2013 is underway with a higher degree of activity than is normally seen this early in the year. Economic prospects and commercial activities are both trending upwards. This is accompanied by a net job creation of 6,570 in the foreign direct investment sector, illustrating that Ireland is still an attractive option for multinationals when establishing a base for European operations. In this article we will look back at the noteworthy matters from the previous year and in our accompanying article we set out what we expect to be key areas of interest to watch the coming year.
The Technology and Intellectual Property sectors have been particularly active. We are delighted to list LinkedIn, General Electric and Pepsi among some of our new clients. These global brands are key contributors to Ireland, and we are pleased to help them develop their businesses here. It was an extremely active year for William Fry, with us advising on NewBay’s $100 million sale to Research In Motion (RIM) as well as Nortel Networks (Ireland) Limited’s patent portfolio sale, which was valued at $4.5 billion.
With all that occurred over the past year, some topics may have escaped unnoticed or been overshadowed by other events. This article will recap some of the key developments in 2012, with particular focus on those issues expected to continue to have an impact in the coming year.
Samsung and Apple featured prominently in the headlines in 2012, in particular when it came to their legal battle over patent issues across multiple jurisdictions, including an award from a US court of an eye-watering $1.049 billion.
EU patents took a leap towards a unitary system and could be a reality as of the start of 2014 if approved by the necessary EU member states. ACTA was signed into law following the global SOPA campaign and the debate surrounding the liability of ISPs is sure to continue, following on from the action against Pirate Bay, the Meltwater decision by the Supreme Court in the UK, the closure of Newzbin.com and the issues related to linking raised by the NNI.
Activity relating to data protection continued its upward trend and was a particularly prominent issue in 2012. The US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for misleading Safari users as to the operation of cookies when browsing websites. This was matched by the first substantive signs of enforcement of the so-called “cookies” regulations, which saw the Irish Data Protection Commissioner write to 80 Irish websites identifying what was perceived to be low compliance with the relatively new laws. Data protection will undoubtedly continue to be a busy area in 2013 as both regulation and enforcement actions are on the increase yet again.
In light of this, 2013 is set to be an active time, so watch our website and follow us on Twitter (@WFIDEA) to keep up to date with the latest Technology and IP issues.
To view any of the articles mentioned above, please click the relevant link below:
Controversial Copyright Regulations Signed into Law
BT Ordered to Block its Users Accessing a Website used for Illegal Downloading
Data Protection Commissioner Takes Action on Cookies
