Latest news and views tagged Intellectual property
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Tiffany has lost a legal action brought against eBay in which the jewellery shop sought to hold the popular online auction site liable for sales made of counterfeit products through its online platform....
Digital Economy Act to cost millions of pounds for ‘innocent’ ISPs
The newly passed Digital Economy Act will cost at least £15m a year to Internet service providers. Those figures have been revealed from a Government consultation document. They just cover the estimated...
Digital Economy Bill passes through Parliament in controversial ‘wash up’ process before anyone has a chance to say ‘cut off’
The Digital Economy Bill has been passed by the House of Commons without much chance for Parliamentary debate with the aim of getting it on the statute books before the General Election - a process known...
Arguments of being innocent host in copyright infringement case sent to bin – Twentieth Century Fox v Newzbin, High Court
The operators of the Newzbin web site – which provided helpful tools to enable people to share unauthorised content such as films – infringed the copyright owners’ content in providing that service...
French file-sharing on the rise despite a change in the law
Illegal online file-sharing behaviour has increased in France by 3% since a law was passed in late 2009 (the "three-strikes law") which allowed persistent pirates to be thrown offline. A small-scale study...
European Court of Justice applies recent ruling in Google v Louis Vuitton case, but we’re still none the wiser of the implications – Die BergSpechte Outdoor Reisen und Alpinschule Edi Koblmueller v Guenter, European Court of Justice
As reported here, the European Court of Justice has recently ruled on the long-awaited Google v Louis Vuitton case, concerning the extent to which brand owners, competitors and search engine providers...
European Court of Justice gives eagerly-awaited ruling in Google keyword search terms trade mark cases – Google v Louis Vuitton, European Court of Justice
In an eagerly-awaited judgment, the European Court of Justice has ruled on whether use of a trade mark term for the purpose of creating a sponsored advert and getting higher up the search results could...
Account of profits sometimes claimable as remedy for breach of confidentiality and sometimes not, depending on the nature of the duty – Vercoe v Rutland, High Court
V&P had approached R about a possible acquisition of a company called H&T. V&P and R had entered into a confidentiality agreement about this. In breach of that agreement, R bought H&T without...
Entertainment value really hots up in on-going YouTube / Viacom spat
The gloves have certainly come off in the legal spat between YouTube and Viacom. Viacom – the owner of masses of media and entertainment content – is suing the popular video-sharing web site in the...
Internet piracy could cost over one million European jobs by 2015
The growth in illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing on the Internet has a real impact on the European economy. There will be a loss of over one million jobs across Europe by 2015 and over £200bn due to the...