Legal Archive

Code not physical property, court rules

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-12 Legal 15 Comments

"Former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, who downloaded source code for the investment firm's high-speed trading system from the company's computers, was wrongly charged with theft of property because the code did not qualify as a physical object under a federal theft statute, according to a court opinion published Wednesday." This could be a huge deal, if it ever were to be upheld in higher courts. More specifically, "because Aleynikov did not 'assume physical control' over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby 'deprive of its use', Aleynikov did not violate the ". Well paint me purple with white and red dots and call me a girl scout.

‘DOJ may sue Apple over ebooks early as Wednesday’

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-11 Legal 13 Comments

"The Justice Department could sue Apple as early as Wednesday over alleged electronic book price-fixing, while settling with several publishers as early as this week, two people familiar with the matter said." I feel safe already. Update: ...and we have lift-off.

Wozniak fears patent war fallout

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-10 Legal 39 Comments

"The man who co-founded Apple - the world's most valuable company - in the garage of Steve Jobs' parents, fears the torrent of intellectual property lawsuits being filed by companies such as Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC and Nokia could prevent future entrepreneurs from treading a path to technology fortune." Well, mr Wozniak, you are, technically, still an Apple employee. Shouldn't be too hard for you to get an audience with mr Cook.

Microsoft buys 800 patents from AOL covering search, ads, more

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-09 Legal 19 Comments

Since it's Easter (it spans two days in The Netherlands), what better to talk about than patents? Microsoft has just bought most of AOL's patents, and took up a license for the remainder bit they didn't buy. Microsoft also bought all the patents belonging to AOL subsidiary Netscape. Uh-oh.

Major textbook publishers sue open-education textbook start-up

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-07 Legal 53 Comments

Rage-inducing and despicable. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, three major textbook publishers, Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education, are suing a small startup company that produces open and free alternative textbooks. This startup, Boundless Learning, builds textbooks using creative commons licensed and otherwise freely available material - and this poses a threat to the three large textbook publishers. So, what do you do when you feel threatened? Well, file a copyright infringement lawsuit, of course.

Google responds to concerns over its consolidated privacy policy

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-05 Legal 4 Comments

Google has just responded to the first set of questions from the EU regarding its new consolidated privacy policy. The EU inquiry is being headed by the French - more specifically, by France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties. So, the country that monitors all its citizens' internet traffic for possible copyright infringement is spearheading the investigation into Google's new privacy policy? I'm not sure I should be laughing, crying, or shoving shards of smallpox-infested glass underneath my fingernails.

Possession of hacking tools to become criminal offence

Thom Holwerda 2012-04-04 Legal 43 Comments

"Cyber attacks on IT systems would become a criminal offence punishable by at least two years in prison throughout the EU under a draft law backed by the Civil Liberties Committee on Tuesday. Possessing or distributing hacking software and tools would also be an offence, and companies would be liable for cyber attacks committed for their benefit." Wait, what?

Guest post by fran 2012-03-27 Legal 42 Comments

"Linus Torvalds just can't help but be a thorn in Microsoft's side. First, he created an open source project that completely upset Microsoft's business model. And now, he has helped shoot down an important Microsoft patent in Redmond's crusade to wring licensing dollars out of Google Android and other versions of Linux."

Goliath v. David, AAC style

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-25 Legal 34 Comments

"Last week a large, profitable company sued a small start-up business for patent infringement. As a non-legal person, I can only guess that this sort of thing must happen fairly often. I would also guess that the large companies, which have the means to hire crackerjack legal teams and drag cases out, must often win. And while I guess I feel bad for the small businesses, I've never really cared before now. Because this time, the stakes are high. This time, it's my daughter's voice on the line. Literally." Infuriating. Maybe these are the kinds of stories we need to get normal people to care enough to force lawmakers to change. Sadly, the big bags of money from Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are probably far more important to them than this sad story.

Google defends Hotfile (and Megaupload) in court

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-22 Legal 15 Comments

"Google has filed a brief at a federal court in Florida defending the file-hosting site Hotfile in its case against the MPAA. The search giant accuses the movie companies of misleading the court and argues that Hotfile is protected under the DMCA's safe harbor. Indirectly, Google is also refuting claims being made by the US government in the criminal case against Megaupload." Obviously, Google isn't really defending Hotfile or MegaUpload here - they're defending themselves by proxy.

