A major milestone was reached for the OASIS ODF TC last week. The latest Committee Draft of ODF 1.2 (CD 05) was sent out for a 60-day public review.

Brazil has proposed a broad update to its copyright law (Portuguese) and it contains a surprising idea: penalize anyone who "hinders or impedes" fair use rights or obstructs the use of work that has already fallen into the public domain.

This court decision should provide a wake-up call for all those planning to store documents in the so-called "cloud".

In a landmark announcement issued today, the data protection officials across the European Union found that the way that EU Member States have implemented the data retention obligations in the 2006 EU Data Retention Directive is unlawful.

New Zealand is set to become one of the first countries to make software unpatentable after its Minister for Justice, Hon Simon Power, announced modifications to the Patents Bill.

At the European Court in Luxembourg, Monty Widenius has brought proceedings against the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems

"Brazil has just created the best-ever implementation of WIPO Copyright Treaty. In Brazil's version of the law, you can break DRM without breaking the law, provided you're not also committing a copyright violation. And what's more, any rightsholder who adds a DRM that restricts things that are allowed by Brazilian copyright laws ("fair dealing" or "fair use") faces a fine."

Software patent law must be simplified if not completely abolished. The concept that a routine or function is somehow "intellectual property" is ridiculous. How many times have you had an idea and found out someone else had the same idea? Patents were designed to prevent stealing of ideas but two independent people creating the same idea are not stealing from each other.