Though a late-comer to the mobile market, Google has nonetheless made a rather spectacular entrance. Android, its operating system for smartphones, is running on millions of mobile terminals manufactured by other companies under their own brands. The key to Google‘s success is the fact that Android is open-source, and thus freely distributed. This has allowed […]
Software RSS feed for this section
Online banking, switching costs and competition: a complex story
By 18 January 2012 59
(Updated February 7, 2013) In an article published in October 2012 in the New York Times, Nelson D. Schwartz suggests that online banking creates switching costs and, thereby, reduces competition in the US banking sector. The title of the article summarizes the argument in a forceful way: “Online Banking Keeps Customers on Hook for Fees”. Mr. Schwartz illustrates […]
LEGO: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
By 13 October 2011 5
Regarding intellectual property management, LEGO may seem to suffer from some form of personality disorder. Over the years, the company has indeed been oscillating between very open and very closed attitudes. On the “open side”, LEGO appears nowadays as a champion of crowd-sourcing and of user-based innovation. LEGO’s recent Cuusoo project is a nice example of crowd-sourcing design, whereby the […]
A paperback version of “Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice” (Palgrave, Nov. 2010)
By 5 December 2010 0
The book “Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice” edited by Axel Gosseries, Alain Marciano and myself is available in paperback since November 2010. Please visit the page of the publisher here. The book benefits from a positive review of Richard Posner, now Judge at the US Court or Appeal, Seventh Circuit, formerly Professor at the […]
Legal responses to online piracy
By 27 November 2010 35
Yesterday (November 26, 2010), the New York Times published two short articles concerning online piracy of digital goods. The first article (Swedish Court Upholds Convictions in File-Sharing Case) reports that an appeals court in Sweden upheld the copyright convictions of three men behind Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing site that remains in operation despite attempts to […]
What to think of ‘patent trolls’?
By 11 November 2010 0
Early october this year, Apple was condemned by a US court to pay $625.5 million damages to a small company, Mirror Worlds LLC, for infringing three patents related to how files are displayed on several Apple’s products (iPhone, iPod and Macbooks). Apple is currently challenging this verdict (see here for more). A question that has […]
← Previous 1 2