Oracle’s final damage claim less than $100 million

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-20 Legal 39 Comments

Some people (you know who) predicted the Oracle-Google lawsuit would spell doom for Google and Android. Well, turns out this was all a huge fuss over nothing. Oracle's damages claim started at an idiotic $6 billion - but the final claim is less than $100 million. Oracle's patent trolling is turning into a huge failure of epic proportions.

Submitted by anda_skoa 2012-03-19 Legal 16 Comments

Notorious competition law offender Microsoft has asked the EU's competition department to look into Motorola's behavior regarding patent licences vital for h.264 video. Microsoft complains that Motorola doesn't play by the usual rules and wants to decide by itself how much they want to charge for patents it owns. According to Microsoft, acceptable behavior for patent owners is to licence patens vital for industry standards at rates of single-digits-cents per device and ask for double-digits-cent amounts only for patents not necessary for implementing such standards. Since according to Microsoft's complaints at least some of the patents abused that way are related to h.264 video encoding/decoding, one has to wonder how much MPEG LA's ensurance of patent safety is now worth.

Guest post by nej_simon 2012-03-16 Legal 6 Comments

"In an unexpected turn of events, one of the key committees in the European Parliament voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works, pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located. There's a problem with this. There are 24 seats in the committee, and one group (non-inscrits) was absent, lacking deputies to fill that person's vote. So, there should have been 23 votes at the most. But we just counted 12 votes for reform and 14 against. That's 26." Sometimes, people complain that the EU has a democratic deficit. It looks like we had a democratic surplus this time.

Google faces new EU, US privacy probes

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-16 Legal 5 Comments

"Regulators in the US and European Union are investigating Google for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple's Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal. The investigations - which span U.S. federal and state agencies, as well as a pan - European effort led by France - could embroil Google in years of legal battles and result in hefty fines for privacy violations."

US ISPs to launch massive copyright spying scheme July 12

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-15 Legal 64 Comments

"If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider has been watching, and they're coming for you. Specifically, they're coming for you on Thursday, July 12. That's the date when the nation's largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users' bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials." One day, years from now, historians are going to debate whether this was the point of no return.

Yahoo! sues Facebook for patent infringement

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-14 Legal 13 Comments

"Yahoo has made good on its threat of last month and filed a patent infringement suit against Facebook." Yup, another patent battle. Great for innovation, this. Destroying the technology industry, one patent at a time.

How patent monopolies work in reality

Thom Holwerda 2012-03-12 Legal 33 Comments

"Patent monopolies prevent innovation. It is a system that works against innovations, to protect the current corporations against competition from aggressive, innovative, and competitive upstarts. It allows the big corporations to crush competitive upstarts in the courtroom, rather than having to compete with their products and services." ...which happens to be exactly why the old boys' club of computer technology (Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM) wants to keep it this way. This is not a system for the people, it's a system for huge corporations.

Guest post by snydeq 2012-03-06 Legal 1 Comment

"A US judge has ordered Motorola Mobility and Google to turn over information to Apple on Google's acquisition in 2005 of Android, its development of the Android OS and the proposed acquisition of Motorola. According to Motorola, the information Apple seeks regarding Google's acquisition of Motorola and Android is not relevant to any damages asserted in the case."

Top LulzSec hackers arrested, group leader reportedly working for FBI

David Adams 2012-03-06 Legal 8 Comments

The laughs are reportedly over for five top members of the hacker group LulzSec who were arrested on Tuesday and charged as part of a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court. FoxNews.com reports that the arrests were part of a multinational sting across the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States on Tuesday morning, and LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, who operated online under the alias â€œSabu,â€ provided the Federal Bureau of Investigation with information leading to the arrests.

US government claims right to seize any .com domain

David Adams 2012-03-06 Legal 32 Comments

If you run a web site or service that runs afoul of US law, and that site is hosted overseas, then the US legal system doesn't have much recourse, right? Wrong. Because the .com, .net, and .org top level domains are managed by a US company, the government can come to Verisign with a court order and seize your domain, effectively shutting you down. And because of a quirk of internet history that made the US-controlled domains the de-facto standard for web sites, this is a situation that's quite possibly permanent.