices are under monitoring surveillance right now. Revelations about the PRISM program are not only revealing crispy details on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance methods, opening new debates about national security vs. personal privacy, but are also provoking fissures between U.S. Officials and all the technology companies involved in it; mostly Google. Yesterday, Google filed a " motion for declaratory judgement [1] of Google Inc.'s first amendment right to publish aggregate information about FISA Orders " (click here ). As you all know, the First Amendment states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press (underlined added) ; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition...

FOSS Patents: European Commission looking into competition-chilling effects of Android licensing practices

One of the most important and complex patent cases has just come to an end. The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the States, recently heard an extremely difficult biotech case: Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc ., No. 12-398, June 13, 2013 (hereafter 'Op.'). Its ruling is expected to have broad implications, not only in the U.S. but worldwide. The central question is: whether human genes could be patented? Put in a simple way: how genes, the basis for hereditary traits in living organisms, could become a company’s intellectual property; and who owns the gene?  In particular in the field of medicine, modern biotechnology is one of the key technologies of the 21st century, a major source of innovation and a global driver of economic growth. With annual net sales exceeding $90 billion, it's easy to understand the paramount importance of biopharmaceuticals to the pharmaceutical industry today. With all these new technologies, scien...

Introduction             S ince 2007, we are living in a world where the most used and important verb is ... TO SHARE. Indeed, we are constantly sharing all type of information/data (pictures, articles, videos, emails) sometimes even without realizing it anymore. Perhaps, we are becoming so obsessed by this 'sharing culture' that when we see amazing pictures on a social network or that a friend is travelling around the world for instance, we don't really pay attention anymore or, at least, we tend to believe that 'it's normal'. But 2007 is also the year when Facebook started to expand its business, Apple launched its first generation of IPhone, Google opened Gmail for everyone, etc. In other words, with these new technologies, data become more important than before... Of course, PRISM was also created! Yesterday, a prism was just transparent optical element that refracts light.. Today, it is considered as one of the bigges...

I just wanted to share this amazing video that kicked off  Apple WWDC 2013 Conference yesterday in San Francisco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JsBrI_ftKXw

According to LinkedIn, their mission is simple: "connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. When you join LinkedIn, you get access to people, jobs, news, updates, and insights that help you be great at what you do". With the recent changes on their homepage (see below), it seems that the world's largest professional network is becoming a social network (such as Facebook or Google+) or, at least, a "professocial" network, something like a professional network but with all the same features and characteristics that you expect to find in a social network. As we all noticed, LinkedIn recently added the ability for users to share your videos, images, documents, photos, presentations, etc. from the LinkedIn Profile Page and for some users, also from the Homepage. These new features have been added to the existing options to share status messages, links, or to mention someone or type a name on the Home News Stories Page...