Archive
Category: Intellectual Property
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Melbourne game pirate convicted of commercial copyright infringement
According to The Age, a fellow University of Melbourne alumnus has been convicted of three counts of commercial copyright infringement and fined $20 000 for running a duplication lab in his parents’ home: Jeffrey Lim, 28, converted the ground floor of his parents’ Doncaster home into a work office that held six hard drives, a… Read more →
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Senator Conroy criticises ongoing iiNet defence
Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has issued a stinging attack on iiNet’s position in Roadshow Films Pty Ltd & Ors v iiNet Ltd. Speaking at the CommsDay summit in Sydney yesterday, Senator Conroy described iiNet’s defence as something which ‘belongs in a Yes Minister episode’ — ironic, given that… Read more →
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UK internet disconnection scheme unlikely to proceed
According to an interview in The Times with David Lammy MP, the United Kingdom government is retreating from an earlier plan to sever the internet connection of those who repeatedly share or access copyright materials on P2P networks. Instead, rumour has it that the government is considering a download levy — perhaps similar to the… Read more →
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Latest novelty trade mark in Russia: 😉
In a move as bold as it is legally questionable, Superfone, a Russian mobile advertising company, has applied for a trade mark in respect of the characters ‘;-)’ (a winking emoticon). According to the certificate of grant, the registration applies to classes 35, 38 and 41. It’s unclear whether it extends to any territories beyond… Read more →
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Cisco sued for GPL copyright infringement
The Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) has commenced proceedings against Cisco Systems Inc, alleging copyright infringement. The plaintiff argues that Cisco distributed software subject to the General Public License (GPL) without meeting the terms of the popular open source licence. Specifically, FSF alleges that Cisco’s subsidiary Linksys sold networking products containing GPL software without making… Read more →
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Survey finds teenagers disrespectful of copyright
This piece is almost Onion-worthy for its obviousness. According to a study conducted by Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times, teenagers don’t understand copyright law. This is hardly surprising, given that most politicians — heck, even lawyers — exhibit similar deficiencies: Among teens aged 12 to 17 who were polled, 69 per cent said they… Read more →
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Apple Computer v Apple Music: Two Bad Apples or Apples of Our Eyes?
Apple Computer (maker of the Macintosh computer systems) and Apple Corp (the music publisher founded by The Beatles) have been fighting over the right to use the Apple name and logo since about the mid 1980s. At the time, the companies reached a settlement that permitted Apple Computer to maintain its name and logo, providing… Read more →
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Windows XP End User Licence Agreement: Decyphered
The Microsoft Windows XP End User Licence Agreement (‘EULA’) is a classic example of abstruse drafting. In being so generalised, and endeavouring to cover all possible uses and jurisdictions — from Australian high school students to Chinese nuclear power plants — it isn’t the most accessible document to the general public. Indeed, non-lawyers have frequently… Read more →
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Eminent Domain for Intellectual Property?
This interesting article on Prospect explores the possibility of state-sanctioned seizure of private intellectual property rights for the purpose of lowering pharmeceutical costs: Unless the drug industry starts to negotiate significantly lower prices, it may find itself battling debt-strapped states for control over the manufacture of drugs. States already take land and other property in… Read more →
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Paying the Mafia? Intellectual Property Insurance
With the proliferation of open source software, the risks of unknowingly infringing a third party’s intellectual property have become alarmingly large. For example, infringing code produced by Developer A (and released under an open source license for distribution, such as the GNU General Public License (‘GPL’)) may be found and innocently used in a project… Read more →