A software license resembles a rental agreement. The vendor retains ownership of the intellectual property rights in the software but grants a third party with a limited right to use it for a certain period of time. However, not all licensing models are created equal. Significant differences exist between the traditional licensing model of proprietary…Continue reading
Wrap agreements in electronic contracting: click-wrap and browse-wrap
Over the course of the past three decades we are experiencing a new reality of flourishing and ever-growing electronic commerce. This new form of trade brought with itself a new medium for contracting – electronic contracts. The result is that nowadays, with one click of a mouse a user in one part of the world…Continue reading
IP and Video Games
Over the course of the last four decades the video games industry has seen rapid growth and expanse. In 2019 the global video games market was valued at 151 billion dollars and the expectation for it is to reach a value of more than 250 billion dollars by 2025. For the last 40 years computer…Continue reading
Public key cryptography and its applications on the blockchain
Cryptography is an essential pillar of modern cyber security. It has a multitude of applications in digital currencies, blockchain technology, payment cards, password protection and electronic commerce. Cryptography can be defined as the science and practice of keeping information secure by way of employing mathematical principles and transforming that information into a form that would…Continue reading
Literal and non-literal copying as forms of copyright infringement in computer programs
One of the most common forms of IP infringement when it comes to computer software is unauthorized copying. Such copying represents a violation of the exclusive reproduction right of the copyright holder. The exclusive reproduction right gives the rightholder the power to authorize or prohibit direct or indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means…Continue reading
The open source definition and permissive FOSS licenses
In general, the concept of open source is built upon three key tenets – i) the open source technology, ii) the open source community that stands behind it and iii) the open source licenses that regulate the use of that technology. These three elements are intertwined together to produce a phenomenon that provides significant benefits…Continue reading
The concept of copyleft in open-source software licensing
What is copyleft? Copyleft is one of the most important concepts when it comes to distributing free and open-source software (FOSS). Before elucidating what copyleft is, we need to take a step back and take a quick look at the general concept of free and open source software. FOSS is known for the provision of…Continue reading
The legal protection of graphical user interfaces
Back in 2010 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) was faced with an intriguing question with regards the legal protection of graphical user interfaces (GUI) – Case C-393/09 Bezpečnostní softwarová asociace – Svaz softwarové ochrany v Ministerstvo kultury. The question raised before the CJEU was whether a GUI can be protected as…Continue reading
On APIs, copyright protection and the fair use doctrine
What is an API? In simple terms, an API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows applications to talk to each other. For example, when you see a snippet with the weather forecast on the home screen of your mobile phone, this happens through an API which facilitates sourcing the weather data from…Continue reading
The notion of consent in the GDPR – a missed opportunity?
In our current digital economy consumers are increasingly more often required to disclose their personal data in order to obtain access to services. It seems that personal data is the fuel of this new economy as big data centers are slowly becoming almost as valuable as oil refineries. One of the reasons for this paradigm…Continue reading