Law and Innovation

A fter almost half a century of striving for unified patent protection throughout the European Union, one of the biggest single markets on the planet, the creation of a single EU patent system is within reach and should be a reality in 201 7 . However, the Unified Patent Court system still needs to be completed  [1] . With less than a week to go before October 1 , 2013 (deadline for the public, i.e. international companies, to submit their suggestions on the Unified Patent Court's Rules of Procedure  [2] )  things are getting a little more interesting. On Wednesday September 25, 2013 a group of 14 global innovators and users of the European patent system (among others, Google, Microsoft, HP, Intel, Yahoo, Apple, Samsung, and also non-IT companies such as Adidas and DHL), has sent an open letter   [4] to European Officials and decision-makers outlining their concerns about the coming change of this new Unified Patent Court. As innovators, these tech com...

Click here for the Apple Madness short video.  What do you think about it? Are people gadget obsessed or simply 'crazy'? 

In an effort to make piracy less visible copyright holders are sending dozens of millions of takedown notices to Google every month  [1] . On Monday, Google refused to comply with music industry group British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) DMCA notice asking to remove the Pirate Bay’s homepage from its search results. In the past year they’ve asked Google to remove more than 32 million URLs (pretty huge!)  [2] , and the search engine complied in nearly every instance. As you know, the Pirate Bay is one of the few torrent sites that doesn’t link to any infringing material on its homepage but that doesn’t prevent copyright holders from targeting it  [3] . Yesterday, by coincidence (?), Google released a comprehensive report called ‘How Google fights piracy’ detailing all its main efforts to fight copyright infringement/online piracy. Here are few highlights posted on Google Public Policy blog: ‘Better Legal Alternatives : The best way to fight piracy is with...

The New Apple iPhone 5S With A Fingerprint Scanner? A couple of days ago, at the Samsung IFA event, Samsung released a new smartphone (the Note 3) and a totally ‘new’ concept: a smartwatch (the Samsung Galaxy Gear). Surprisingly, considering the hype surrounding around a fingerprint reader/scanner, Samsung didn’t include this highly anticipated feature in the new phone. Instead, they introduced a new Air Command   [1] . This failure (?) leaves a huge room for Apple. Indeed, tomorrow (on September 10), Apple is also about to release a new phone (the iPhone 5S) with (most likely) a fingerprint scanner. It seems that Apple could end up being the first smartphone player to deliver this next generation biometric security feature. What’s exactly biometrics about? It is ‘the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data. In information technology, biometrics refers to technologies that measure and analyze human body characteristics, such as DNA, finge...