Law and Innovation

C’est sans aucun doute la bataille juridique la plus importante de la Silicon Valley depuis des années. Fin février, nous vous annoncions l’action judiciaire intentée par Waymo, filiale d’Alphabet Inc. (ex-Google), à l’encontre d’Uber et sa filiale Otto. Google avait accusé son ex-ingénieur d’avoir copié 14.000 documents confidentiels avant de rejoindre Uber. Le juge américain vient de donner le feu vert : les deux superpuissances vont maintenant au procès. Un enjeu de taille L'enjeu est un marché qui pourrait valoir, un jour, des dizaines de milliards de dollars et renverser toute l'industrie automobile. Il s’agit tout simplement du marché naissant de la course aux voitures autonomes. Le PDG d'Uber, Travis Kalanick, déclarait encore récemment que « l'avenir de l'entreprise repose sur sa capacité à déployer des voitures autonomes et qu'il pourrait tout perdre si une autre société comme Waymo battait Uber sur le marché  ». Ce procès « explosi...

Fresh and interesting article posted on TechCrunch about how Twitter's stock has been under pressure for months, as the company struggles to boost user growth and the potential sale. Happy reading! "Twitter continues to inch its way to a sale process, and the latest developments come in the form of alleged bids from potential buyers. Today CNBC is  reporting , and we have also independently heard, that both  Google  and  Salesforce  are interested in buying the company. We have additionally heard that  Microsoft  and  Verizon  have also been knocking, although  right now  Verizon (which also owns AOL, which owns us), may have a little  too much  on its plate. Twitter currently has a  market cap of $13.3 billion , and it opened for trading today with a jump of nearly 22%, in response to all these whispers. Google, Microsoft and Verizon have been reported as potential suitors in the...

Fresh and interesting article posted on the WIPR about Samsung’s writ seeking to restrict “unjustified windfalls” in design patent cases at the U.S. Supreme Court level.  Happy Reading! Pressure is growing on the US Supreme Court to grant Samsung’s writ seeking to restrict “unjustified windfalls” in design patent cases, after Google and Facebook threw their weight behind the Korean company in its dispute with Apple. Both parties filed an  amicus  brief along with eBay, Dell and HP, arguing that if an earlier decision to award Apple total profits from the sale of Samsung’s smartphone products that infringed Apple’s design patents is left to stand, it would “lead to absurd results and have a devastating impact on companies”. “Awarding a design patentee the total profit from an infringer’s product when the design covers only a relatively minor portion of the product is out of proportion with the significance of the design and out of touch with economic realities,...

Fresh and interesting article posted on FOSS Patents about the Oracle v. Google Android-Java copyright case. The suspense was all killing us but yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States finally denied the petition for a writ of certiorari. Happy reading! "The copyrightability of code relating to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) may elicit more heat than light from a small but vocal group of people. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, has not concluded that there is anything quite so special about the subject that Google's petition for writ of certiorari (request for Supreme Court review) in Oracle's Android-Java copyright case should be granted. At its Thursday conference, the court denied the petition, as just reported by Reuters court reporter Dan Levine on Twitter . And as he accurately noted , this is a "huge victory" for Oracle. The order list is now available online. On page 11 you can find this entry: 14-410 GOOG...

Fresh and interesting article posted on Patently Mobile about Google's invention for a set-top box, a box-shaped device that converts the signals from a digital TV broadcast into a form which can be viewed on an analogue TV set, with an integrated wireless powering and/or charging station (commonly known as inductive charging). In other words, Google wants to eliminate the different cable for charging the batteries of the portable electronic devices. Happy reading! "(...)  Google's Patent Background Television is the prevalent global medium for entertainment and information despite the increase in use of smartphones and tablets throughout the past several years. A set-top box (STB) connects a television to an external source that provides a signal to the television. The STB usually contains a tuner for tuning the received signal and displaying the content (i.e., video, audio, internet web pages, interactive video gaming) on the television screen. The signal is ...

Fresh and interesting article posted on TechCrunch about the Report of the Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten following the Court of Justice of the European Union’s ruling in Google Spain and Inc. vs. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja Gonzalez C131/12 (“the Ruling”) in May 2014.  It should be noted that this ruling doesn't establish a general "Right to be Forgotten" . As explained in the report, the implementation of the Ruling doesn't have the effect of “forgetting” information about a data subject. Instead, i t requires Google to remove links returned in search results based on an individual’s name when those results are “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive”. Therefore, Google is not required to remove those results if there is an overriding public interest in them “for particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life" (see report, p.3). Happ...

Recently, the Supreme Court of the United Sates, the highest federal court in the United States, has sought help from the Solicitor General concerning whether it should hear a Android-Java copyright case between Oracle America and Google.  The U.S. Supreme Court has so far not confirmed whether it will hear the case.  Instead, "[t]he Solicitor General is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States". As explained on the Department of Justice's site , this person (Donald Verrilli) "determines the cases in which Supreme Court review will be sought by the government and the positions the government will take before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys, Deputy Solicitors General and Assistants to the Solicitor General, participate in preparing the petitions, briefs, and other papers filed by the government in the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General conducts the oral arguments before the Supreme Court". As a reminder...