Legal Archive

And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?

And the story just got bigger. The Guardian has more documents up its sleeve, and they reveal that British intelligence agencies also tapped into PRISM for data on citizens. Like the NSA, the British intelligence agencies also hide behind the 'it's all legal'-nonsense. Great.

"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an 'ongoing, daily basis' to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk - regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing." Hey Americans, welcome to the club. And here we were, afraid of Google!

"The ITC has banned Company X from importing some models of Phone A and Tablet B because they infringe on a Company Y patent. In a cease and desist order issued today, the International Trade Commission ordered Company X to stop importing AT&T models of the Phone A, the Phone B and C, the Tablet A, and the Tablet B into the US." Commentary if you're cheering for Company X: it's entirely unfair to ban entire products just because of infringement on a single patent. The patent system sucks! Commentary if you're cheering for Company Y: Company X are a bunch of thieves who never invent anything on their own. The patent system is a great thing that protects American companies. Up next week: role reversal, regurgitation of the same 'arguments', just the other way around! Ugh.

"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.

"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.

"The European Commission has accused Motorola Mobility of abusing its standard-essential patents against Apple in Germany. The Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to the company over a misuse of its GPRS patents, which has seen Motorola pursue injunctions against Apple products instead of properly licensing the technology."

"The OFT has launched an investigation into whether children are being unfairly pressured or encouraged to pay for additional content in 'free' web and app-based games, including upgraded membership or virtual currency such as coins, gems or fruit. Typically, players can access only portions of these games for free, with new levels or features, such as faster game play, costing money." Instances of this may be illegal, especially when it targets children. As for me - I just find it incredibly annoying.

"The parties have no interest in efficiently and expeditiously resolving this dispute; they instead are using this and similar litigation worldwide as a business strategy that appears to have no end," US District Judge Robert Scola said, "That is not a proper use of this court." Judge Scola knows what's up. "Without a hint of irony, the parties now ask the court to mop up a mess they made by holding a hearing to reduce the size and complexity of the case," he adds, "The court declines this invitation." Always fun to see stuff like this. Oh, one more? He calls their conduct "obstreperous and cantankerous conduct".

After Microsoft's extortion racket has failed to stop Android, and after Oracle's crazy baseless lawsuit failed to stop Android, and after Nokia adopting Windows Phone failed to stop Android, Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle are now grasping the next straw in their fruitless efforts to stop Android: they've filed an antitrust complaint with the EU, claiming Google unfairly bundles applications with Android.

Joel Spolsky is ramping up the fight against patent trolls, the scourge of small companies and startups trying to advance technology in new and interesting ways. Sadly, while Spolsky is right on the money on everything, and even though the fight has to start somewhere, I think he - and others - are doing the industry a huge disservice by focussing entirely on pure patent trolls, without actually addressing the other side of the coin: medium and large business engaging in the same patent troll behaviour.

Late last week, Nokia dropped what many consider to be a bomb on the WebM project: a list of patents that VP8 supposedly infringes in the form of an IETF IPR declaration. The list has made the rounds around the web, often reported as proof that VP8 infringes upon Nokia's patents. All this stuff rang a bell. Haven't we been here before? Yup, we have, with another open source codec called Opus. Qualcomm and Huawei made the same claims as Nokia did, but they turned out to be complete bogus. As it turns out, this is standard practice in the dirty business of the patent licensing industry.

Nokia has gotten an injunction against HTC in Germany over a patent on a power-saving feature in Qualcomm chips (?!). Nokia's response illustrates why the company started its recent patent offensive: "Nokia is pleased with this decision, which confirms the quality of Nokia's patent portfolio." If nobody buys your phones and your business is failing spectacularly, you have to promote something else of value to paint yourself as an interesting acquisition target. Patents it is, then. If you can't compete, litigate. Update: HTC's statement is pretty damning.

"Google and MPEG LA announced today that they have entered into agreements granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders. The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec. As a result of the agreements, MPEG LA will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool." The word that stood out to me: the auxiliary verb 'may', which has a rather low epistemic modality. To me, this indicates that this is not so much a clear-cut case of VP8 infringing upon patents, but more a precautionary move on Google's part.