NEWS YouTube, Viacom copyright lawsuit reignites
removed copyrighted videos when notified, it was protected by a provision under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But the most recent decision will be an
obvious blow to YouTube, which reaffirmed that it removed the disputed videos when asked. Viacom welcomed the decision, saying it was confident of prevailing in the lawsuit.
The $1 billion copyright lawsuit being fought between Viacom and YouTube has reignited after a court overturned an earlier ruling that favoured the video-sharing website.
The Manhattan-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said a “reasonable jury” could find that YouTube executives did
know that users were posting material that infringed Viacom’s copyright.
Media company Viacom sued Google-owned YouTube in 2007, alleging that material from shows such as South Park was illegally shared between 2005 and 2008. In 2010, a judge ruled that because YouTube had promptly
Oracle and Google fight over Android patents
Database-maker Oracle took Google to court on April 16, alleging that Android smartphone software infringes patents owned by its subsidiary company Sun Microsystems.
Oracle, which acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in 2010, claims Google copied elements of language-programming software Java—owned by Sun—and failed to take a licence. Google has denied the claims, saying Sun does not own the disputed application programming interfaces.
The lawsuit, under which Oracle wants $1 billion and an injunction to block Android using the software, has been dubbed the
“world series of IP cases” by district judge William Alsup, who will oversee the jury trial. Java enables the writing of programs
for
various operating systems and computers. Developed in the mid-1990s, it runs on billions of mobile devices, including on nearly all 150 million Android phones, according to Oracle.
Talks between the two companies broke down despite several attempts to resolve the dispute outside court. The trial, to be held in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco, is expected to last eight weeks.
WIPO data reveal cybersquatting rise
Te World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has announced a record number of cybersquatting cases for 2011.
Te number of trademark holders filing cybersquatting cases with WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) rose to 2,764—an increase of 2.5 percent on 2010, and 9.4 percent on 2009.
Cybersquatting refers to the practice of bad faith registration, trafficking, or use of a domain name to profit from someone else’s trademark. Te UDRP, introduced in 1999, allows trademark holders to resolve domain name disputes outside
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the courts. To have a domain name transferred or suspended under the UDRP, a trademark holder is required to prove that the disputed domain is confusingly similar to its trademark, that it is used in bad faith and that the domain holder has no legitimate interest in that domain name.
Cases filed in 2011 involved complainants and respondents from 110 countries. US complainants filed 929 cases—more than any other country— followed by France with 300 and the UK with 244. Te majority of cases (17.8 percent) concerned retail but the Internet and IT, and the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors, also ranked highly. WIPO also received the first
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 2
UDRP case concerning the new .xxx domain. Complainants included a range of household names such as Nestlé, Microsoſt and Volkswagen.
With the increase in the number of generic top level domains (gTLDs) such as .com underway, a further rise in cases is expected in 2012. Speaking at a press conference, WIPO director general Francis Gurry said: “Tese UDRP filing trends illustrate that even under today’s domain name system, brand owners already have to make difficult choices for their stretched online enforcement resources. With the domain name coordinating body, ICANN [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], allowing for a massive increase in the number of new domains, brand owners’ resources will likely be stretched further.”
www.worldipreview.com
The latest ruling comes only days after Google signed a deal with Paramount Pictures, owned by Viacom, to provide films on YouTube’s online rental store. Viacom and Google also clashed this year over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While Viacom lobbied in favour of the controversial SOPA, which proposed handing greater powers to law enforcement officers, Google participated in an online protest against it.
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