This contribution offers a critical socio-legal perspective on the European Commission's Decision in the Google Shopping investigation. In particular, three outstanding issues, concerning Google's data collection, algorithmic transparency and the beneficiaries of the Decision are explored. The...

On June 27, 2017, the European Commission imposed a record fine of 2.4 billion EUR on Google for violating EU competition law. More specifically, the Commission issued a decision finding that Google had infringed Article 102 TFEU by abusing its dominant position on the market for online general...

As businesses and other entities have sought to collect more personal data on individuals, the public has pushed back, and lawmakers throughout the United States and elsewhere have responded by passing data protection laws. Recent data protection laws passed by the European Union and by several...

Many have argued that thought should constitute per se unpatentable subject matter, and some have even suggested that any patent claim that includes a mental step should lie outside patentability. Many courts have long disagreed with such a draconian rule, and have instead upheld myriad patent...

The copyright system has long been understood to play a critical role when it comes to the development and distribution of creative work. Copyright serves a second fundamental purpose, however: it encourages the development and distribution of related technologies like hardware that might be...

For well over a century, U.S. trademark law has afforded brand owners certain rights, remedies and obligations. As the Department of Commerce has noted, owners of trademarks have both a legal right and an affirmative obligation to protect their trademarks from unauthorized third-party use....

Not all code is created equal—at least not in the majority’s view in Google v. Oracle, handed down on April 5th. In this landmark 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that Google’s verbatim reproduction of approximately 11,500 lines of computer programming code from Oracle’s Java library...

Proponents of a ‘more economic approach’ (MEA) to EU competition law criticise the case law on abuse of dominance as overly form-based – i.e. as being built on categorizations rather than case-specific assessments of actual competitive effects. While the Commission has largely accepted...

In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust suit against Google alleging that Google has unlawfully monopolized the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising. The complaint raises questions involving market definition, monopoly...