Legal Archive

The Community Design: …and you Thought the USPTO Was Bad

Legal 68 Comments
Earlier this week, we were introduced to a new concept in intellectual property law: the European 'Community Design'. The Community Design is a sort of trademark on design, and sits halfway between a trademark and a patent. I decided to investigate what, exactly, the laws and regulations around Community Designs are, and what I found was shocking. Think the USPTO is bad? Wait until you learn about the Community Design.
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Apple, Publishers Conspired Against Amazon, Says Lawsuit

Legal 7 Comments
"'Terrified' by Amazon's Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase e-book prices and compel Amazon to abandon its discount sales strategy. That's the gist of a new class action antitrust lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Hagens Berman litigation group. The five book sellers named in the suit are HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin Group Inc., and Simon & Schuster Inc, plus one more defendant: Apple. 'Fortunately for the publishers, they had a co-conspirator as terrified as they were over Amazon's popularity and pricing structure, and that was Apple,' charges Hagen Berman attorney Steve Berman. 'We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon's Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader.'" I'm starting to see a pattern here.
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Samsung Accuses Apple of Photoshopping Evidence

Legal 3 Comments
Okay, the court case between Apple and Samsung started in The Netherlands today, over Samsung's various Android devices. The day has been pretty uneventful - up until just now. Andreas Udo de Haes, editor at WebWereld.nl, present in the court room, just tweeted that Samsung is accusing Apple of 'tampering' with the evidence - they claim it has been Photoshopped. The story is ongoing, more sure to follow. Update: The tampering of photos will be fully covered tomorrow. Update II: The general gist is that Apple supposedly manipulated photos of the iPad and Galaxy Tab to make the similarities stand out. This is a pretty harsh claim, I'm dying to see the evidence Samsung has for this one.
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Apple Blocks Sales of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in EU

Legal 190 Comments
Okay, I didn't see this one coming. German press agency dpa is reporting that Apple has been granted a preliminary injunction barring Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 from being distributed in the entire European Union except for The Netherlands, over a design patent. Competition at its finest, people, and this is clearly in the interest of consumers. I'm ashamed to be European. Updates in the article now. This iterative update process isn't really working when you've got a gazillion of them.
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Galaxy Tab 10.1 To Be Sold in Australia After All

Legal 3 Comments
Yesterday, the web was ablaze about how the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 wouldn't be sold in Australia due the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. Turns out the story was blown out of proportion. Official statement from Samsung explains it all: "Apple Inc. filed a complaint with the Federal Court of Australia involving a Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 variant that Samsung Electronics had no plans of selling in Australia. No injunction was issued by the court and the parties in the case reached a mutual agreement which stipulates that the variant in question will not be sold in Australia. A Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 for the Australian market will be released in the near future. This undertaking does not affect any other Samsung smartphone or tablet available in the Australian market or other countries. Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communication business."
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Apple Patent Suit Puts Samsung Tablet Sales in Australia on Hold

Legal 18 Comments
"Apple won an agreement from Samsung that the South Korean company won't sell the newest version of its tablet computer in Australia until a patent lawsuit in the country is resolved. sought an Australian injunction and also wants to stop Samsung from selling the tablet in other countries, Burley said without specifying where. Samsung agreed to stop advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and not to sell the device until it wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved, according to an accord reached by lawyers during a break in the hearing. Should Apple lose its patent infringement lawsuit, it agreed to pay Samsung damages, which weren't specified." Free market and competition at work, my friends!
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Lodsys Angry About Angry Birds

  Submitted by fran Legal 6 Comments
"If you thought Lodsys was done making a spectacle of itself and dragging app developers to court, you were sorely mistaken. The king of the patent trolls has amended its original complaint against mobile devs, removing one company, but adding five new ones - all of them big names. Rovio, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Atari, and Take-Two Interactive have been added to the list of defendants in the suit filed back in May." All part of the patent system Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM fight to maintain.
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Internet Activist Charged in MIT Data Theft

Legal 6 Comments
"Aaron Swartz, a 24-year-old programmer and online political activist, has been indicted in Boston on charges that he stole more than four million documents from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and JSTOR, an archive of scientific journals and academic papers." The weird part? JSTOR dropped all claims against him, because "they've suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute". Weird.
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App Devs Withdraw from US as Patent Fears Reach ‘Tipping Point’

Legal 23 Comments
"App developers are withdrawing their products for sale from the US versions of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market for fear of being sued by companies which own software patents - just as a Mumbai-based company has made a wide-ranging claim against Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and a number of other companies over Twitter-style feeds, for which it claims it has applied for a patent."
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ITC Judge Rules HTC Infringes Two Apple Software Patents

  Submitted by Jennimc Legal 117 Comments
If you can't compete, litigate. Not entirely unsurprisingly, the US ITC has sided with a US company against a Taiwanese competitor - the US International Trade Commission judge has ruled that out of ten patents Apple brought into its suit against HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone pioneer is infringing upon two. The ruling has to be reviewed by a panel of six, but if they agree, then some HTC devices may be banned from the US market - unless HTC and Apple can come to a settlement. We also know which two patents - and yes, they're software patents, of course.
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US Patent Expiration for MP3, MPEG-2, H.264

Legal 37 Comments
Patent term calculation is complicated in the US because there are essentially two different systems and quite a few corner cases. Even with a list of patents, it can be tricky to determine when the patents are all expired. Since I am a computer programmer (and not a lawyer), I created a program to try and automate this. This paper discusses how patent term calculation works, and some results from a combination of hand and automatic term calculation for MP3, MPEG-2 and H.264.
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Iconfactory’s Hockenberry: Patents Destroying Small Developers

Legal 80 Comments
I've been sitting on this item all day. Technically, it's about patents and the like, and even I understand I've been beating this dead horse so often it almost looks like it's alive. However, this is an interesting opinion piece by Craig Hockenberry, long-time employee at The Iconfactory, one of my favourite software development houses - these guys breath software and beautiful design, and employ one of my favourite artists, David Lanham. The gist of his story? Software patents are killing the independent developer scene.
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High Tech Investors Slam Hollywood, Blast Internet Censorship Bill

Legal 4 Comments
"The battle lines over online copyright enforcement sharpened on Thursday when dozens of prominent high-tech entrepreneurs and investors signed a letter urging members of Congress to reject the PROTECT IP Act. The legislation, which has been making rapid progress through Congress in recent weeks, would establish a blacklist of 'rogue sites' and compel a variety of intermediaries to block access to them. It is strongly supported by Hollywood and the recording industry."
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