Legal Archive

An architecture blogger has temporarily disabled her website, McMansionHell.com, after receiving a demand letter from Zillow and posting it on Twitter.

On Monday, Zillow threatened to sue Kate Wagner, saying that that she was violating its terms of use, copyright law, and possibly the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because she took images from the company's website without permission. However, on each of her posts, she acknowledged that the images came from Zillow and were posted under the fair use doctrine, as she was providing (often humorous) commentary on various architectural styles. Her website was featured on the design podcast 99% Invisible in October 2016.

Confusingly, Zillow does not even own the images in question. Instead, Zillow licenses them from the rights holders. As such, it remains unclear why the company would have standing to bring a lawsuit against Wagner.

The Trump administration has rolled out a new questionnaire for U.S. visa applicants worldwide that asks for social media handles for the last five years and biographical information going back 15 years.

Under the new procedures, consular officials can request all prior passport numbers, five years' worth of social media handles, email addresses and phone numbers and 15 years of biographical information including addresses, employment and travel history.

While the new questions are voluntary, the form says failure to provide the information may delay or prevent the processing of an individual visa application.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday tightened rules for where patent lawsuits can be filed in a decision that may make it harder for so-called patent "trolls" to launch sometimes dodgy patent cases in friendly courts, a major irritant for high-tech giants like Apple and Alphabet Inc's Google.

In a decision that upends 27 years of law governing patent infringement cases, the justices sided with beverage flavoring company TC Heartland LLC in its legal battle with food and beverage company Kraft Heinz Co. The justices ruled 8-0 that patent suits can be filed only in courts located in the jurisdiction where the targeted company is incorporated.

European companies such as Spotify, Rocket Internet and Deezer have complained that online platforms - such as search engines and app stores - abuse their position as gateways to customers to promote their own services or impose imbalanced terms and conditions.

The Commission said that initial findings of an investigation launched last year showed platforms were delisting products or services without due notice, restricting access to data or not making search result rankings transparent enough.

The Commission wants to establish fair practice criteria, measures to improve transparency and a system to help to resolve disputes.

John Deere has turned itself into the poster-child for the DMCA, fighting farmers who say they want to fix their own tractors and access their data by saying that doing so violates the 1998 law's prohibition on bypassing copyright locks.

Deere's just reiterated that position to a US Copyright Office inquiry on the future of the law, joined by auto manufacturers (but not Tesla) and many other giant corporations, all of them arguing that since the gadgets you buy have software, and since that software is licensed, not sold, you don't really own any of that stuff. You are a licensee, and you have to use the gadget according to the license terms, which spell out where you have to buy your service, parts, consumables, apps, and so on.

The right to repair movement is spreading. In recent weeks legislators in Iowa, Missouri, and North Carolina have introduced bills that would make it easier for you to fix your electronics, joining eight other states that introduced right-to-repair legislation earlier this year.

The bills would require manufacturers to sell replacement parts to consumers and independent repair companies and would also require them to open source diagnostic manuals. It would also give independent repair professionals the ability to bypass software locks that prevent repairs, allowing them to return a gadget back to its factory settings.

But the mood is different in South Korea these days. There's always been public opposition to corruption and nepotism in the country's chaebol conglomerates, but the country has never seen anything like the massive protests that swept the streets last year and helped drive President Park's approval rating down to four percent. In a climate like this, where widespread outrage can lead to the impeachment of a president, even a Samsung chairman might have reason to worry.

Apple is planning to fight proposed electronics "Right to Repair" legislation being considered by the Nebraska state legislature, according to a source within the legislature who is familiar with the bill's path through the statehouse.

The legislation would require Apple and other electronics manufacturers to sell repair parts to consumers and independent repair shops, and would require manufacturers to make diagnostic and service manuals available to the public.

In the days after Donald Trump won November's presidential election, immigration and civil liberties advocates began assessing how the new president might carry out his promises to create a registry of Muslims and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Almost immediately, it became clear the Trump administration would need data, and a lot of it, in order to not only peg people's religious affiliation and immigration status but also allow federal agents to verify their identities and track their whereabouts. Information that could be used for such purposes is collected and stored by a variety of state agencies that issue driver's licenses, dispense public assistance, and enforce laws.

In Washington state, The Verge has learned, Democratic governor Jay Inslee has directed members of his policy and legal staff to work with a handful of state agencies to identify data that could be utilized by Trump’s deportation officials, and how, if possible, to shield any such information from federal authorities engaging in mass deportation. In California and New York, Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation to block state data from federal immigration authorities. Democratic legislators have also proposed bills in Washington state, California, New York, and Massachusetts that would prevent state data from being used by federal authorities to build a registry of people belonging to a certain religion.

The sprawling investigation into President Park Geun-hye of South Korea took a dramatic turn on Monday with word that prosecutors were seeking the arrest of the de facto head of Samsung, one of the world's largest conglomerates, on charges that he bribed the president and her secretive confidante.

The European Union has ruled that the "general and and indiscriminate" collection of computer data by governments is only permitted when used to fight serious crime. The decision, handed down today by the European Court of Justice, directly challenges the UK's recently-passed surveillance legislation, which includes plans to retain every citizen's mobile and desktop browser history for up to a year.

The Court notes that the collection of such data means citizens feel they are under "constant surveillance" and allows governments to draw "very precise conclusions" about their private lives. "Only the objective of fighting serious crime is capable of justifying such interference," said the Court, adding that legislation like the UK's "exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society."

The Supreme Court has overturned Apple's $400 million award in its long-running patent lawsuit against Samsung. Apple won the case in 2012, convincing a federal court that a number of Samsung devices had infringed upon iPhone design patents - including one for a rectangular device with rounded corners and bezels, and another for a home screen comprised of a grid of colorful apps. The Supreme Court’s decision today does not reverse Apple’s win, but does mean that the case will be returned to the Federal Circuit so that the damages can be reassessed.

The end may be in sight for software patents - which have long been highly controversial in the tech industry - in the wake of a remarkable appeals court ruling that described such patents as a "deadweight loss on the nation's economy" and a threat to the First Amendment's free speech protections.

It is well past time to return software to its historical dwelling place in the domain of copyright. See Benson, 409 U.S. at 72 (citing a report from a presidential commission explaining that copyright is available to protect software and that software development had "undergone substantial and satisfactory growth" even without patent protection (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (noting that "several commentators" have "argue that the complex and expensive patent system is a terrible fit for the fast-moving software industry" and that copyright provides " perfectly adequate means of protecting and rewarding software developers for their ingenuity" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); Peter S. Menell, An Analysis of the Scope of Copyright Protection for Application Programs, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 1045, 1076 (1989) (explaining that patents were historically "not seen as a viable option for the protection of most application program code" and that many software programs "simply do not manifest sufficient novelty or nonobviousness to merit patent protection").

How often have you taken a gadget or a pair of shoes in for repair and found out that fixing it will cost more than buying a new version? Too often, that's how often. And Sweden is trying to fix this, by halving the tax paid on repairs and increasing taxes on unrepairable items.

The new proposals come from the ruling coalition of the Social Democrat and Green parties, and, if successfully enacted, would be accompanied by a publicity campaign to encourage Swedes to repair products instead of replacing them.