The wheels seem to have come off the IP bandwagon (at least slightly), and anyone who bought shares in Tom Online would make a loss if they sold their shares immediately. The Financial Times connects this to what happened at Vanda, where the share price has fallen substantially since it became the proud owner of…

Another slightly puzzling story from the somewhat unusual world of Hong Kong public companies. After the recent shuffling of assets by Hutchison Whampoa, another member of the family is following suit according to The Standard. It seems that PCCW will revert to being a fixed-line telecom and Internet company, and that Richard Li will end…

I found this article in the New York Times interesting because it appeared to offer a counter-argument against the current copyright laws and all the fuss about people ‘stealing’ intellectual property: The entertainment industry’s pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released…

Simon mentioned this a week ago based on an article in The Economist, but here is another one that challenges the myth that outsourcing is bad for the American economy. Someone recommended a book to me a couple of years back which takes an even more radical view. It is “Living on the Fault Line”…

Yesterday, Phil reported on his expedition to buy pirate software. Today, Jake van der Kamp’s column in the SCMP argues that the goverrnment should ignore requests from foreign companies to enforce anti-piracy laws. This has prompted both Conrad and Simon to have had a bit of fun at the SCMP’s expense by reprinting the article,…

This development in Oracle’s battle with PeopleSoft took me rather by surprise. Last year, Peoplesoft agreed to merge with (take over) J D Edwards, and Oracle then launched a hostile bid that seemed to be designed to frustrate this merger. Peoplesoft and JDE managed to re-structure their merger so that it could be completed more…