I live in Bulgaria. Should I worry about a patent that has been granted in the USA? I want to implement, in my app, a technique that has been patented in the USA. I live in Bulgaria. Do I need permission from the patent owner?
Bulgaria is one of many countries in which intellectual property can be protected with a single international patent filing, in lieu of a Bulgarian specific filing. In generally, you should assume that any patented idea likely to have international application, such as Internet based software, which is patented in the U.S. is also the subject of international patent protection, unless you specifically know that this is not the case. Virtually all patent lawyers know how to make this filing and most would recommend doing so in this case. So, yes, it is something you should worry about, and the better practice, by far, would be to obtain permission from the patent owner if the app is likely to have any meaningful commercial value. Now, if you were sued, there is a good chance that it would be in Bulgarian courts under Bulgarian patent law, which may be somewhat less harsh in some respects like damages awards than U.S. patent law. But, the basis for patent liability for an infringement in Bulgaria would be very similar.
If you want to implement this or a similar feature, you'd look up the patents, and either get a license (unlikely that Microsoft would give you a license), or figure out how to implement the feature without violating the patent. An example how a company I worked for worked around a patent: In order to compress data. in the best possible way, the idea was to try eight different methods to compress the data and pick the best compressed data. There was a patent for that (even though to me, this was quite obvious). Workaround: The software tried eight different methods and reported a number from 1 to 8 indicating which method gave the best result (unlike the patent, which actually gave the best result). Then the data was compressed once using the best method. No patent violation. You'd probably want a patent lawyer to check if your idea how to implement the feature violates the patent or not, and how to get around it. It takes a specific mindset that you and I don't have. And even good lawyers who are not patent lawyers might not be able to help you there. Commercial vs. open source/free software makes no difference, except that Microsoft might not bother suing you if there is no money to be made. Unless the intent is to prevent you from implementing the feature, in which case the would sue companies without money as well.
You will want to speak with a patent attorney, not a labor attorney. Some of the facts you are presenting are entirely wrong. Patents have inventors, copyrights have authors. Inventorship has strict rules. Inventorship cannot be denied without consequence in almost any jurisdiction, but you'll need to get local legal advice. In the US, "A patent is invalid unless it lists the first and true inventor or inventors of the claimed invention." (See Stark v. Advanced Magnetics, 119 F.3d 1551, 1553, 1556 (Fed. Cir. 1997); 35 U.S.C. § 102(f) (“A person shall be entitled to a patent unless . . . he did not himself invent the subject matter sought to be patented). See also 35 U.S.C. §§ 111, 115-16, 256.) Assignment--the "ownership" of the patent--is different. It's very common to have you sign an agreement as a condition of your employment that you grant full assignment to your company for any patentable material created under their employ. If you did not, it is possible that the company would need to give you consideration for the right to assignment, e.g., they would have to pay you something to own the patent. If you are no longer there, that "something" can be substantial, because the patent is invalid without it, and they have little leverage over you. Bring all written records, emails, etc. to a licensed attorney who specializes in patent litigation.
Unfortunately, no. Apple does not have any legal obligation to make the program available in Moldavia. The reason why Apple opened the battery replacement service was to limit the bad press after the BatteryGate had hit the press. So, to answer your question, you cannot sue on these grounds. However, you could theoretically sue Apple on the grounds of planned obsolescence, if such behavior is incriminated in Moldavia. I wouldn't advise on it, however -- it would be extremely expensive and quite a long procedure, for minimal result. A solution I could have to your problem, would be to get your phone sent &amp; repaired by a store in a country were the program was made available by Apple -- even if you'll have to pay for the shipping costs... Hope it helps!
Prompted by this recent similar question, I've revisited this question and deleted my original answer as it was completely off the mark. This is its replacement. It is illegal, and it turns out to be an international standard in the Berne Convention. Article 16 in full: (1) Infringing copies of a work shall be liable to seizure in any country of the Union where the work enjoys legal protection. (2) The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall also apply to reproductions coming from a country where the work is not protected, or has ceased to be protected. (3) The seizure shall take place in accordance with the legislation of each country. Your scenario falls squarely within point (2) and the imported George Orwell book is to be treated as an infringing copy within the UK. The implementing UK legislation for (2) can be found in Section 27(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has a relevant document. As mentioned in the referenced document, the inventor must set forth the best variant of the invention, which would explain using the words "preferably" and "advantageously". But the inventor doesn't want to let someone evade the patent by building a version that isn't the best, but is still better than what was known before the patent was published. So some features are described as "optional", meaning both the invention with the optional feature, and the invention without the optional feature, are covered by the patent.
The Berne Convention is the treaty that creates international copyright. The existence and duration of copyright is determined by the law in the country of first publication. If you publish these things first in Finland they have no copyright anywhere; if you publish first in say USA, they have copyright everywhere including Finland. However, the law for determining if there is a breach is the jurisdiction where the breach occurs. So even though these snippets may have copyright protection in Finland by virtue of first publication elsewhere; their use may be allowed under Finnish copyright law.
Yes, this violates the GDPR if the user is in Europe. Data which is tied to a personal device can be tied to the person who owns it. From "What Is Personal Data" by the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (emphasis added): Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. What identifies an individual could be as simple as a name or a number or could include other identifiers such as an IP address or a cookie identifier, or other factors. If it is possible to identify an individual directly from the information you are processing, then that information may be personal data. If you cannot directly identify an individual from that information, then you need to consider whether the individual is still identifiable. You should take into account the information you are processing together with all the means reasonably likely to be used by either you or any other person to identify that individual. The bit about "all means reasonably likely" in the last bullet includes the kind of de-anonymisation tactics described in the NYT article. There are 6 lawful bases for data processing in the GDPR, and all processing must fall under at least one of them. (a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose. (b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract. (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations). (d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. (e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. (f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.) Selling data isn't covered by any of the others, so consent must be obtained. Permission must be clear and positive, and you cannot predicate delivery of a service on the processing of data that isn't necessary for that service. So for instance you cannot say "You can use this service as long as we are allowed to collect and sell your data" because selling the data isn't necessary to the provision of the service. From "Consent" by the ICO: Consent requires a positive opt-in. Don’t use pre-ticked boxes or any other method of default consent. Explicit consent requires a very clear and specific statement of consent. Keep your consent requests separate from other terms and conditions. Be specific and ‘granular’ so that you get separate consent for separate things. Vague or blanket consent is not enough. [...] Avoid making consent to processing a precondition of a service. This applies to any processing of data about individuals within the EU, so just being an American company doesn't get you a free pass to ignore the GDPR if your app gets used by Europeans. The "Legitimate interests" basis is more problematic, in that the company collecting the data has to conduct a vague "balancing test" to determine if this basis applies. For direct marketing the ICO has written this, which says that direct marketing may be a legitimate interest, especially if you can show that the user has expressed interest in such adverts. For instance a location service which promises to tell you about nearby special offers would fall into this category. Against this, the impact on the user's privacy has to be considered, and location data is "special category data" because it can reveal medical information (e.g. hospital attendance) or religious affiliation (e.g. which church you go to). So unless the relationship between the recorded location data and the service is very direct its not going to pass the balancing test. The company would also need to distinguish between knowing the current location and keeping a record of historical locations; the two need separate justification. And of course nothing about this covers the sale of the data; this is considering a company which sells advertising space in it's app, not one that sells the data itself.