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Full-Text Articles in Law

Success, Dominance, And Interoperability, Alan Devlin, Michael Jacobs, Bruno Peixoto Oct 2009

Success, Dominance, And Interoperability, Alan Devlin, Michael Jacobs, Bruno Peixoto

Indiana Law Journal

In September 2007, the European Court of First Instance (CFI) ruled that Microsoft violated the European Union's competition law by failing to provide certain of its rivals with proprietary computer protocols that would have enabled them to make their products fully "interoperable" with Microsoft's dominant operating system. In the process, the court suggested that an owner of certain kinds of dominant intellectual property is obliged to share its property with rivals to the extent necessary to allow those rivals to compete "viably" with the dominant firm. Thus, in theory, should protocol sharing fail to achieve the requisite degree of "viability, …


Copytraps, Ned Snow Jan 2009

Copytraps, Ned Snow

Indiana Law Journal

Congress has unintentionally evoked copytraps, which exact thousands of dollars from the Internet user who innocently buys music without knowing that it infringes copyright. Copytraps arise when Web sites lure innocent users into downloading expression that seems legal but is actually infringing. Regardless of whether the Web site appears legitimate, whether a user's good-faith belief is reasonable, or whether the Web site owner is unaware that the material is infringing, users who download infringing material face strict liability punishment, and the penalties are severe. It is entrapment, with the spoils from the innocent going to large corporate copyright holders. The …