Welcome to the first edition of our Intellectual Property e-zine in 2013.
It is great to see that 2013 is underway with a higher degree of activity than is normally reported 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 remains an attractive option for multinationals establishing a base for their European operations.
2012 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’ patent portfolio sale, valued at $4.5 billion. 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 look forward to helping them further develop their businesses here.
With all that occurred in 2012, some news stories may have escaped unnoticed. In this issue, we recap some of the key developments last year, 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 their legal battle over patent issues which is being fought in multiple jurisdictions. In one phase of this apparently never-ending dispute, a US court awarded an eye-watering $1.049 billion against Samsung.
EU patents took a leap towards a unitary system, which looks set to be a reality at 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 continued, following on from the action against Pirate Bay, the Meltwater case, the closure of Newzbin.com and the issues related to linking raised by the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI).
Activity relating to data protection continued its upward trend and was particularly prominent 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.
2013 is set to be an active year, so be sure to watch our website and follow us on Twitter (@WFIDEA) to keep up to date with the latest Technology and IP issues.
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