When the Internet Has a Party, Everyone's Invited: IP Law Issues at the Internet Governance Forum 2013

There is a little-known place in the world where you can approach absolutely anyone—a Brazilian federal minister or WIPO legal officer; a policy manager at Google or the world's leading cybersecurity expert; an Indonesian LGBT activist or Pakistani digital rights advocate; or someone at some intersection of civil society, government, business, academia, law, technology, or […]

Bowman v. Monsanto and Patent Exhaustion: To Be, or Ought to Be?

More of a cautionary winter's tale than a midsummer night's dream, an Indiana farmer facing legal action from a certain biotech and chemical multinational behemoth recently reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is called Bowman v. Monsanto, and with all that hangs in the balance, a herbicide-resistant rose by any other name would, in […]

Mining the Digital Gold Rush: The Legal (L)ore around France's Data-Mining Tax

With markets in real property, personal property, and intellectual property quite cornered, the future-savvy lawyer might consider their cutting-edge cousin, if France's data-mining tax proposal has its way: what could be termed existential property*, courtesy of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the like. Or rather, courtesy of their users, whose digitally collected personal data may be wholesale […]

Pride and Property: IP Law, Traditional Knowledge, and Cultural Heritage

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single culture in possession of good traditional knowledge must be in want of intellectual property rights.”

Artwork to Ashes, Brands to Dust: Australia's Tobacco Plain Packaging Act Held Constitutionally Valid

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: The High Court of Australia recently ruled that the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act withstands constitutional scrutiny, in JT International SA v Commonwealth of Australia. Retailers and smokers will thus soon find themselves scrutinizing things as well, in order to distinguish between identical cigarette packages stripped of all branding and trade-marks.

C for Copyright: No More Pirated Textbooks for Guyanese Classrooms

In a case that calls more for gold stars than gold doubloons, the government of Guyana and major British publishing houses have at last come to an agreement over textbook purchases—no copyright infringement necessary. This was the latest and hopefully final chapter of a plot in which the Guyanese government publicly called for tenders to provide pirated […]

Bonsai This Is Not: ICANN and the Internet Governance Landscape

Internet Governance may be one of the most understated, under-recognized issues today, relative to its impact on Internet-using society as we know it. And as far as landscapes go, the current one sits slightly closer to that of an asteroid belt than a Japanese rock garden.

Sunny with a Chance of Chill: Forecasting EU's New Cloud Computing Strategy

At the risk of raining on the EU's cloud parade, the European Commission's recently unveiled report, “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, also threatens to unleash a legal storm of international regulatory ordeals, multi-jurisdictional issues, privacy and security battles, and commercial liability. Alas, that is the price of technological ambition: one is always waiting for […]