Posts tagged: legal
publichouse.sg:
We have lost faith in the system.
That’s how Mr Laurence Wong and Mr Paul Liew described their feelings about the way the police have handled the assault case which they were involved in.
Remember the US SEC’s indifference when a member of the public raised concerns over Madoff’s ponzi scheme for over 10 years?
Yahoo! Southeast Asia has filed a memorandum of appearance with the courts to defend itself against allegations by Singapore Press Holdings that the digital media company had infringed on its copyright.
“We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against this suit,” said Yahoo! Southeast Asia Managing Editor Alan Soon. “Our editorial business model of acquired, commissioned and original content is proven.”
In its claim, SPH cited 23 articles which it alleged were reproduced from its stable of newspapers without permission. Yahoo! has denied the allegations in an earlier letter to SPH’s lawyers.
Looks like they’ve got bored with their old gun and found a new one. This will be an extremely interesting case—23 articles are alleged to be reproduced without permission. I’d like to see for myself.
Alex Au, writing about the attitudes of the police when dealing with the various kinds of crime:
The police say they fight crime — sounds obvious until we hear a story like this. What do they mean by crime? Not quite what you and I might understand by the term, nor even what our statute books say is a crime. ‘Crime’ seems to mean that which is at variance from political priorities and administrative fiat. If thugs help “cleanse” Singapore of “illegals” — social control being one of Singapore’s top priorities — thuggery and forcible detention are not crimes.
Bottom-line: Just don’t get cheated, and don’t rely on the police.
This proves that the Real Estate rights in Singapore are pretty much inexistent:
Land acquisition notices have been handed out since 12pm Tuesday and the Singapore Land Authority has gazetted the lands affected by the acquisition.
The government just takes and pays for whatever it needs.
A Driver in Foreign Lands (via Confused.com).
NYTimes Opinion Blogs:
The problem, according to the writer, Liu Shinan, a high-ranking editor at the paper, is that many in China worry that they will be found liable for the injuries that they are seeking to alleviate.
The fear is not unfounded: in 2006, a man who helped an elderly woman to the hospital was dragged to court by her family and later made to pay a large share of her medical bills.
The difference between the Law of Torts in Common Law, and the lack thereof in Chinese Civil Law jurisdictions.
Mosaid said it will buy about 2,000 wireless patents from Core Wireless, which holds them for Nokia (NOK1V.HE) and Microsoft (MSFT.O).
Mosaid said it will pay nothing for the patents, but will shoulder the costs of reaching licensing deals with other companies and take a one-third cut of any deals made.
The deal is “transformative” for Mosaid and revenue from future licensing will likely exceed the company’s revenue from its first 35 years in business, Mosaid Chief Executive John Lindgren told Reuters.
The Intellectual Property scene is set to look bloodier then ever in the years to come. Hopefully, this doesn’t stall technological development as badly as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD has for the future of DVD.
Google will keep fighting, but realistically, the jury will get to see the Lindholm email. As a result, there’s a fairly high risk for Google that it could be found to have infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property rights willfully, which in turn would result in triple damages and, even more importantly, an injunction — the maximum leverage Oracle could possibly get in order to dictate the terms of a license deal.
Exciting!
On Friday, August 12, Google filed inter partes reexamination requests with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the two patents asserted in patent infringement claims by Lodsys against, among others, several Android developers. The patents subject to these requests are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,222,078 and 7,620,565.
We have had a chance to review the reexamination requests, and after that review we believe Lodsys is in for a rough time. We have seen reexam requests before, but when we saw these, the above quote came to mind. Lodsys, you shouldn’t have brought a knife to a gunfight.
Good job.
In a major about-shift, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) and the People’s Association have lifted restrictions on who residents can invite to events held on public sites leased by the PA.
However, these activities had to be “non-political” in nature and that they had to be organised by “non-grassroots organisations”.
That’s still a major contention. What on earth is the difference between grassroots organisations and non-grassroots organisations?
The liberalising of rules, announcing in a joint HDB-PA statement on Tuesday night, is the latest twist in a public debate over the use of open spaces in Aljunied GRC, which is under the Workers’ Party (WP).
It’ll be interesting to see how this goes.
Google doesn’t want to do what Motorola Mobility does (sell phones); it wants the company because it’s got a big heap of patents—seventeen thousand, apparently, with seven thousand more under review. And this is why today’s news is profoundly depressing.
I can sense that other Android OEMs, such as Samsung and HTC, would be rushing to find an alternative mobile OS, and Windows Phone 7 looks the most attractive thus far.
The smartphone landscape would be exciting to watch as upheavals are really threatening competitors without their own mobile OSes.
Judge Alsup — the federal judge presiding over this litigation — attaches a great deal of importance to that particular document. At a recent hearing, he essentially said that a good trial lawyer would just need that document “and the Magna Carta” (arguably the origin of common law) to win this case on Oracle’s behalf and have Google found to infringe Oracle’s rights willfully.
Google’s behaviour is pretty appalling. What’s happened to “Don’t be Evil”?
A man is suing his town council for damages after he slipped and fell near his block.
The Straits Times reported that Aw Kian Chow was walking back to his flat in Block 415, Sembawang Drive on a wet evening in August 2008 when he slipped on a sloping ramp near his block.
Mr Aw fractured his spine and became paralysed from the neck down and is now seeking compensation for medical expenses, loss of future earnings and transport costs; loss of pre-trial earnings, pain and suffering.
The 46-year-old is suing Sembawang Town Council for alleged negligence as he claims it did not lay down non-slip material or paint the surface of the walkway to prevent falls.
Another interesting case on negligence.
High Court Judge Quentin Loh wondered out loud if a person can be guilty of committing an offence if law enforcers had given permission for him to carry out that activity.
What a mind-boggling predicament the judge is put in…
The Judge indicated that he needed time to think over the issue and reserved judgement.
Yeps. Public policy considerations, I think.
I began the six weeks prison sentence on June 1. Because I couldn’t pay the fine, another two weeks were added. With remission for good behaviour this would mean five and a half weeks. I had been ordered to surrender to the sheriff at the Supreme Court at 9 a.m. and was quite looking forward to the experience as I defiantly told a Straits Times reporter who turned up mysteriously at a lively pre-jail party at The Old Brown Shoe, a British pub on Bukit Timah Road the night before. The words that headlined the report announced that I was going to have a ‘ball’ in Changi Prison. Despite having a slight hangover, I was awake early and arrived at the sheriff’s office dead on time.
A vivid recount of the time the author spent behind bars.
