Showing headlines posted by BernardSwiss

Of course, patent system apologists will point out that he never patented his own work, and Mattheij answers that the same way many developers I know have answered various patent questions, by noting that what they did was nothing special, and the idea that it deserves patent protection is ridiculous.

When the call came yesterday morning, I assumed at first I was being trolled—it was just too perfect to be true. My phone showed only "Private Caller" and, when I answered out of curiosity, I was connected to "John," a young man with a clear Indian accent who said he was calling from "Windows Technical Support." My computer, he told me, had alerted him that it was infested with viruses. He wanted to show me the problem—then charge me to fix it.

Juror defends himself to the press; Samsung wants him hauled back into court. In a remarkable new post-trial motion, Samsung has laid out its strategy to get the $1.05 billion verdict against it kicked out. The boldest maneuver? A straightforward attack on the patent-owning jury foreman.

Executing [a patent pool] in the real world, however, is likely to be a different story. The modern mobile space is turning out to be uniquely litigious. Even if the Via patent pool is successful in getting many licensees, companies that have paid up will still be susceptible to lawsuits on "feature" patents, like the ones asserted by Apple against Samsung. Joining a patent pool made up of big operating companies also won't stop patent trolls from coming out and filing suit, although such suits are unlikely to get injunctions that knock a product off the market.

The spectre of a new MeeGo phone is beginning to take solid form: a startup resurrecting the OS has received €200 million ($258 million) in funding and its flagship phone is set to be unveiled next month, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies funding the venture include at least one telecom and a chipset manufacturer, as well as other parties concerned about "recent developments in the smartphone industry" such as the ongoing patent wars.

"Got an email from Microsoft, wanting to help 'certify' minecraft for win 8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the PC as an open platform," he wrote.

"I'd rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along. Maybe we can convince a few people not to switch to win 8 that way," he added in the second message.

As you hopefully recall, Aereo is the online TV service, backed by Barry Diller, that sets you up with your very own physical TV antenna on a rooftop in Brooklyn, connected to a device that will then stream to you online what that antenna picks up. This ridiculously convoluted setup is an attempt to route around the ridiculous setup of today's copyright law -- something that Oman was intimately involved in creating with the 1976 Copyright Act. The TV networks sued Aereo, but were unable to get an injunction blocking the service. Oman's amicus brief seeks to have that ruling overturned, and argues that an injunction is proper.

But he goes much further than that in his argument, even to the point of claiming that with the 1976 Copyright Act, Congress specifically intended new technologies to first apply to Congress for permission, before releasing new products on the market that might upset existing business models:

A few years ago, Jackson, while deployed in Iraq, wrote a book about Python (the programming language) called Start Programming with Python. He decided to give away the book for free, as a "thank you" to the open source community which, he notes, has provided him with tremendous value over the years. He has always made the book available for free, and linked to various sources where you can get it. At the same time, he's offered people the option to support him via donation. He also made a little bit of money via Google AdSense ads on his site.

Last week, he was contacted by a Google bot, telling him that AdSense had been disabled. Why? Because they claimed he was distributing copyrighted content illegally. The email, which I've seen, notes that his account has been disabled for the following reason:

However, the jury found that Samsung had not violated the patent that was the basis for the tablet injunction and Samsung argued the sales ban should be lifted. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said she could not act because Samsung had already appealed.

Ah, life imitating art (or art accidentally imitating life). Earlier this year, we had Rob Reid post an excerpt and discuss his new novel, Year Zero, concerning aliens listening to Earth music for free, without a license... and then realizing that they've been infringing our copyrights for years, and owe the record labels more money than exists in the galaxy. Funny story, right?

Except... as Joe Betsill points out, apparently at least EMI really was afraid that aliens might listen to music without a license.

The conduct of patent-holding jury foreman is being questioned. Apple and Samsung are nowhere near done fighting over the patent trial that led to a $1 billion victory for Apple last month. Last week, Samsung demanded a judgment as a matter of law in its favor or a new trial, apparently due to concern that the patent-holding jury foreman improperly relied on information not presented during trial. Apple made its own court filing (PDF) on Tuesday night, accusing Samsung of attacking the jury process with baseless and frivolous claims.

Researchers have discovered a Java flaw that would let hackers bypass critical security measures in all recent versions of the software. The flaw was announced today by Security Explorations, the same team that recently found a security hole in Java SE 7 letting attackers take complete control of PCs. But this latest exploit affects Java SE 5, 6, and 7—the last eight years worth of Java software.

“The impact of this issue is critical—we were able to successfully exploit it and achieve a complete Java security sandbox bypass in the environment of Java SE 5, 6, and 7,” Adam Gowdiak of Security Explorations wrote, claiming the hole puts "one billion users" at risk.

It seems like every technology company on the planet is releasing a tablet these days, and we use the phrase "technology company" loosely. Even Toys"R"Us decided it had to make a tablet of its own, recently making the Tabeo 7 inch Kids Tablet available for preorder at the sub-Kindle Fire price of $149.99. But Toys"R"Us is now facing the same problem as just about every other tablet maker—it's being accused of ripping off another company's intellectual property.

"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root," Shuttleworth says in Canonical's defense.

The new version of Ubuntu Linux slated for release in October introduces a feature that some users claim is at worst a violation of privacy or, at best, generally annoying. Ubuntu 12.10 introduces search results from Amazon into the Dash. That means you could be searching for a file or application on your computer and get shopping results under a "more suggestions" section after your general results.

In May, plans leaked that Freiburg's IT department is preparing the city's return to using a proprietary office suite, replacing the free and open source suite OpenOffice. That decision is based on a report from an external consultant, which is kept under wraps. The report has not been shared with the members of the city council. Requests by the press and by the Free Software Foundation Europe to publish the report were denied by the city. The state of Baden-Württemberg does not have a Freedom of Information Act. Freiburg has since May also ignored questions on how it will procure the licences for the software that it wants to use. European procurement rules do not allow requests for a specific brand or product.

... isn't it about time that we recognize the patent system is really, really broken? Courtesy of the always awesome Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (and my friend Tom who sent this over), I present to you, yet another example of "the patent system" being a punchline:

The popularity of the ITC among patent holders was bolstered by the 2006 Supreme Court decision in eBay v. MercExchange. When a patent holder wins an infringement lawsuit, it is sometimes awarded an injunction against continued use of the patent by the infringer, in addition to monetary damages. The threat of such an injunction gives the patent holder extra leverage that it can use to extract larger settlements. For example, shortly before the eBay decision, the patent troll NTP used the threat of an injunction to force smartphone maker Research in Motion to fork over $612.5 million. But the eBay decision made it harder for patent holders to obtain these injunctions, tilting the playing field a bit more toward defendants.

So patent holders looked for other remedies.

Lawyer/law professor Mark Lemley has argued for years that, even as there are very clear problems with software patents, the answer is not to merely exclude software from being patentable.

Swiss Federal Railways wants compensation for use of its iconic design.

Apple added a Clock app to the iPad in iOS 6, but the company may get into trouble for the visual look of the app's analog-style clock face. According to Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger, Apple's designers copied the iconic—and trademarked—look of the Swiss Federal Railway (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, or SBB) clocks used in train stations all over Switzerland. And the SBB wants Apple to pay up.

Well this is bizarre. Jamie Love from KEI was over at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a meeting about "global negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine." The meeting itself was held in a room that it uses for the USPTO's Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA), and there is free WiFi for people to use. Love tried to log onto his own website... and found that it was being blocked as a "political/activist group."