Legal Archive

While the US is still pondering SOPA, we just got some absolutely fantastic news out of Europe. The European Court of Justice, the highest court in the European Union, has just ruled that P2P filters installed by ISPs violate the European Directive on electronic commerce as well as fundamental rights . This is a hugely important ruling that effectively protects all member states of the European Union from ever being subjected to ISP filtering and spying.

"The US International Trade Commission today said that Apple is not violating patents held by S3 Graphics in its products and is terminating its investigation on the matter. The decision follows a mixed ruling in July, where an ITC judge found Apple to be infringing on two of S3 Graphics' patents, while not infringing on two others. A final decision on the matter was due last week, with the ITC electing to postpone it until today for reasons unknown." That's one of the 3958354635635627658358365367 cases closed.

"The Stop Online Piracy Act is being constructed to allow a stranglehold on the American Internet. Make no mistake. Its constructors are building it with this intent in mind. Just like the Great Firewall of China, the Stop Online Piracy Act is a misnomer. Hidden behind an innocuous name, the bill's intent is not to stem piracy as its proponents suggest, its true intent is to control the Internet itself." McCarthy would be proud.

The legal fire between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft is flaring up even more. B&N has filed a compilation or prior art to Microsoft's patents. B&N is proving just how easily and quickly Samsung, HTC, and other buckled to Microsoft's protection racket: we're talking 43 (!) pages of prior art, drawing from things like old Netscape releases, GNU Emacs, and much more. If B&N can create such a monumental list of prior art, why didn't Samsung or HTC? Amazing.

A New York Times guest editorial titled Stop the Great Firewall of America says "China operates the world's most elaborate and opaque system of Internet censorship. But Congress... is considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China's Great Firewall and even bring major features of it to America." The culprit is the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act. Sounds good until you read that "The bills empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial." Rather like the Department of Homeland Security's seizure of websites for copyright violations without the constitutionally-required court orders. If you're not an American citizen, why should you care? Read this Techdirt article telling how the U.S. seized a Spanish domain name that had already been declared legal by the Spanish courts.

The US is currently busy copying China's internet censorship policies, but before this bill, the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA, can be pushed through, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to debate the act. Sadly, the hearing was - quite obviously - rigged. It was set up so that Big Content and Congress could label Google and other opponents to the law as "the pirates". In fact, Google was the only party opposing SOPA.

To anyone who has been reading anything on the web over the past few months, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Barnes & Noble is currently embroiled in a patent lawsuit started by Microsoft, after the bookseller/tablet maker refused to pay protection money to Redmond. Barnes & Noble has now openly said what we already knew, and has filed an official complaint at the US Department of Justice: Microsoft is engaging in anticompetitive practices. Update: Here's the slide deck B&N presented to the DoJ.

Why oh why does big news always break when I'm already in bed? This is a big one, guys: Motorola has been granted an injunction in Germany against Apple, which, as far as we can tell right now, covers Apple's entire portfolio of mobile products. Motorola can enforce this injunction, barring all of Apple's mobile products from the German market. In addition, Apple has to pay Motorola damages from 2003 and onwards. Update: Apple has responded (see Engadget article linked to above): "This is a procedural issue, and has nothing to do with the merits of the case. It does not affect our ability to sell products or do business in Germany at this time." At this time huh? Huh.

A Spanish judge has overturned an injunction Apple won against a Spanish Android tablet maker, N-TK. "A small Spanish company has won a legal case against Apple Inc. and will now be able to sell a tablet computer that the U.S. technology giant had claimed infringes on the iPad patent." N-TK only sold about 200 of these tablets due to Apple's legal nonsense, a lot less than their 15000 unit target. As such, NT-TK is going to sue Apple for damages.

So, the White House has this site where American citizens can set up petitions, and once they've gained enough support in the form of signatures, the White House will respond. One of the very first petitions added to the site called for the abolition of software patents - both issued and for the future. The petition gained enough support, so the White House has responded. Hit read more for a summary of the respons.

"Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the US copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails. The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show the administration's cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry's lobbying arms, and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July. One top official even used her personal e-mail account at least once during the negotiations with executives and lobbyists from companies ranging from AT&T to Universal Music." You don't say. Totally did not see this coming. Major surprise. Who'da thunk?

Fascinating infographic on the all the patent stuff going on in the mobile world today. Another infographic summarises the patent lawsuits between Apple and Samsung specifically (via). On a sidenote, what's the deal with infographics these days? Did someone decide they were cool without telling me?

A few days ago, several countries signed ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. As you are probably aware, ACTA was drafted up in secret, and is basically Obama/Biden's attempt to impose the US' draconian pro-big business/big content protection laws on the rest of the world ('sign it, or else'). The European Parliament still has to vote on it, and as such, Douwe Korff, professor of international law at the London Metropolitan University, and Ian Brown senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, performed a 90-page study, with a harsh conclusion: ACTA violates fundamental human rights.

Apple has the right to continue restricting its operating systems to its own hardware thanks to a decision handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in her opinion that Apple's Mac OS X licensing agreement was indeed enforceable against Psystar, which had sold non-Mac computers with Mac OS X installed.