The contentious issue addressed in the recent Intellectual Property Colloquium, hosted by Professor Doug Lichtman of the UCLA School of Law, was the way the courts calculate patent damages. As the debate over the U.S. patent reform continues, Professor Lichtman has made available a series of excerpts from the Senate and the Federal Trade Commission […]
A recent article written by Colin Campbell from Maclean's discussed the unfortunate fact that Canada is usually far behind other nations when it comes to adopting new technologies that have been developed in the United States and abroad. His discussion begins with a reference to the Kindle DX. This is the new, wireless e-book reading […]
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision this past Thursday (4 June 2009) to extend the exemption of new media broadcasting from regulation. After considering the current state of broadcasting in new media, the CRTC felt that while new media is of growing importance, it currently does not pose any threat to […]
Currently, China has an estimated 70 million bloggers posting on a wide range of subjects. In January, the country's number of internet users was estimated at 298 million, the most of any nation in the world. Unfortunately, China's internet censorship is one of the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. Bloggers' freedom of expression […]
Consider the following scenario: The sales team at a large software company is meeting with a particularly hot prospect and is hoping to seal the deal on a big sale of Product X. Things have been going great, but right in the middle of the meeting someone pulls out a printout of a message board […]
Three months ago I posted a response to Dan Hartrell’s article: Facebook’s grassroots earn policy voice. Dan’s article focused on the new grassroots, open approach Facebook was taking which allowed social network users to comment and vote on Facebook policies. In my response, I questioned the wisdom of having a corporation emulate a nation by […]
Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. On Thursday, May 21, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel wrapped up hearings on the preliminary injunction she granted in the fall against Real Networks and its "RealDVD" copying software. And the Real "Facet" DVD copying and storage device […]
The dispute between Microsoft Corporation and the defendants, PC Village Markham, PC Village Downtown - two software retailers in the Greater Toronto Area - and two of their employees, Syed Aziz and Johnson Ye, arose because the defendants were selling counterfeit Microsoft software, "software that was neither manufactured by Microsoft nor by any of its […]
Sean O'Connor is a Professor at the University of Washington School of Law and Chair of the Law, Technology & Arts Group, specializing in intellectual property and business law involving biotechnology, cyberspace/information technology, and new media/digital arts. Professor O'Connor is an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. This is the second part of Professor O'Connor's feature blog […]
A recent proposal by European Commissioners Meglena Kuneva and Viviane Reding outlined a number of consumer protections relating to licensing agreements. In the event that the proposal becomes law, software companies could be held liable for their code. The directive requires that products, including software licensed under licensing agreements, be held to a higher standard […]