Law and Innovation

Discussions about copyright rules for the digital age are rising. In the last quarter of 2017, the European Commission (“EC”) has been pretty busy to step up the fight against online piracy and counterfeiting; but online platforms also have a role to play. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of movies, TV shows, software and books are still available to download for free. In this article, we highlight some of the new proposals aiming at protecting copyright and ensuring that illegal content once taken down does not (too quickly) simply reappear. How does the Commission plan to step up the fight against counterfeiting and piracy? Apart from the  copyright proposal   reform adopted in September 2016, the EC recently published a number of important IP documents: -           A Communication paper on “ Tackling Illegal Content Online - Towards an enhanced responsibility of online platforms ”;   -    ...

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 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...