Legal Archive

Groklaw shutting down

  Submitted by l3v1 Legal 23 Comments
So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate.

I'm really sorry that it's so. I loved doing Groklaw, and I believe we really made a significant contribution. But even that turns out to be less than we thought, or less than I hoped for, anyway. My hope was always to show you that there is beauty and safety in the rule of law, that civilization actually depends on it. How quaint.

Quaint indeed.

Groklaw is shutting down. A huge loss, as the site's contributions to various ridiculous lawsuits, like the SCO one about Linux, or the even crazier one from Oracle about Java, were invaluable. The reasons are sound, though - without secure, private communications, the collaborative effort that is Groklaw cannot function.

A sad day.

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UK abuses terrorism law to intimidate journalist’s partner

Legal 44 Comments

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

Miranda also had all his equipment confiscated. He has done nothing wrong - there's no charges, no criminal suspicion, nothing at all. His only crime is being the partner of a famous journalist who, among other things, is one of the driving forces behind shining a light on the NSA's mass surveillance.

There is no war on terror, because the terrorists have already won.

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Apple patent wins could mean US import ban for Samsung

  Submitted by torb Legal 8 Comments

Some older Samsung Electronics Co. mobile devices face a sales and import ban in the United States after a U.S. trade panel ruled for Apple Inc. in a high-profile patent infringement case.

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday ruled that South Korea's Samsung infringes on portions of two Apple Inc patents on digital mobile devices, covering the detection of headphone jacks and operation of touchscreens.

If Obama does not step in, two tiny patents like this can get devices banned, but refusal to accept FRAND terms, refusal to negotiate, all the while using the patent in question anyway does not.

Sure, this is not about protectionism. How cute.

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CCIA response to veto of ITC ban on Apple products

Legal 19 Comments
Ed Black, President & CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association:

The Administration’s unprecedented decision to veto an ITC "Section 337" import ban against Apple for infringing Samsung's intellectual property is a disruptive and potentially dangerous development that calls into question the fairness of our trading regime and could undermine the way US companies are treated globally.

Adjudication by USTR fiat, however, is unacceptable and invites other countries to do the same. While Ambassador Froman's letter cites policy issues, it offers little helpful analysis or guidance. And it ignores the ITC's determination that Apple failed to prove either that Samsung's patent was a standard-essential patent or that Samsung breached its obligation to a standards-setting organization.

Well said.

This is the core of the problem with Obama's veto. Not only did he completely and utterly contradict the findings of an expert panel of judges who investigated all the materials in great detail, he also sent out a very strong message: if you're a foreign company doing business in the US, you will be treated as a second class citizen. Combined with the endless stream of negative press concerning surveillance and which hunts for whistleblowers, the US just got a whole lot less enticing for technology companies.

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Tech executives meet with Obama to talk surveillance

Legal 28 Comments

President Barack Obama hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Google computer scientist Vint Cerf and other tech executives and civil liberties leaders on Thursday for a closed-door meeting about government surveillance, sources tell POLITICO.

Five hundred years ago, our ancestors started the fight to separate church and state. Now it's time we separate corporation and state.

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VP8 does not infringe on Nokia patent

Legal 18 Comments
Good news:

Today a court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled that VP8 does not infringe a patent owned and asserted by Nokia. This decision is an important and positive step towards the WebM Project's ultimate goal: ensuring the web community has an open, high-quality, freely licensed video codec. Google's intervention in the underlying lawsuit (Nokia v. HTC) was a strong show of support for open standards like VP8.

I guess they'll have to dig out another patent somewhere to try and undermine Android, since Nokia isn't having much luck competing with Android by, you know, actually selling stuff. How the mighty have fallen, huh?

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Obama slaps ITC in the face, vetos exclusion order

Legal 123 Comments
The Obama administration:

After extensive consultations with the agencies of the Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review Group, as well as other interested agencies and persons, I have decided to disapprove the USITC's determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order in this investigation.

Lots of talk about SEPs and FRAND in Obama's decree, which means that the Obama administration contradicts everything the ITC has said. To freshen your memory, the ITC ruled that not only was the patent in question not a standard essential patent, but Samsung's offer was actually proper FRAND:

Additionally, the Commission found that there were still disputed issues concerning the patent at issue was even actually essential to the standard (and therefore whether a FRAND or disclosure obligation applied at all).

The Commission analyzed the history of negotiations between Apple and Samsung (this portion is heavily redacted) to see if Apple showed that Samsung failed to negotiate “in good faith,” and found that Apple failed to do so. Notably, the Commission dismissed Apple’s arguments that (1) Samsung’s initial offer was so high as to show bad faith, and (2) Samsung’s attempts to get a cross-license to Apple’s non-SEPs violated its FRAND commitments.

In other words, the Obama administration threw out virtually everything the ITC has said in order to protect Apple. This effectively means that American companies can infringe on non-American companies' (standard essential) patents all they want, because the president will simply step in if they try to fight back.

