Dubious
Distinction: Jakarta electronics emporium causing US ‘significant losses’
Jakarta Globe, Victoria Slind-Flor, Mar 08, 2015
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| Harco Glodok market in Jakarta, Indonesia’s largest trade center for consumer electronics and related goods. ( JG Photo/ Yudhi Sukma Wijaya) |
The US
Trade Representative’s office released its latest list of so-called notorious
markets, identifying sites that cause “significant financial losses” for US
companies to piracy and other forms of intellectual property infringement.
The 2014
survey identified physical marketplaces in 10 countries where significant
amounts of counterfeit goods are sold. The markets are in Indonesia, Argentina,
Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Paraguay, Thailand and Uruguay.
Particular
areas of concern are Harco Glodok market in Jakarta, listed as Indonesia’s
largest trade center for consumer electronics and related goods; Argentina’s La
Salada, which the report identified as South America’s largest black market;
the Silk Market in Beijing, where vendors reportedly have access “to a supply
of newly manufactured counterfeit products to replace those that have been
confiscated”; and the Computer Village Market in Lagos, Nigeria, reportedly the
largest market for knockoff computer products and accessories in the nation.
China is
the source of many of the counterfeit goods sold in markets in Prado, Italy;
Lagos; Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Bangkok, according to the report.
The report
lists a number of websites where enforcement activities have cut down on the
quantity of counterfeit goods sold, including Seriesyonkis.com, Aiseesoft.com,
Xunlei.com, and wawa-mania.ec, Mp3skull.com and Share-rapid.cz.
In other
intellectual property and copyright news:
Rocketman
A challenge
by Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies to a patent on which Jeff Bezos
is the lead inventor received a positive ruling from the US Patent and
Trademark Office.
At issue is
a patent that covers the sea landing of space launch vehicles and is aimed at
re-using rocket elements, instead of discarding them during flight as is
usually done. Re-using launch vehicles would make space travel cheaper.
According
to the patent, a structure would be positioned in a body of water and the
launch vehicle returning to Earth would land tail-first on it.
The patent
was issued to Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, a company established by Bezos,
the chairman of Amazon.
In a March
3 decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board said that Musk’s Hawthorne,
California-based SpaceX demonstrated a reasonable likelihood that it would
prevail in showing the unpatentability of one of the patent claims.
The board
agreed with SpaceX that some of the claims in the patent under review had been
anticipated by and were obvious in the light of a technical paper, “Re-entry
and Terminal Guidance for Vertical Landing TSTO (Two-Stage to Orbit),”
presented at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1998.
The
application for the disputed patent was filed in June 2010.
The board
ruled that a procedure known as an inter parties review could be conducted over
this patent.
UK blogger
vindicated in his contention that someone is wrong on the Internet
A UK
blogger who was the subject of a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim after
he posted a press release sent to him by an organization advocating
heterosexual rights won a default judgment in a California federal court.
Oliver
Hotham, identified in court papers as a student journalist and blogger,
publishes a blog on the WordPress.com website operated by San Francisco’s
Automattic [sic].
After
reading a news account of Straight Pride UK, he contacted the organization,
identifying himself as a student and freelance journalist, and asked for
information about the organization, according to his pleadings.
The
organization sent him a press release, which Hotham published in part on his
blog. That same day, the self-described press officer for Straight Pride sent
takedown notices to Hotham and Automattic, claiming copyright infringement.
Hotham sued
in federal court in Oakland, California, in November 2013, accusing the press
officer of misrepresentation of copyright.
In her
March 2 order, US District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted a default judgment
and awarded damages, including attorney fees, of $25,084.
She said
Hotham and Automattic have been unsuccessfully attempting to locate the press
officer, Nick Steiner, in order to serve the recommendations of a federal
magistrate judge with respect to the default judgment. She said the court would
require no further expenditure of resources.
The report
from US Magistrate Judge Joseph Sero was filed Oct. 6. He recommended that
Steiner be found to have made material misrepresentations in filing a DMCA
infringement complaint.
All your
assets are belong to us, Kim
Kim Dotcom
and his co-defendants in a criminal copyright case have no standing to contest
the forfeiture of their assets, a federal court in Virginia ruled.
Dotcom is
in New Zealand, fighting attempts to have him extradited to the US to face the
charges. The case is related to websites the government claims facilitated
unauthorized file- sharing.
US District
Judge Liam O’Grady ruled Feb. 27 that because Dotcom and other co-defendants
are fugitives, they can’t contest the forfeiture.
He said the
government successfully invoked a US law that bars such actions. The law, he
said, was enacted to prevent the “unseemly” spectacle of a fugitive criminal
defendant who is facing both incarceration and forfeiture from attempting to
invoke “from a safe distance only so much of a US court’s jurisdiction” to
recover alleged criminal proceeds.
According
to court papers, the government is seeking the forfeiture of 18 bank accounts
in Hong Kong and New Zealand; Dotcom’s assets in Computershare Investor
Services; two luxury homes in Auckland; 21 cars, including Mercedes Benzes and
Cadillacs; a Dutch Angel motorcycle; four personal watercraft; a 108-inch
television; three 82-inch TVs; a Devon watch valued at $27,000; and a photo by
Olaf Mueller.
Bloomberg
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