The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
18 Mar 2013
The market for smart phones is now dominated by two companies. Apple Inc. is the biggest corporation in the field, followed by the South Korean headquartered Samsung. But the two companies have been engaged in a legal battle over patent rights for more than a year and their battle looks set to obstruct innovation. Patent law is frequently understood as a mechanism to safeguard the rewards for innovation. But companies who employ batteries of lawyers and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on patenting every possible aspect of their products are not rewarding innovation. They are doing the exact opposite. They are putting up bulwarks against competition.
To get to the bottom of this issue, Paul Jay of The Real News Network talks to Shir Hever.
Hever is an economic researcher of the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, and has published numerous reports and studies on the topic, especially for the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. He writes his PhD dissertation on the privatization of security in Israel. His first book: Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation.
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