Copyright tussle compels Google to alter search results

It may be a thrash for the torrent hosting websites. But, it was a victory day for the big media companies as they won a battle against online piracy on Friday. The event of their victory emerged when Google agreed to alter its search algorithms to favour web sites that offered legitimate copyrighted movies, music and television.

With the beginning of next week, algorithms of the Google would take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices, that are received by the web sites. As a result, the web sites facing multiple, valid complaints about copyright infringement may appear lower in Google search results.

The move of Google came as victory news for the entertainment industry, as it was, for years pressurising Google and other Internet sites to act against online piracy.

This announcement from Google came after more than six months of a much heated tussle between big media companies and technology companies. The entire tussle involved the proposed legislation intended to crack down on pirated online content, particularly by rogue foreign Web sites.

However, Google has denied removing pages from copyright-infringing web sites from its search engine unless it receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights’ owner.

According to the statements of Google, it had received copyright removal requests for over 4.3 million web addresses in the last 30 days, according to the company’s transparency report, which was more than what it received 2009.

WIPO launches IP Facts and Figures 2012

WIPO has launched 2012 IP Facts and Figures, which provides an overview of intellectual property (IP) activity based on the latest available year of statistics. Due to the time involved in collecting and reporting statistics to WIPO, most national and regional IP office statistics refer to 2010. 

Four types of industrial property, namely patents, utility models, trademarks and industrial designs has been covered in the publication. The publication focuses on application data only, which is the most often used measure of IP activity. 

The data used in the report have been taken primarily from the WIPO Statistics Database, which is based on WIPO’s Annual IP Survey and on data compiled by WIPO in processing international applications filed via the PCT, Madrid and Hague systems. 

See complete report

CC appointed new Regional Project Managers for Africa and the Asia-Pacific

According to the sources, Creative Commons added in its staff crew Tobias Schonwetter and Alex Gakuru (as new Regional Project Managers for Africa) and Jane Hornibrook and SooHyun Pae (as new Regional Project Managers for Asia-Pacific).

The Regional Project Managers at CC support and foster CC’s community in their regions. Creative Commons has volunteer teams operating in over 70 countries, all of whom work to support and promote the adoption of CC in their local jurisdictions, while at the same time providing valuable expertise and input to CC’s work globally.  

About Creative Commons (CC).
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

It provides free easy-to-use copyright licenses that provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use authors’ creative works, with the conditions of choice of the authors. CC licenses allow changing copyright terms from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”  The CC licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable authors to modify their copyright terms to best suit their needs. 

Trial Day: Apple alleges that Samsung copied the icons of iPhone

According to sources, in the yesterday’s court proceedings, the Apple Inc. alleged that Samsung Electronics Co. changed the design of its smart-phone icons in order give it resemblance to the icons on the iPhone. In the support of its claim, it presented an internal Samsung document to a jury in California.

In the excerpts of a 2010 internal Samsung report, which was presented by the Apple Inc., the Samsung did a side-by- side comparison of its icon designs next to those of the iPhone. As per the recommendations of the report, Samsung altered icons that weren’t as user-friendly as those on Apple’s devices.

Susan Kare, a former Apple graphics designer said in the court that the icons for the companies’ current competing products are “confusingly similar”, both being square with round edges and displayed on the device in rows of four. She also told the jury that while visiting the office of Apple’s lawyers, she mistook a Samsung smart-phone for an iPhone.
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Google should pay $750 per book, says authors in copyright case

Authors suing Google for copyright infringement for  digitization of their works in Google books case have made a filing in a federal court in Southern District of New York to make an order requiring the internet giant to pay $750 per book it copied, distributed or displayed as a part of Google book project.

In its filing  president of Authors Guild, Scot Turow urged the court to rule that Google's unauthorized digitization of works does not amount to fair use. Current motion claims that Google has implemented its library project for commercial reasons to gain competitive advantage over its competitors, Microsoft and Amazon which were also digitizing books but with permission of authors.

On the contrary Google's spokesman took a stand against this view and puts that "Google library project constitutes fair use within copyright law by allowing the users to identify interesting books and find ways to borrow or buys those books and acts much like a card catalog in digital age.

 Google books project began seven years ago, where millions of books where scanned and converted into digital format after entering into agreements with libraries. Further details of project is available here.

Soon after the launch of this project, the authors across world came against it claiming copyright infringement. They claim that scanning in real sense means copying and  thus unauthorized digitization of their works by Google amounts to copyright violations.On the other hand Google always maintained its position that The Books Project amount to fair use within copyright legislation.

It was in mid 2005,  the  Authors Guild and American Association of Publishers filed a suit against Google in a Federal Court of New York to prevent them from digitizing works. The case was sooner declared to be a Class action suit.

In May 2011, a settlement package offered by Google amounting to $127 million USD was rejected by a Federal Judge.

Current motion filed by Authors guild was a  response to Google's motion on 27/7/2012 seeking dismissal of the long running case by claiming that authors have not suffered any economic harm owing to its copying and displaying of digital copies.

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