So, I was wrong. I expected the Obama administration to be impartial and not give such a huge slap in the face of the ITC - as cynical as I usually am, I can still be naive. Protectionism is more important to the POTUS.

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Regarding the ITC’s exclusion order against Apple

Legal 49 Comments
Recently, the ITC ruled in favour of Samsung, issuing an exclusion order against certain Apple products, barring them from being sold in the US. Several people have called upon president Obama to step in and overrule the decision (e.g. this guy) - however, not only would this set a very bad precedent for non-US companies, it would also simply be incredibly unfair if you actually look at the ITC ruling itself. Because of this, it is quite unlikely that Obama will step in.
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Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys

Legal 32 Comments
"The U.S. government has attempted to obtain the master encryption keys that Internet companies use to shield millions of users' private Web communications from eavesdropping. These demands for master encryption keys, which have not been disclosed previously, represent a technological escalation in the clandestine methods that the FBI and the National Security Agency employ when conducting electronic surveillance against Internet users." Well. "And where once you had the freedom to object, think, and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillence coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission." When quoting a work of fiction befits the state of reality better than reality itself, shit has officially hit the fan.
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Victory Lap for ‘Ask Patents’

Legal 15 Comments
Joel Spolsky killed a Microsoft patent application in just a few minutes - he found prior art and submitted it, and the USPTO examiner rejected the patent because of it. "Micah showed me a document from the USPTO confirming that they had rejected the patent application, and the rejection relied very heavily on the document I found. This was, in fact, the first 'confirmed kill' of Ask Patents, and it was really surprisingly easy. I didn't have to do the hard work of studying everything in the patent application and carefully proving that it was all prior art: the examiner did that for me." This is all under the umbrella of 'Ask Patents'.
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EFF sues NSA over ‘illegal’ telephone surveillance

Legal 21 Comments
"A diverse coalition of 19 groups announced today a lawsuit against the United States government for 'an illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet electronic surveillance', known as the Associational Tracking Program, which collects all telephone records handled by Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint in the US. The group, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, aims to compel the government to inventory and disclose the records in its possession, to destroy them, and to immediately end the surveillance program."
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Judge says Apple conspired to raise prices on e-books

Legal 12 Comments
"In a decision that could reshape how books are sold on the Internet, a federal judge ruled that Apple conspired to raise the retail prices of e-books in violation of antitrust law, and called for a trial on damages. The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a victory for the U.S. government and various states, which the judge said are entitled to injunctive relief." Yet another ruling confirming that virtually all technology companies are criminals. But don't worry, there's nothing wrong with how companies are run and the immense power they have, no sirree!
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UK taps cables for secret access to world’s communications

Legal 70 Comments
"Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency. The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate." Woah.
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German parliament moves to ban software patents

Legal 14 Comments
"The German Parliament, the Bundestag, has introduced a joint motion against software patents. The resolution urges the German government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. In the resolution, the Parliament says that patents on software restrict developers from exercising their copyright privileges, including the right to distribute their programs as Free Software. They promote the creation of monopolies in the software market, and hurt innovation and job creation." After New Zealand, we now have one of the most powerful economies in the world moving to ban software patents for all the reasons smart people have been outlining for years. also: "The government should also push to ensure that software is covered by copyright alone, and that patent offices (including the European Patent Office) stop granting patents on software." Germany is not a country the EU can ignore. Very good news, this.
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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals himself

Legal 48 Comments
The former NSA employee - a man in military service in the US for a decade - has revealed himself in an interview with The Guardian. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under." He did it out of a sense of civic duty. He's in Hong Kong, and doesn't expect to ever see home again. Poor guy.
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What ‘direct access’ means

Legal 10 Comments
The term 'direct access' seems to be the central issue when it comes to the coordinated PR campaign from Silicon Valley, and a new article from The Washington Post seems to clarify it all quite a bit. "Intelligence community sources said that this description , although inaccurate from a technical perspective, matches the experience of analysts at the NSA. From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may 'task' the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company's staff." This seems to explain why the leaked official documents speak of 'direct access' even though the companies themselves deny it. The leaked documentation probably wasn't written by a technical expert, so he simply used a term that describes the end result (i.e., access whenever, wherever, whatever), but not the actual technical workings (i.e., the system does not directly tap into the companies' own servers). Update: The Guardian has released a new slide from the NSA slide deck: it speaks of "collection directly from the servers" of several US companies, like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and so on. It also mentions directly tapping into the very cables that carry data to and from the US. I wonder how long Silicon Valley will continue to lie and/or legalese around the issue. Man up for once.
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Twitter proves Silicon Vally could’ve said “no”

Legal 20 Comments
I didn't want to put this in the article on the coordinated PR campaign, but the fact that one company refuses to cooperate with the US government in the way Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others were more than willing to do, is very, very important. This means that the argument "but we had to do the things we did because Washington told us to" holds no water. Twitter's refusal proves that the others did not have to say yes - they chose to do so. Whenever someone - a corporate PR person, company blogger, or fanboy - tells you Microsoft, Apple, or Google had no choice, all you need to say is "Twitter".
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