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>you can bet that some UK companies are violating the US's insane IP laws. Should American companies be able to sue them for doing things that are legal in thei

by smtddr 13y ago

>you can bet that some UK companies are violating the US's insane IP laws. Should American companies be able to sue them for doing things that are legal in their own home country? Yes. That's how it works if the UK company operates in the US. Like the other comments said, if there was no Google.co.uk & no Google UK offices then maybe they'd have some ground. But both of those exist, so... Just like China can't open this[1] store on American soil, Google can't have UK offices & Google.co.uk and somehow be immune to UK law, right? If companies can just enter other countries and do whatever is legal back home, I'm sure we can all think of a few examples where that would cause some significant issues. 1. http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/06/chinas-copycat-phenomenon-fake-apple-stores-booming-in-southern-china/ http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/06/chinas-copycat-phenomen...

jacques_chester 13y ago
Laws require "nexus" between the law and the party governed by the law. There needs to be some connection, some thing which can be gripped and used to obtain compliance -- because, as the Romans observed, without punishment there is no law. Google will have a British subsidiary for administrative purposes. That's a nexus. They might have some money in British banks, which is another nexus. And so on. More to the point, brother courts in different jurisdictions in the Common Law world will often respect and uphold each other's judgements where possible and where their laws are aligned. An order to pay a certain amount, made in Britain, might be upheld by an American court saying "yes, you broke their laws / performed a civil wrong / broke your contract; now pay the guy". Or instead there might be an inconsistency: "I'd love to help you out, but we just don't have that rule, sorry". The law is a sophisticated institution unto itself. Every time you think of a first-order or even second-order problem with a story (written by a non-lawyer), guess what? The lawyers thought of that. Probably decades ago. For example, the cases which cover the way ISPs are treated in defamation go back to a pair of cases about AOL and CompuServe. CompuServe, people. Lawyers think as hard and as far ahead about the law as we do about the web and software development.

by smtddr 13y ago

jacques_chester 13y ago

Laws require "nexus" between the law and the party governed by the law. There needs to be some connection, some thing which can be gripped and used to obtain compliance -- because, as the Romans observed, without punishment there is no law. Google will have a British subsidiary for administrative purposes. That's a nexus. They might have some money in British banks, which is another nexus. And so on. More to the point, brother courts in different jurisdictions in the Common Law world will often respect and uphold each other's judgements where possible and where their laws are aligned. An order to pay a certain amount, made in Britain, might be upheld by an American court saying "yes, you broke their laws / performed a civil wrong / broke your contract; now pay the guy". Or instead there might be an inconsistency: "I'd love to help you out, but we just don't have that rule, sorry". The law is a sophisticated institution unto itself. Every time you think of a first-order or even second-order problem with a story (written by a non-lawyer), guess what? The lawyers thought of that. Probably decades ago. For example, the cases which cover the way ISPs are treated in defamation go back to a pair of cases about AOL and CompuServe. CompuServe, people. Lawyers think as hard and as far ahead about the law as we do about the web and software development.