First Publication Date: 7th January 2008
The Copyright law protects ideas expressed on a tangible form. Ideas by themselves do not get any protection; only the expression of the idea is protected under the copyright law. To get protection an idea should be expressed as literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, cinematographic or photographic work or a sound recording. Such an expression should be on a tangible form such as a paper, canvas, tape and so on. Expression in an electronic form is…
We are happy to bring to you a guest post on Software escrow and licenses written by Jorge Sagastume, Vice President, EscrowTech International, Inc.
In early 2013 Paul Golland, CIO of north-easy Long borough of Waltham Forest faced a horrible crisis. He was told by their sole cloud provider that they were closing shop and he had 24 to 48 hours to get their business’ data systems working elsewhere.
This type of disaster is not uncommon and it is a…
The District Court of the Northern District of California held last week that Google's use of 37 Java APIs of Oracle does not give rise to copyright infringement liability because it is fair use. On remand from the Federal Circuit, in a Jury trial, Google's use of Java APIs and around eleven thousand lines of code was held to be fair use as it is meant to promote inter-operability and compatibility between programs. You may read our earlier post for…
In 2010, Oracle sued Google for copying 37 Java packages, 8 specialized Java security packages, and a routine called “rangeCheck" in its Android operating system. Oracle claimed in the suit that Google is liable for infringing two of its patents in the software and that Google is also liable for copyright infringement for literally copying the code. The suit was filed in a California District Court. Oracle claimed damages to the tune of nine billion dollars in the suit. …
One of the first IP litigations to hit the open source community was the suit filed by SCO against IBM in 2003. In the suit, SCO alleged IBM of breach of contract, copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation, among others. It alleged that IBM's insertion of portions of UNIX, owned by SCO, into LINUX, amounts to liability on various counts including copyright infringement. SCO initially claimed damages to the tune of one billion dollars, which was later increased to three…
Indian Institute of Management (IIMB) has become the first business school in India to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through their program called ‘IIMBx’. The program desires to provide quality education free of cost. The courses have been carefully designed to cater to a divergent group of learners, who can utilize these courses to hone their managerial skills.
This is good news, considering the plight of students who face fierce competition every year trying to get a seat in…
It has been reported that Apple's new programming language Swift, which is now in its second version will be made available as open source software (OS) under a permissive license. However, the specific license under which it will be made available as OS has not been specified. Some bloggers are of the opinion that it would most probably be available under Apache or another BSD style license. Over the last five years, flexible licenses have taken over the viral GPL…
The Indian Government recently released its policy on adoption and use of Open Source Software (OSS) for government projects. The policy seeks to cut costs and improve flexibility by using, implementing and contributing to OSS development. The policy mandates that preference in government software projects must be given to OSS, and Closed Source Software (CSS) must only be an exception when OSS is not available.
The Preamble of the policy reads as follows:
"Government of India (GoI) is implementing the…
The presentation herein was given by Dr. Kalyan Kankanala. It deals with the different types of IP, assignment and licensing. Important clauses such as Recitals, Definitions, Grant, Royalties, Term & Termination are discussed. All of these are explained with the help of examples. Open Source licenses are talked about in detail. Licenses and their types with a special focus on music licensing brings about the close of the presentation.
To know more about BananaIP Counsels (Earlier known as Brain League) visit bananaip.com