How can huge company mergers that kill all competition be legal? Disclaimer: I'm a programmer/electrical engineer and therefore a complete novice to law. My question is: how can mergers of direct competitors, each already having a dominant market oligopoly, be legal? The trend in the electronic industry the recent years has been that two huge, multi-national companies that are each other's direct competitors, with little or no other competition, have merged into one. Some notable examples: Infinion acquires International Rectifier. Both companies specialized in advanced MOSFET circuits with barely any other competitors existing in the whole world. They now have close to monopoly on these kind of circuits. You find these circuits in every modern car. Microchip acquires Atmel. Both companies were direct and fierce competitors in the market of cheap, small microcontrollers. They were the only two companies in the world that profiled themselves as having beginner-friendly, easy to use microcontrollers and so they have been competing over the very same kind of customers for the past 30 years or so. There is barely any competition left at all on that market now. NXP acquires Freescale. The companies had many overlaps and were competitors in many areas, particularly in microcontrollers and automotive electronics. These two companies branched out from Phillips and Motorola respectively, roughly at the same time, some 15 years ago. Since then they had the same owners. NXP now got a different owner Qualcomm, at the same time as the merger. Qualcomm being another of these huge companies, but with a focus on telecom electronics, where they in turn have close to monopoly. So essentially this is 3 companies merging into 1. There are many more examples. ON Semi acquires Fairchild, Analog Devices acquires Linear Technology and so on. All in the past 1-2 years. It is the same story over and over, two huge multi-national companies that are direct competitors, with little or no other competition, merge into one. Imagine Microsoft and Google merging and you get the idea. The nature of their products - advanced electronic components - is such that barely anyone can start up a competing company, as they would need to do massive investments in R&amp;D, head-hunt all staff from the existing companies and possibly also make massive investments in production lines. Because of this steep threshold to enter the market, there has traditionally only been around 20 companies like this in the world, making 99% of the world's advanced electronic components. I take it that these mergers must have been approved by authorities in USA and Europe etc. Are there no laws regulating this? If there are, how do these companies manage to repeatedly dodge such laws world-wide?
There are no laws directly regulating merger of two companies. Instead, there are laws against "monopolizing" (and similar expressions). In the US, the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act and the FTC Act providing the legal underpinning for the Department of Justice to prosecute a merger, or for a judge to prohibit a merger. The typical logical flow is that it is illegal to unfairly reduce competition, which might mean lowering prices when you have a substantial share of the market, privately agreeing on technical innovations with a competitor, or simply gaining a substantial share of the market via a merger. Section 7 of the Clayton Act (also Sect 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Sect. 5 of the FTC Act) forbid a merger or acquisition when the effect would be "substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly". The US government has issued guidelines that gives ballpark suggestions about that they would be looking for in deciding is a merger is forbidden. The Hart–Scott–Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act provides the legal framework for federal review where the government approves vs. blocks an acquisition action (you have to file paperwork so they know that you intend a potential violation of anti-trust law). There are thresholds involving how big the cmopanies are and whethr4e they affect US commerce. This blurb outlines the review process.
You don't say what jurisdiction's patent laws you're interested in, and priority dates can differ in different schemes. I'm answering as to U.S. law only. In the United States, under the current hybrid "first-inventor-to-file" system, the priority date--the date that determines who "wins" if there are multiple claims to a specific invention--is, with some exceptions that I won't go into, the date of your first application. In other words, the date that the PTO got it in the mail. Once your application is submitted, it is--again, with some limitations I won't get into--prior art for the purposes of any later-submitted application. They can't get another application later, grant it first, and then deny your application based on the later-submitted application. Your application date would still win out. Could someone in the USPTO slip your application out of the stack, fudge the dates, and convince some other company to submit a similar application to get priority over you? Not as a practical matter, no. The USPTO isn't one guy in a room; it's a large organization, and the person who opens the mail, types in your application details, and sends you a receipt, isn't the same guy who knows whether your invention is any good or not. And, frankly, very few patentable inventions are going to be worth someone risking their job and/or jail time over--especially when there would be significant evidence of the misconduct--for example, your patent agent's files. So what are the chances that the examiner on your patent: 1) Is a nefarious character who has lived a life of public service long enough and wants to go rogue; 2) Has a friend in the mailroom who is also an expert in the field of your invention; and 3) Has a conduct in industry who is willing to break the law for the rights to your invention? Slim to none. And if you have an invention that is really so revolutionary that it's going to be worth so many people risking so much to steal it, odds are there will be other evidence that you were the inventor.
