Wikileaks has published the IP chapter contained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral trade treaty negotiated between Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. Several commentators have already started to make their initial analysis of what it contains, and I Read more
Yours Truly is writing a report on voluntary copyright relinquishment and public domain dedications for WIPO. The terms of reference of the report can be found here. As part of the work, I thought that it would be a good idea to have an informal web survey to ask people Read more
Earlier this year, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) agreed to hold a special session of its Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) to organise a diplomatic conference later in the year in Marrakesh that would discuss a possible Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Read more
Has the UK abolished copyright law with the passing of orphan works legislation? I’ll answer quickly with Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: NO. However, if you listen to some copyright maximalist outlets, and particularly to the photograph lobby, you would believe that all copyright has been abolished as of now. Just Read more
The High Court of England and Wales has produced another blocking order for UK Internet service providers (ISPs) against three torrent sites. The action was brought by the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) against the main UK ISPs in order to obtain a blocking order against three torrent indexing sites, Read more
Durante los últimos días hemos presenciado un lamentable ataque contra el Congreso y la Fuerza Pública por parte de elementos opuestos al veto presidencial de la Ley 17342 que reforma varios artículos de la legislación vigente de observancia de derechos de propiedad intelectual. El ataque ha sido propiciado por una Read more
For something which has the unequivocal weight of the law behind it, software copyright has had a rather bumpy history in the courts. Once we get past the obvious facts of law, namely that copyright protects source code, the application of such protection has been more difficult. The reason for Read more
Source: google.ca via Andres on Pinterest It seems like the Pinterest copyright meme refuses to die. Some days ago I wrote a short analysis of what I believed were the main issues in this subject, particularly concentrating on the fair use and DMCA take-down aspects of the question. In my Read more
Source: 9gag.com via Andres on Pinterest Pinterest, in case you have not heard, is the latest social network. It is sort of like Tumbler without the social angst and hipster look. Some have described it as “Facebook for women” (because everyone knows that no woman uses FB). Time magazine tells Read more
Long-time readers may remember the interesting case of SAS Institute v World Programming (my analysis here), an important software interoperability decision in the UK that got referred to the European Court of Justice. The case sets SAS, one of the biggest business software giants, against a UK software company that Read more