Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article posted on The New York Times  about the third antitrust lawsuit Apple is facing on December 2 this y: "The Apple iPod iTunes Anti-Trust Litigation". U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers is presiding over the case. Happy reading! "SAN FRANCISCO — Three years after his death, Steve Jobs is very much a presence in courtrooms across the country. And that’s not necessarily good news for Apple. In December, the company is set to go to trial in the third major antitrust lawsuit it has faced since Mr. Jobs died. His emails will play an important role in the case, as they did in the last two. But lawyers will probably have to work hard to give his statements a positive spin. The potential damages — around $350 million — are a pittance for a company that in its last quarter had an $8.5 billion profit. Executives are often told by their lawyers to be careful what they put in writing for fear it will end up as evidence in a courtroo...

Fresh and interesting article posted on BBC News concerning Shakira's song “Loca’’ which contains, according Judge Alvin Hellerstein, segments that were clearly copied from Dominican artist Ramon Arias Vasquez’s “Loca con su Tiguere” from the late 1990s. Happy reading! "A hit song performed by Colombian pop star Shakira was indirectly copied from another songwriter's work, a federal judge in New York has found.   Judge Alvin Hellerstein said Shakira's Spanish-language version of Loca in 2010 had infringed on a song by Dominican singer Ramon Arias Vazquez. Her English language version of Loca - which featured Dizzee Rascal - was "not offered into evidence" at the trial.  Neither version of Loca was released as a single in the UK. However, the Spanish language version - a collaboration with Dominican rapper Eduard Edwin Bello Pou, better known as El Cata - was widely released as a single around the world. It went on to sell more t...

Fresh and interesting article posted on Mashable concerning the big news that Apple is close to buying Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion and the real reason behind it. "(....) If Apple does buy Beats for roughly $3 billion, a deal that is widely reported to be in its closing stages, it won't be because of the headphones. (Though given the fact that Apple sells Beats cans in every Apple store in the world, and has exact sales figures for each model, keeping all that profit to itself would be a nice boost for the bottom line.) No, this is more about Beats' streaming music service, Apple's tenacious grip on music distribution, and the fact that with a deal like this, Apple could easily become a recording industry giant that cuts out the middleman entirely — a notion that keeps executives at Sony, Universal, EMI and the rest of the major labels up at night. When Apple CEO Tim Cook had a high-level summit with Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine during a visit to LA...