The companies agree to resolve the dispute with a neutral arbitrator. This is similar to a court action, but instead of a judge or panel of judges, there is an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators. The two parties to the dispute must agree to this in advance. For more information, you can consult the rather thorough Wikipedia article on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration
First of all, this assumes that the debt consolidation firm would be willing to buy, and the CC company willing to sell. With a trial already scheduled, this might well not be the case. Secondly, when (if) the debt consolidation firm buys the debt, they buy the rights of the seller. In many states the trial could go forward, with the debt consolidation firm substituted as plaintiff. It is not automatic that a sale of the debt would postpone the legal case. Certainly if this happened once, it seems very unlikely that a second debt consolidation firm would buy the debt from the first. And as the comments by Moo and ohwilleke suggest, such a scheme would be fraudulent and criminal, if discovered. It might also constitute contempt of court for intentionally abusing the process of the court. Not a good or safe idea.
The Right to Repair generally talks about hardware, not firmware or software, and only to the point of restoring &quot;original&quot; functionality. For example, RTR would make it prohibited to have Apple require that they fix your phone battery for hundreds of dollars and make it impossible for you, or a third-party shop, to do the repair instead. In Sonos case, RTR would imply that if your speaker blew a fuse (or capacitor, etc), you should have the right to fix that yourself, and they should provide you with reasonable instructions and hardware to do so. That said, if you look at the Sonos OSS references, at least a few of the licenses suggest that you can't release derivatives under more restrictive languages. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any case law that establishes this would work, and it would be really expensive to try and find out. There's also the problem of Intellectual Property and Copyright that they could try to argue as reasons why they can't release the proprietary bits that make their hardware run. Any other options would be, unfortunately, illegal, in part because of the DMCA. Edit: Looking further into this, I found that there is H.R.4006 - Fair Repair Act, which, if passed, would require manufacturers of some hardware to offer diagnostic tools and public copies of firmware. In addition, there are also actions being taken by iFixit at the Copyright Office to allow an exception to DMCA violations for the purposes of patching firmware. Also, the President of the United States issued an Executive Order that, among other things, instructs the FTC to set rules against anticompetitive repair policies. Much of this has moved forward in just the last year, so it's relatively new to me, but it sounds like an even stronger indicator that Sonos is probably not going to have that defense much longer, unless they totally abandon their old hardware, in which case, it may become legal to hack your own firmware.
Anyone seriously planning on doing this or anything like it would be well advised to consult a good trademark lawyer with the specifics. Specifics will matter in such a case. That said: Under US trademark law, the key question is whether a reasonable person would be confused into assuming that there is some connection, and that the new firm could be relied on based on the reputation of the old one. if so, this is a trademark infringement unless permission is obtained from the trademark holder (not likely to be granted). Since "orbitz" is a coined term its protection is stronger, there is no natural object or concept this can refer to. "AppleMoving" is less likely to be confused with "Apple Computers" because apples are real things and need not refer to computers. The likelihood of confusion depends on the specific facts of an individual case. Note also that trademark protection is a matter of private civil lawsuits. If orbitz didn't choose to sue for whatever reason, nothing would have stopped OrbitzMoving.
First of all, you own the mobile phone, you do not own the software on it - you have a licence to that software that almost certainly includes terms allowing Samsung to change the software and/or revoke your license. Second, changing the software does not destroy the phone - the hardware is completely intact. You can present that hardware and, in exchange, receive a brand new working phone which has the added advantage that it won't spontaneously explode. Alternatively, if you are an idiot, you can install a non-Samsung OS and cause your bomb, sorry, phone, to work again. Third, Samsung is probably not liable for any consequences that flow from an inability to make phone calls in any event - their contract will almost certainly exclude it and a case in negligence would probably fail for lack of both a duty of care and/or lack of foreseeability. Alternatively, Samsung is aware of a real risk to the users of their phone and have gone to great lengths to get them back. Having reached a 93% return rate they have identified a way to make the remaining 7% completely harmless. It is arguable that if they can do this and don't, then they are being negligent.
What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.