Law and Innovation

L’essor du numérique a constitué un véritable espace privilégié pour le « revenge porn ». Une fois qu’une photo est publiée sur Internet, il est en effet difficile de la supprimer définitivement. Les conséquences pour les victimes peuvent être dramatiques. Ce fléau digital, au même titre que le cyber-harcèlement, sévit plus précisément sur les réseaux sociaux (e.g. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.). D’après une récente étude, les femmes représentent 80 à 90 % des victimes de vengeance pornographique. Applicable depuis le début de l’été, le législateur belge vient de modifier le Code pénal afin de renforcer le caractère punissable de ce type de comportement. La personne qui s’en rendra coupable encourra désormais une peine d’emprisonnement de 5 ans. Si des mineurs sont concernés, cette peine pourra aller jusqu’à 10, voire 15 ans de prison s’il s’agit d’enfants de moins de 16 ans. Détaillons. 1.       Qu’est-ce que le « revenge porn...

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...

Following an article on what startup should do in order to protect a mobile application idea (see here ), it may also be important for startup to register a trademark as a username on social media/networks websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Instagram, etc. Indeed, we are living in a world where the next Facebook, Google+ is about to come. Ello, for instance, the ad-free social networking service created by Paul Budnitz and Todd Berger in March 2014 could be the next one. If you don’t want a “competitor-user” stealing your username and misusing your brand, you should be the first to secure and reserve it; and read this article! Ello's  smiley face logo Let’s start with a crazy scenario. You just graduated, have a brilliant idea that’s solving an important daily problem, and are one of the best startups ready for the battlefield at the next TechCrunch Disrupt in front of a panel of expert judges, press, and an online audience of millions. Fantastic! Wha...

Fresh and interesting article posted on the IPKat IP Blog about the introduction in Spain of a new intellectual property legislation that will charge the free Google News service for showing snippet from  Spanish publishers  publications. As a result, Google will remove Spanish publishers from this service, and close Google News in Spain. Happy Reading! "IPKat readers will remember that last year Germany introduced an   ancillary right  that grants press publishers the exclusive right to exploit their contents commercially for one year, thus preventing search engines and news aggregators from displaying non-insignificant excerpts of newspaper articles without paying a fee.  As explained  here , the German initiative was aimed at recouping  some of the revenues that traditional news publishers have lost to the web. The underlying idea was also that news aggregators like Google News would not really boost visits to newspaper webs...

(Article published in the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law, International Associates Action Group Newsletter , p.15).   I nnovation continues to outpace the law. Since the last six years, the convergence of cloud-based products/services with the consumption and distribution of entertainment content is producing a large number of conflicts and legal uncertainty in the television industry. Indeed, the scope and bounds of copyright law remain ill-equipped to tackle this rapid pace of technological advancement. The question remains: are we not in presence of a “loophole” in the law?    Following the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of the TV content owners ( American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Aereo, Inc ., 573 U.S. ___ (2014)) concluding that “Aereo performs petitioners’ copyrighted works publicly” infringing this exclusive right by selling its subscribers a technologically complex service that allows them to watc...