Facebook was already problematic, as I’ve written before. When you post your IPR on Facebook (your logo, trademark, music, etc.), Facebook has effectively an unlimited right to do with your IPR whatever they want. For free. But there is more: Facebook has asked trademark owners to register their trademark with Facebook. What does that mean? Read more …
News
No copyright on “interface” – that’s GUI for you!
Yesterday, 22 December 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled on a very interesting question: does software protection apply to the graphical user interface (GUI)? The answer was no. This may not surprise lawyers, but my guess is it would surprise IT people. IT lawyers know that in the EU, software protection (a specific form Read more …
Social Media & IPR – Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Among Intellectual Property professionals, it’s a surefire hit: “have you read Facebook’s IP terms”? Tone is important – think of a TV preacher asking: “have you been tempted by Satan!?”. Poor Facebook. Don’t blame them, blame the fact that it’s still so difficult to set up your own website, so most people prefer the easy Read more …
Lego builds new Intellectual Capital
It is probably fair to say that most people know Lego, the little building block toys. Most of us played with them as children. I remember that I didn’t actually like to construct the things Lego wanted me to make. Rather, I used to come up with the most bizarre and absurd constructions. My father, Read more …
Google apps ownership in datanews
Here’s the link to the article published by Datanews on the issue (in Dutch).
Cooking is like software – no copyright in the menu
Interesting decision from a first instance court in Liège, Belgium. Cooking recipes are not covered by copyright. As such, that may not be such a shock. Imagine having to pay a royalty to the earl of Sandwich every time you reproduce the recipe of .. a sandwich (or worse, every time you make one), or Read more …
Google Apps – who owns them?
I’ve written about software written by other software before on this blog. Now the practice is really taking off: Google has released its Google Android Apps inventor program. What does it mean? Anybody registered can start developing Google Android Apps. These are applications (software), where not a single line of code is written by humans. Read more …
Stronger IPRs foster innovation – QED?
This is an interesting article in Der Spiegel. It claims that the secret of the success of German industrialization throughout the 19th century (when Germany overtook the UK as the leading industrial nation of the world), was due to the relative total lack of protection granted to copyright. It’s an interesting position, and one that Read more …
Get out of Jail Free
Who owns your mobile phone or mobile computer? What does “ownership” actually mean? If you own it, does that mean you can do with it what you want? Are you allowed to change some or more of its software? Can you install what you want? If you really own what you paid for, the answer Read more …
Will technology kill book publishers?
Amazon announced last week that it has sold more e-books than hardcover books. At the same time, the Wylie literary agency has announced a number of big publishing deals bypassing the traditional publishing houses, and going straight into online publishing. So, e-books are now more important than traditional books. More e-books are sold, and more Read more …