Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting infographic about IP Theft from i-Sight: Copy(right) Cats: How Intellectual Property Theft Affects Everyone, Including You from i-Sight

Fresh and interesting article from Reuters about  U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal email and instant messaging (IM) accounts around the world: 'The collection program intercepts email address books and "buddy lists" from instant messaging services as they move across global data links, the newspaper said in an article posted on its website, citing senior intelligence officials and documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The Post said analyzing that data lets the NSA search for connections and map relationships among foreign intelligence targets. The data collection takes place outside the United States, but sweeps in the contacts of many Americans, the report said, citing two senior U.S. intelligence officials. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, said the agency is focused on discovering and developing intelligence about foreig...

‘Inadvertent disclosures’ happened (Samsung’s counsel [1] ). Inadvertent (Adj.): failing to act carefully or considerately; inattentive (Collins Online Dictionary). A couple of days ago, F. Mueller IP expert (FOSS patent) published an interesting article about Samsung’s illegal disclosure of confidential information related to the secret Nokia-Apple patent license. In this case, the United States District Court (Northern District of California) seemed to be very ‘angry’ with Samsung and its outside counsel (Quinn Emanuel). From the start, the tone was set: ‘(…) Letting Samsung and its counsel investigate without any court supervision is unlikely to produce satisfactory results’ said Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal. What are the consequences of such a disclosure and what sanctions on Samsung’s actions might be taken by the Court? Unfortunately, it’s still hard to predict... The mere facts of this new  Apple Inc. (and Nokia) vs. Samsung Electronics Co . case...

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...