Legislator: Corruption, mafia help intellectual property crimes thrive
By Jim Landers -
SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Luiz Antonio de Medeiros tells a story of organized crime, corrupt police, a frightened judge and a $2 million effort to buy his silence.
It could be a chapter in the war on drugs. Instead, it's a tale of counterfeit goods and piracy of music, movies and software.
by Arieanna Foley
I spent some time talking to Wes Kussmaul, CEO of The Village Group, about intellectual property and identity management. It's an area of business that is becoming increasingly important, and thus there is a lot of talk as to how best to secure and monitor access to collaboration systems.
We talked around a really interesting dilemma when it comes to securing intellectual property. How do you decide who is allowed inside the clubhouse? You not only have to decide which friends you're going to trust, but also which of their friends are allowed to tag along. Not easy, is it? When your clubhouse is your "circle of trust," it's more serious than just letting friends in. You have more at stake.
Representatives of 20 national intellectual property offices and 10 institutions promoting the competitiveness of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) participated on May 25-26, 2006 in the third annual WIPO Forum on Intellectual Property (IP) and SMEs for IP Offices of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and South Mediterranean Countries at the Geneva headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
A program is available at www.wipo.int/
By Brooks Boliek -
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - Federal law enforcement officers continued their crackdown on illegal copyright piracy as the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced the first-ever criminal-enforcement action against BitTorrent network users Wednesday.
Agents of the FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed 10 search warrants throughout the U.S. against leading members of a sophisticated peer-to-peer network known as Elite Torrents. Federal agents also took control of the main server that coordinated all file-sharing activity on the Elite Torrents network.
By Scott Kessler -
Recent court outcomes are transforming the online business landscape, as will several key upcoming cases
In a previous life, I went to law school and later practiced law. Afterward, having become an equity analyst covering an area that isn't heavily regulated (the Internet), I figured I wouldn't have to spend much time thinking about things legal.
Boy, was I wrong. From patent matters to civil suits to Supreme Court cases, legal issues have significantly affected many well-known Web companies. Just take a look:
SAN JOSE, California, May 24 /PRNewswire/ --
Guidelines Help Organizations Achieve Compliance and Mitigate Risk Associated With Security Breaches
IPLocks(TM), the leading provider of enterprise information risk management solutions, today announced the Seven Laws of Information Risk Management. The Laws are a common sense framework for how organizations can achieve compliance and mitigate risks, while better connecting people, process and technology. For more detail on the laws and tips on how to implement comprehensive Information Risk Management, please visit www.iplocks.com/7laws.php.
By Kevin Rademacher -
There are no businesses that are not -- or will not -- be affected by the Internet's continued expansion into personal and business lives around the world.
"Five years ago, I predicted that IP (Internet protocol) would eat everything," said Hossein Eslambolchi, chief technical officer of AT&T Corp, who was in Las Vegas recently to speak at the Networld-Interop technology convention. "I am not surprised at all with where we are today."
U.S. trade official warns of "rampant piracy and counterfeiting"
By Jeffrey Thomas -
Washington -- The level of copyright piracy in Russia has increased dramatically, and the adverse effects on American owners of copyrights are compounded by the fact that Russia has become a major exporter of pirated material, according to a senior official in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
NEW YORK, May 18 /PRNewswire/ --
In the US, one out of every five software programs installed on PC computers is a pirated copy. That's according to today's release of the Business Software Alliance's Annual Global Software Piracy Study.
While US software piracy rate may be the lowest in the world, the piracy rate is higher 90 percent in other parts of the world.
By Simon Aughton -
Software piracy in the UK declined slightly in 2004 but 27 per cent of software on computers was illegal, according to the Business Software Alliance's Global Piracy Study. The value of pirated software was put at more than £1bn.
The UK remains below the European average of 35 per cent. The worst offender was France, at 45 per cent, which is put down to the large proportion of small businesses in the country.
By Adam Brown -
Border patrol seizures of counterfeit goods and illegal drugs along the Canadian border throughout the past two weeks have focused public attention on the border patrol system.
