A Reverse Payment Agreement (RPA) is an interesting point of interface between competition law and intellectual property law. One crucial issue in this regard is whether RPAs can trigger antitrust provisions. This issue had been dealt with previously here.
In an effort to draw a line in the sand in the smartphone market, an “innocent bystander” has been caught in the legal crossfire. Following a successful sales ban of the Xbox 360 in Germany, Motorola set its sights on the gaming console’s home turf, and currently, things are not looking good for Microsoft in […]
Courtney Doagoo is a doctoral student at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. On December 6 2011, the European Commission launched a public consultation to review the current regulatory regime surrounding “EU antitrust rules for the assessment of technology transfer agreements” for “patents, know-how and software licensing”. The aim of the public consultation is […]
Brent Randall is a JD candidate at the University of Ottawa. In the biggest sale of technology patents in history, a consortium of Apple, Research In Motion, Microsoft, Ericsson, Sony and EMC, was the highest bidder for 6,000 patents from Nortel at a price of $4.5 billion.
Brent Randall is a JD candidate at the University of Ottawa. Kimberly-Clark, manufacturer of infant diapers and training pants under the Huggies brand name, was recently denied a motion to dismiss a counterclaim made against it regarding patents for its products. First Quality Baby Products claims that Kimberly-Clark, “uses its patents to disrupt competitors and […]
Kalen Lumsden is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. According to a report released last week by Sandvine, 29.7% of all downstream internet traffic during peak hours in North America is from the online video streaming service Netflix. Old-fashioned web browsing accounted for only 17% of traffic due to the high bandwidth requirements […]
Jenna Newman is a graduate of the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University. The long-awaited ruling on the proposed Google Books settlement is out: the court has rejected the settlement. So many serious concerns were voiced by potential class members as well as scholars, librarians, the US Department of Justice, other nations—on questions […]
Matt Lonsdale is a JD candidate at Dalhousie University. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York released their decision in the fairness hearing on the latest proposed settlement in the Google Books class action proceedings. Judge Denny Chin refused to grant final approval for the Amended Settlement Agreement (ASA). “The […]
Judge Chin of the US District Court (Southern District of New York) has rejected the Google Books Settlement. See the decision. Kenneth Crews, founding director of the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University, summarizes the decision. He concludes by asking, "What is next?" and answers as follows: "The parties may accept the invitation to convert […]