Throughout history, intellectual property has been a contested terrain. Recent legal disputes involving big companies such as Apple and Samsung have brought the subject down to an everyday conversation. South Africa’s intellectual property law shares many
Author: The Conversation
The semiconducting silicon chip launched the revolution of electronics and computerisation that has made life in the opening years of the 21st century scarcely recognisable from the start of the last. Silicon integrated circuits underpin practically everything we take for granted now in
It’s been 20 years since the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system, which changed the way we interacted with…
Bitcoin has been declared the “end of money as we know it” and as a currency for our times; decentralised, and created specifically for seamless exchange on the Internet. That is, it would be, if
The arrival of Microsoft Windows 95 on 24 August 1995 brought about a desktop PC boom. With an easier and more intuitive graphical user interface than previous versions, it appealed to more than just business, and Bill Gates’s stated aim of one PC per person per desk was set in
The 21st-century spy movie is typically a pretty serious affair. Daniel Craig has brought a bit of darkness back to Bond, coasting on the success of the Bourne series. But after the success of Kingsman: The Secret Service last year, it looks as if the hammy spy spoof is back in the game
The share price of Tesla Motors shot up this week after a financial analyst said that the electric vehicle maker…
It has been a bad week for companies wanting to build businesses around making money from illegal movie downloaders. Last Friday saw an Australian judge refuse Voltage Pictures the right to send downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club a letter demanding an undisclosed payment. Justice Nye Perram decided that
Google is seen as a world leader in innovation, an important backer of tech start-ups and a pioneer in all our futures. The corporation, which is financially the size of a mid-sized country, just reorganised its structure so that it can continue to invest in
Flying cars in The Jetsons and Back to the Future, or Star Trek’s spaceships and teleportation, may have captured the imagination decades ago, but most current methods of transport have been around a long time. Railways were being rolled out rapidly from the