Google’s New Privacy Policy: Going Too Far?

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 1^st 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 a step in the right direction, whereas American lawmakers have asked for changes, and this week the European Union has suggested that the changes are in breach of European law. The multiplicity of reaction means it is important to understand what the changes are and why so many have come to their unique positions about it.

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Research Works Act pulled as Elsevier bows to boycott pressure

For the last month, the academic publishing industry has been the latest battlefield over American copyright law. In December 2011, the US Congress introduced the controversial Research Works Act, which aimed to reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy of requiring academic research papers funded by its federal grants to be made open access one year after its publication. In short, the RWA would require that all parties with rights to the papers in question (including publishers) come to an agreement before a paper could be made open access. In effect, this would allow publishers to unilaterally prevent papers published in their journals from becoming open access.

Although this has been attempted several times before, this iteration of the Act has drawn the greatest controversy and criticism to date. Publishers supported the bill through the Association of American Publishers, an industry lobby group representing intellectual property interests of their members.

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Apple v Samsung: This Time It’s Global

“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 only granted many of Apple and Samsung’s sealing motions, but in some cases have gone even further. During an October hearing on the proposed injunction, Koh was unprompted when she asked Apple and Samsung if they wanted to seal the courtroom.

This level of secrecy prevents academics, lawyers, and other curious bystanders from the cottage industry of prognosticating the results of the trial. Perhaps the best alternative is to look at the recent decision by the German courts applying EU law in an effort to draw some conclusions that could apply to the American ruling. Read the rest of this entry »

SOPA and PIPA: The White House Changes Its Stance

The explosion in major names denouncing  SOPA and PIPA (including giants of the internet like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the Wikimedia foundation, who are all considering an unprecedented ‘blackout’ on January 18th) now has a new supporter in the name of the White House and the Obama administration.  Read the rest of this entry »

Carrier IQ faces lawsuits over controversial tracking software

Last week, a furor was caused by software developer Carrier IQ, who develop software used to track mobile phone usage in diagnostic and network monitoring purposes. A researcher, Trevor Eckhart, reverse-engineered his HTC Evo Android phone and found that Carrier IQ’s software tracked his keystrokes, search queries and text messages with no ability to turn it off. He posted his results in a YouTube video showing ostensibly how his information was recorded and transmitted to carriers in the background on his phone. The video attracted massive attention, gathering 1.5 million hits in a week, and evoked a cease-and-desist letter from Carrier IQ’s legal team which they subsequently withdrew and apologized for after the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in.

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Who Gets Burned When the Dragon Stirs? – Ramifications of Stricter Patent Protection in China

Jameson Berkow in The National Post recently voiced a concern not unfamiliar to those who have seen the cover of any Economist magazine in the past eight years – the dangers of China’s evolving economy, in particular their approach to patent protection.

The article argues that, “China … has intentionally maintained a lax intellectual property enforcement regime for decades, waiting until its internal invention industry had become strong enough to warrant something more robust.” Read the rest of this entry »

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

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 line of products copies the iPhone and iPad in functions and appearance. Read the rest of this entry »

Do the copycat Apple stores in China harm Apple?

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 were the real deal. That these stores were and are selling real Apple products complicates the question of whether there are legal claims to be had for copyright infringement. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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 than has the United States. We argue that, at least in the context of copyright protection, this conventional wisdom is false. Read the rest of this entry »

Entire Apple Store Knockoffs in China

Fake Louis Vuitton handbags, fake Thomas the Tank Engine toy trains and fake electronics have, in essence, become the norm in China. But the recent incident takes piracy to a whole new level: fake Apple stores in Kunming, a city in the southern Yunnan province.  Read the rest of this entry »