Business ← Innovation Law Blog

Licensing Autonomous Cars

Oct

2012

This post is about licensing partly autonomous cars. Not legally speaking, autonomous cars are those which can drive themselves without any human input, and partly (or mostly) autonomous cars have reduced human input. They use sensors to provide electronic input to a rapidly interpreting computer, and the computer controls some or all of the car’s ...

“Do Not Track” – Recent Developments in Internet Privacy

Henry Ren

Mar

2012

Fresh off successful efforts to quash the Stop Online Piracy Act, a number of internet companies are turning to consumer privacy issues. Web giants like Google and Facebook have been facing mounting political pressure and popular demands for greater user choice and control over privacy settings. In the forefront of the debate is the proposed ...

Google’s New Privacy Policy: Going Too Far? 1

Sarit Pandya

Mar

2012

Anyone who uses one of Google’s multitudes of services recently has been confronted with Google’s new Privacy Policy, which was implemented on the 1st of March. Internet privacy is obviously a major concern for users and governments alike, and this new policy has been met with mixed reaction. Canadian reaction has suggested that it is ...

Apple v Samsung: This Time It’s Global

alexkitz

Feb

2012

“The United States district court is a public institution, and the workings of litigation must be open to public view,” Justice Alsup wrote in an October order in Oracle America, Inc v. Google Inc. Yet this is not the approach of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh and U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, who have not ...

Apple Manages to Frustrates Developers…Again!

Sarit Pandya

Nov

2011

Apple has launched a new requirement, which will require sandboxing of all Mac App Store applications, starting next March. This move again will frustrate developers, although Apple claims its main motivation for such a move is to provide safety. Apple has had a unique relationship with many app developers in the past, providing a superb ...

Microsoft Defends Patent-Licensing Strategy

Henry Ren

Nov

2011

Amidst the flurry of patent cases among the lot of mobile technology companies, it is difficult to keep track of who is bringing whom to court. In light of the sheer number of cases and their ever growing international scope, even the use of flow charts cannot fully rescue our collectively boggled minds from the ...

Samsung Breathes Temporary Sigh of Relief in U.S. Patent Battle with Apple 1

Henry Ren

Oct

2011

In the latest development in the legal saga between Apple and Samsung, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh tentatively declined to issue a preliminary injunction that would bar some Samsung smartphones and tablets from U.S. sale. In July, Apple had requested the injunction from the Northern District Californian federal court on the basis that Samsung’s Galaxy ...

Google-Motorola Deal: the Patent Portfolio Factor

Giselle Chin

Aug

2011

So we’ve all heard how Google recently bought Motorola for a hefty $12.5 billion on Monday. Aside from the synergies Google gains from end-to-end control, as Google now has hardware, software and service arms to create their mobile products, perhaps just as importantly, Google has also purchased one of the largest patent portfolios of its kind ...

Do the copycat Apple stores in China harm Apple?

Giselle Chin

Aug

2011

News of fake Apple stores in China sparked a media frenzy last month, with calls of massive intellectual property infringement. Of the five fake stores in Kunming, two were shut down, but for lacking official business licenses, not for who they were pretending to be. More interestingly, according to reports, the Apple products sold at these stores ...

Beyond Refusal to Deal: A Cross-Atlantic View of Copyright, Competition and Innovation Policies

Giselle Chin

Aug

2011

Paul-Erik Veel and Professor Ariel Katz have recently released a paper comparing the Competition Law in the European Union and the United States. The abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that the European Union, through the application of its competition law, has opted to subordinate intellectual property rights in the pursuit of competitive markets to a much greater extent ...