Are we ready for Baby Googles?

In "Minnow Microsoft v the Google Giant", posted on the BBC website today, Rory Cellan-Jones writes on the competition-based complaint lodged by Microsoft with the European Commission. He explains:

"It's a familiar story - a scrappy little underdog launches a competition complaint in Brussels about the giant that dominates its industry. Ten years ago it would have been Netscape accusing Microsoft of abusing its monopoly power - today it's Microsoft charging Google with the same crime.

Microsoft's first ever competition complaint is not just a wonderfully ironic turn of events, it's a measure of how the balance of power on the web has shifted. A decade ago control of the desktop and what applications lived on it was still all important - now it's the control of search which delivers huge power and billions of advertising dollars to Google.

... Microsoft is determined that its Bing search engine should make serious headway. In Europe at least, that's not happening. According to Microsoft, Google has 95% of the search market. Now it claims that Google is using its power unfairly to maintain that dominance. Its complaint - which as Google points out is just an addition to an existing antitrust case in which a Microsoft subsidiary was already a complainant - is that the search company is putting walls around content that rivals need if they are to compete.

In a long blog post, Microsoft's chief legal counsel Brad Smith outlines a series of areas where he says Google is impeding competition. He claims that it's very difficult, for example, for rivals to get proper access to YouTube - owned by Google - for their search results.

He points to the Google Books plan - blocked by a US court last week - as another case where any other search engine will get poor access to valuable content, in this case millions of books.

And he says that Google uses its business relationship with leading websites to block them from installing competing search boxes on their sites. ..."

This member of tytoc collie team is not surprised.  He has been telling his friends for the past four years that the only thing that can stop Google taking over the world, if people want to stop it doing so, is to focus on its crushingly powerful market position.  It is effectively impossible for any other business to compete with the combination of forces -- Google Book, Chrome, YouYube, AdWord and AdSense -- which together will inexorably drive so much individualised information into its marketing and advertising facilities that no other electronic or printed media will be remotely able to provide value for the money advertisers are prepared to spend in marketing their goods and services.

Is there a solution? It has always been axiomatic in European competition terms that the existence of a dominant position in a marketplace is not harmful unless it is abusive, but Google is so ominpowerful and omnipresent, and is such an essential facility for all traders in all markets at all times, that there is no way to deal with it other than by breaking it up into lots of Baby Googles that will be forced to compete with one another, by analogy with the Baby Bells and Standard Oil.

Goo-Goo Baby here

Rogue websites: a problem ... and a prize

If only cyber-pest control were so simple ...

tytoc collie has made much in recent weeks of the difficulties faced by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in its battle with the World Intellectual Property Database (WIPD) over the latter's deceptive and misleading imitation website -- which remains obstinately online even several months after its existence was first reported (see earlier Katposts here, here and here, for example).  Interest is particularly keen in intellectual property circles because the WIPO is the United Nations agency charged with the promotion of intellectual property rights and it is its own IP rights that appear so difficult, if not impossible, for it to protect.  However, the issues at stake go far wider than WIPO since it could equally well have been any other UN agency that was the target of this infringing activity.

Let us take the following hypothesis.  This time it is not WIPO but its sister agency the World Health Organization (WHO) which faces a problem.   An imitation website, featuring an organisation calling itself the World Health Department (WHD), can be accessed on www.whd.biz [nb at the time of posting this item, that URL was a parked domain].  A logo closely similar to that of the WHO adorns the WHD's home page; the artwork and fonts are generally similar too.  There are no email, phone or fax contact details but, under "contact", an address in Prague, Czech Republic, is listed.  From this website the WHD offers "WHD-approved" medicines and pharmaceutical products. Some of these products are genuine pharma products with expired "use-by" dates; others are suspected of being counterfeit or of having no curative function. The WHD also sends materials to distributors and suppliers of pharmaceutical goods and to the health ministries of a number of developing countries; while carefully worded so as not to state that they are invoices for goods purchased, they look superficially as though they are.

Reports reach the WHO that this site exists and that its sales offers and not-quite-invoices have deceived or induced a number of businesses and recipients to place orders or pay money.  There are concerns that the activities of the WHD will place the health of consumers at risk, diminish the financial resources available for health in developing countries and damage the reputation of the WHO itself, since some people are convinced that the WHD is a service provided by it or under its auspices.

The WHO has written to the person named as owner of the website and has asked him to cease and desist. The individual in question has neither ceased nor desisted and, since the site earns him valuable income, he is unlikely to walk away from it without a struggle.  Now the WHO comes to you and seeks advice, informing you that it does not hold any registered trade marks for its name or logo but that it is entitled to a degree of legal protection under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention on Industrial Property Rights. 

Your brief is to sketch out a responsible, affordable and legal plan for taking out WHD's www.whd.biz website as swiftly and efficiently as possible, ensuring that it attracts as little traffic until this is achieved and that, as far as possible, there is no repetition of this deception by its perpetrator. 

Please send your advice to tytoc collie by email here, with the subject line "Rogue sites", by close of play on Sunday 6 February 2011.  The best entries will be hosted on this weblog and readers will be given the chance to vote for the winner.   The prize?  A brand-new copy of Alexander Tsoutsanis's excellent Trade Mark Registrations in Bad Faith, just published by Oxford University Press (details here).

Standards and Patents: a conference and a competition

The Fourth Annual Conference on Standards and Patents, organised by IBC Legal Conferences and which will be held in the Crowne Plaza London St James (whoever thought up that name for a hotel?), takes place on 16 and 17 November.  tytoc collie is looking forward to it since he, his associated weblog PatLit and legendary US weblog Patently-O are among the event's many media sponsors.  The panel of speakers over the two days is unusually strong, featuring leading specialist patent judges, lawyers and patent owners, and contains many of the Kat's friends -- but that's not the only reason for attending. The programme itself addresses topics of great relevance in those industrial sectors where huge profits can be obtained if patent licensing policy, IP rules and competition barriers are all correctly sorted out -- while huge losses, market exclusion and commercial wipe-out can result if you get just one small thing wrong.  Topics covered include

• Patent pooling
• The market for patent portfolios
• Trolls and non-practising entities
• Paying for patent litigation and cost-shifting
• Competition law and policy issues in principle and in practice
• The impact of change on standards bodies

You can view the whole programme, and registration details, by clicking here.  Use this link and, as an IPKat reader, you'll be entitled to a generous 10% discount on the cost of registration.

In traditional IPKat fashion, there's a competition to go with the conference.  Win this and you will enjoy the benefit of complimentary registration, two networking lunches, four networking breaks and two cups of registration coffee. As for the competition, well -- it's time for poetry again!  Your task is to compose a limerick that begins with the words "A crafty inventor called Fred".  Closing date for entries is Sunday 24 October.  Email your entries to tytoc collie here, with the subject line "Patent limerick".  Beware: the best entries will be published on this weblog ...