Displaying items by tag: Intellectual Property

Apple, the big company that likes to brag about their “originality” and accuse everybody else of stealing their ideas, apparently stole something from Switzerland. This is the country famous for inventing clocks and watches, and not just any kind of it, but truly of the highest quality and with beautiful design. Now, the Swiss Federal Railways have accused Apple that of copying their official railway clock.

ACTA is in the news again today as we hear from more than a few people on the implications of the treaty and what consequences it might have. Interestingly it looks like ACTA was originally designed to handle the large scale manufacture and distribution of counterfeit physical products (for prescription drugs actually). Some have suggested that the import of items (like the fake Gucci and Fendi bags you can find for sale on some street corners…) has a drastic impact on the sales and profit of those companies. This is the same logic that is put forward for the theft of virtual property like IP, music, and videos.

In another installment of our “and that is why you fail” byline we come to the small dispute between Google and Oracle. On the table is not if Google use Java APIs or not, but the basic question of “are Java APIs free to use for development?” This issue is a huge one as a Google loss could set precedent for Oracle to go after ANYONE that is using the Java API without paying royalties to Oracle for their use.

A recent decision in an appeals court could have disastrous effects on Intellectual Property rights holders in the US and possibly around the globe. Not all that long ago a software developer grabbed a chunk of code from Goldman Sachs as he was on his way out of the door. The code related to a high=speed trading application that Goldman Sachs uses for business. The firm immediately went after the programmer (Sergey Aleynikov) and he was convicted under the National Stolen Property Act.

We have always been a supporter of certain Internet freedoms as well as individual privacy (no surprise there huh). Bills like PIPA and SOPA showed us a glaring issue with the existing level of knowledge currently held by the people that make our laws (and not just in the US). This is not a big shocker to most people either. It is fairly common knowledge that our law makers get into office based on little more than a popularity contest that is held every few years. Once in office they are like the gullible kid in school that gets talked into things, by the “cool kids”, but in this case the cool kids are lobbyists and are not looking for a laugh they are looking to improve their control and profit.

Today is a busy day on the Internet (it usually is on a Monday morning). There are multiple articles and comments that are all related to the freedom of the Internet and how the world is evolving to embrace it while some in power are de-evolving to tray and restrict it. At this point there is no clear winner, but the sides are being firmly drawn in the sand and it is clear that things will get worse before they get better.

After both SOPA and PIPA were publicly shelved the US government did what it always does. It finds a way to do what it wants, but by hiding it in other bills or (as is becoming more common) using trade agreements to by-pass laws altogether. This is exactly what we are seeing with ACTA and TPP. These two trade agreements are probably some of the most dangerous bits of work that we have read about in a very long time.