by Kevin Coates | Aug 23, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Law360: Competition: DOJ Reins In Injunction Bid In Apple E-Books Fight “The U.S. Department of Justice proposed Friday a narrower injunction against Apple Inc. for its alleged e-book price-fixing that slashes the length of the restrictions on the iPad maker but stood by its call for an external monitor and limits on Apple’s dealings in other types of...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 23, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Regulation Watch Feed: Bridging the transatlantic divide in privacy “ A clash of privacy cultures If there is one lesson to be learned from the recent NSA surveillance scandal, it is that no government can guarantee the rights of its citizens beyond national borders – and that the internet, for better or worse, knows no borders. Nothing illustrates this better than the contentious debate on privacy in Germany and in the United States. In the United States, the right to privacy is primarily understood as a right to physical privacy, thus the protection from unwarranted government searches and seizures. In Germany, on the other hand, it is also understood as a right to spiritual privacy, thus the right of citizens to develop into autonomous moral agents. More fundamentally, American and German attitudes towards privacy reflect different underlying constitutional assumptions: privacy as an aspect of liberty or as an aspect of dignity. (Whitman, 2004: 1161; Post, 2001) As data flows defy jurisdictional boundaries, however, policymakers across the Atlantic are faced with a conundrum: how can German and American privacy cultures be reconciled? Freedom is the most valued social good in the American constitution, while the German constitution is grounded on the idea of human dignity. Nevertheless these two potentially conflicting notions of freedom and dignity can be reconciled in the name of freedom of choice. Both the United States and German constitutions are intent on protecting citizens from undue government intrusion into their personal sphere, albeit for different historical and cultural reasons. Furthering the freedom of personal choice in order to enhance privacy could thus fulfill both the conditions...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From CPIP: The Myth of the “Patent Troll” Litigation Explosion “[Cross posted at Truth on the Market] In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong. As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are … Continue reading...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Regulation Watch Feed: No European net neutrality legislation after all Net or not neutrality? Just when activists and avant-garde regulators hoped for a European happy end on net neutrality, Digital Agenda Commissioner defended the right of content providers to negotiate with operators “flexible quality of service including lower levels of priority for traffic which is not time-sensitive.” The July 9 announcement puts at risk the very definition of “not neutrality,” as Europe Digital Rights (EDRI) warned. In July, the civil rights organisation EDRI had leaked Kroes’ draft regulation [PDF] “laying down measures to complete the European single market for electronic communications and to achieve a Connected Continent“. The draft proposal includes some provisions meant to help consumers, including broad transparency requirements. Under the proposal, users are granted rights to fully understand the nature of the service and its limitations with regards to bandwidth or data travel speed (see article 20 of the draft text). Throttling or blocking traffic – something Kroes said in a speech was not an annoyance, but a “death sentence for innovators“ – should be limited to the following situations: implementation of a court order or legislative provision (which might mean a Hadopi-like rule), securing the network, stopping spam (where users have agreed to it) and minimising the effects of exceptional congestion (“provided that equivalent types of traffic are treated equally.”) Obligations for network operators to allow switching include consumer friendly provisions like a 12 month period during which email is sent on to the lost customer’s new email address while the sender receives a notification about the move – all for free. Yet, net...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From The IPKat: Apple Sales Preserved: White House Vetoes ITC’s Ban The United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) Michael Froman, on behalf of the White House, has intervened in the patent dispute between Samsung and Apple. Back in June, the United States International Trade Commission (“ITC”) determined that some of Apple’s older generation of products, including iPad 2 and iPhone 4 models that operate on the networks of AT&T and T-Mobile, were in violation of Samsung patents that cover methods of transmitting data. As a result, the ITC issued an exclusion order that would have banned the importation and sale of the infringing products. Taking into consideration that the Samsung patents are “standards-essential patents”, which the patent owner must offer under license to competitors on “terms that are fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (‘FRAND’)”, the USTR vetoed the ITC ban, explaining: “After extensive consultations with the agencies of the Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review Group, as well as other interested agencies and persons, I have decided to disapprove the [ITC’s] determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order in this investigation. This decision is based on my review of the various policy considerations … as they relate to the effect on competitive conditions in the U.S. economy and the effect on U.S. customers.” …...