Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Rare good news on Intellectual Property

Two recent pieces of good news on the intellectual property front:
  • The Hargreaves process in the UK has resulted in copyright reform legislation which has passed Parliament and is due to receive Royal Assent this month. Among the numerous improvements it contains are that data mining is included in the right to access, that libraries can make fair dealing copies for their readers, and that sound and video are treated the same as text in most cases. Of particular importance is that in most cases contracts will not be able to override these permissions.
  • In the recent Octane Fitness case, the US Supreme Court changed the rules for awards of fees in patent cases to deter patent trolls. The first such case has just been decided, and an obvious patent troll has not merely lost the case, but has had to pay for the victim's lawyers! Congratulations to FindTheBest CEO Kevin O'Connor for fighting back. Here's hoping that the loss of his RICO suit against the troll can be reversed on appeal.

1 comment:

David. said...

Here's one more. The EU Court of Justice somewhat made up for its nonsensical ruling on the "right to be forgotten" by slapping down the publisher's argument that browsing the web constituted copyright infringement.