The trial in the dispute between Oracle and Google over the use of Java technology in the Android operating system is over, and the greatly anticipated ruling on copyright in the Java Application Programming Interface (API) has issued. The court ruled that the elements of the Java API, including the
European Court of Justice Rules on Copyright Status of Computer Programming Languages and Functionality
By Jeffrey Neuburger on
In a jury room in San Francisco, jurors in Oracle, Inc. v. Google, Inc. have been toiling over complicated issues related to the copyrightability of the Java computer programming language, and they may well return a verdict before the ink is dry on this post. We’ll write more about that…
What If I Told You Somebody Was Scribbling on Your Web Site?
By Jeffrey Neuburger on
Let’s say that anybody could write comments on your Web site that were visible to third parties and that you couldn’t prevent it. Those comments might include links to competitive Web sites or products, defamatory statements, or just unwelcome negative comments. And let’s say that your only recourse, if you felt the comments were inappropriate, would be to e-mail a complaint to an enormous media company that might or might not agree that the comments should be removed.
Well, if you download and install the Google Toolbar, and navigate to your Web site, you can find out if that is happening on your site right now.
A we discussed in October at our 15th annual seminar (“New Media, Technology and the Law:
Issues on the Near Horizon,” Google recently debuted the “Sidewiki” function on the Google Toolbar. Google touts the Sidewiki functionality as allowing users “to contribute helpful information next to any webpage.” But brand managers and Web site owners may not think that some of the information that is contributed by users of the Sidewiki functionality is “helpful” at all.