The 2011-created German content alliance  (Deutshe Content Allianz) who gather public and private broadcasters, collecting societies and representatives of the music and film industry in Germany stated  on Friday that the German government should sign ACTA "without delay" and should "consider a future-oriented reform of the copyright". According to Jürgen Doetz from the German association of the private broadcasters and telemedia VPRT  "now everyone is convinced that all the provisions aimed at containing rights infringement in ACTA are already in accordance with the German protection level". The German content alliance was backed up by a statement from tbe representative body of the German public officers of the criminal police BDK  who blamed the anti-ACTA protesters for their hypocrite claiming, since ACTA would in fact not be related with any kind of censorship nor freedom of speech circumcision. However BDK representative recognises that ACTA is "not transparent, badly written and not detailed enough on certain points".

 These pro-ACTA positions in Germany come after the government decided just before the important anti-ACTA protests a week ago to block its signature until the European Parliament has dealt first with the agreement, see my previous blog.

Meanwhile, the list of other EU Member States who are freezing ACTA's approval  is getting longer: currently Germany, Holland, Estonia, Cyprus have not signed yet. Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, The Czech Republic, Romania and Latvia have suspended their ratification process;  Slovenia,  Austria, (in French but significant picture from the Austrian Minister for Home Affairs holding a Stop-ACTA sign)  and Malta  give signs with more or less intensity that they could do so as well.

 - Apple vs Motorola update in Germany and in the EU

 Apple has recently gained territory in its patent war against Motorola, and maybe future other infringers. In Germany, Apple won a battle at the Regional court of Munich, which decided  that several Motorola Mobility Inc. (MMI) smartphones infringed Apple's image patent on the "slide-to-unlock", where you slide your finger on the touch screen in a way to unlock a device. Motorola is likely to appeal, but in the meantime the injunction from the Munich court against MMI is permanent, and can be enforced by Apple against a bond (insurance that Motorola would obtain if it is not considered as infringer further in the procedure). According to Florian Mueller  this could be a real threat to Android providers and Google, who recently acquired MMI and look at the German's market as a juicy target. Secondly Apple made a clear offensive by launching a former complain  to the European Commission, again against MMI, on the ground that the latter would refuse to license its essential UMTS technologies under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. We saw two weeks ago that the European Commission launched an investigation against Samsung on Apple's request for the same issue. Still according to Florian Mueller, Apple's action against Motorola and Samsung for not respecting the FRAND terms seems to be legitimate and aims at avoiding anti-competitive behaviours. Let see what the European Commission decides, but we could also blame more generally the different courts and competition authorities in Europe to make such crazy patent war possible, based sometimes on invalid or trivial- like patents.