On May 9, U.S. border patrol officers intercepted 48,000 doses of the stimulant MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, said Joe Giuliano, 51, border patrol officer. He estimated the street value of the drugs to be approximately $1 million.
By Michael Hiltzik -
For all its skill at designing products that strike an emotional chord with consumers, Apple Computer Inc. sometimes projects a corporate personality as chilly and arrogant as an oil company's.
The latest manifestation of this trait is an Apple lawsuit implicitly aimed at a couple of online publications, Apple Insider and PowerPage, that compile tips, rumors and speculation about the company as sedulously as People counts celebrity stretch marks.
By Steven Marlin -
Federal-agency data-security guidelines for financial-service firms could be extended to other industries.
Laws at the federal and state levels are altering the landscape for sharing and protecting sensitive customer information, just as widely publicized breaches at companies like Bank of America, ChoicePoint, DSW Shoe Warehouse, and LexisNexis have focused attention on the problem of ID theft.
By Carrie Higbie -
Picture this: John is a designer of safe and ergonomically advanced car seats. As he arrives at the factory where he is working on the latest top-secret design for BDA Motors, he swipes his access card to get through the front door and has his iris scanned at his office door.
He has a three level password system to log on to his computer, and opens the design file of the new vehicle. Distracted by a phone call, he inadvertently saves the design file for the whole vehicle into a public folder accessible from the company website. Within minutes the multi-billion pound project is in the hands of the competition.
By Ahmad Sayuthi -
INTELLECTUAL property (IP), which concerns “the property of the mind,” is often misunderstood as being just an obscure legal concept, with little understanding of its true value. Our Government wants this to change.
It has long recognised the wealth-creating potential of knowledge and intellectual property and it wants Malaysia to get a piece of the pie. The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry is tasked to get things moving and is entrusted to oversee the four stages of IP management – creation, legal protection, commercialisation and enforcement of legal protection.
By Ken Adelman -
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent her time in Brazil late last month lavishing all sorts of high praise on the country's leftist president during her Latin American tour to promote the administration's free trade agenda.
Despite his strong communist bona fides, President Lula da Silva was clearly being feted by Miss Rice as a strategic ally to balance the antics of Hugo Chavez's oil-rich Venezuela.
By Jonathan Krim -
WASHINGTON -- While brawls over Social Security and lobbying high jinks dominate the news on Capitol Hill, Congress is quietly moving on one of the technology industry's top priorities: revamping the patent system.
As unsexy as that sounds, at stake is who gets to benefit most from innovation.
These days the patent office looks like California during the Gold Rush, with companies, universities and individuals stampeding to sew up as much "intellectual property" as they can. In the information age, ideas are among the most valuable coins of the realm.
By Steve Lohr -
Microsoft announced today that it would begin to license its home-grown ideas to venture capital firms and entrepreneurs. The move, the company said, is an effort both to open up its technology to outsiders and to exploit its storehouse of intellectual property.
The new program, called Microsoft Intellectual Property Ventures, is intended to foster more amicable relations between the big software company and start-up companies that have often regarded Microsoft as a threat.
By Damian Clarkson of Johannesburg -
There were 279 known incidents of intellectual property (IP) theft worth R2.4 billion worldwide in the first quarter of 2005 - most of which involved entertainment and software - and the piracy rate is increasing.
This is according to a report by Canada-based Gieschen Consultancy aimed at identifying the scope and depth of counterfeiting and piracy activity, which is based on global counterfeit enforcement activity as reported through the Document, Product and Intellectual Property Security Counterfeit Intelligence Report.
By Mark Schultz -
Intellectual property, once a dry, technical subject, has been cast as the villain in a modern day struggle between darkness and light. Free Culture and open source advocates argue passionately that intellectual property rights harm us all by locking up knowledge and culture. Their protests are loudest in the U.S. and E.U., but the most consequential front in this burgeoning ideological war over intellectual property rights is the developing world.
