Legal Archive

Big Content, which already owns the Obama administration, is at it again - I guess mandatory monitoring software to scan every computer's content isn't enough. A bi-partisan proposed bill would allow US federal courts to issue injunctions that would order domain registrars or registries to cease resolving the domain name of a copyright infringing website.

Yesterday's news regarding the lawsuit Skyhook has filed against Google seems to have made quite an impact here and there. If you read through the complaint (at Daring Fireball), Skyhook makes some interesting claims about how Google abuses its position to strongarm OEMs into using Google Location services, but the big claim, something everyone seems to overlook, is this one: Skyhook says Google tried to gain access to Skyhook's data.

With bad news after bad news when it comes to consumer rights in relation to software and copyright, it's always refreshing to see that there are still people in high places who aren't yet bought by big content. Late last week, a major battle was won for consumer rights in Switzerland: Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court has ruled that IP addresses are personal information, and therefore, fall under the country's strict privacy laws, and may not be used by anti-piracy companies.

EULAs, and whatever nonsense they may contain, are legally binding in the US. Have a great weekend!

"It took Hewlett-Packard less than a day to file a lawsuit against its former chief executive, Mark V. Hurd, over his decision to join its rival and partner Oracle as a co-president. H.P. filed its lawsuit on Tuesday in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara, claiming that Mr. Hurd had breached his contract with the company. The lawsuit said that Mr. Hurd could use his intimate knowledge of H.P. and its trade secrets to aid Oracle and harm H.P. The two companies compete in the market for computer servers, storage systems and business software."

We've all heard of patent trolls who buy up patents without using them to make any products. Their only goal is to seek out possible infringers and sue them, making money via the justice system. It was only a matter of time, but we've now got something new: copyright trolls.

Well, this is kind of funny. Steve Wozniak, still an Apple employee, has defended Paul Allen and patent trolls in general. "I'm not at all against the idea of patent trolls cause I've had friends who just got forced into bankruptcy by bigger people who had more money and could have a lawsuit against them, forced them to be their own lawyers, and in the end, sometimes they're victorious. But it's a real hard way to do it. So if you're going to have a patent and say 'It's worth some money, I'll sell it', well, even if Paul Allen makes a fortune off of it, I think he had the insights to recognize which patents were valuable." Apple is one of the companies Allen is suing.

Just when you thought the Amiga world was finally getting its act together, finally making things a little less obtuse for outsiders, this happens. So, we have the AmigaOne X1000 coming up, a brand-new PowerPC computer, running the real deal - AmigaOS 4. In the meantime, Commodore USA - the one with the sketchy website - has apparently secured rights to the Amiga hardware brand, and is planning to release Amiga-branded computers running AROS. In the meantime, Hyperion, the Belgium company behind AmigaOS, who is working with A-eon on the AmigaOne X1000, claims this is a clear violation of the settlement between them and Amiga Inc., and has notified its US lawyers.

Remember that other tablet, which came out right around the same time the iPad was released? Yeah, the joojoo, by Fusion Garage. During its development, it was known as the CrunchPad, and emerged out of some form of collaboration between Michael Arrington's TechCrunch and Chandrasekhar Rathakrisnan's Fusion Garage. Things went sour between the two, and eventually, Fusion Garage released the joojoo on its own. Consequently, Arrington sued, and we've got the first major court decision.

Most of us here are not particularly big fans of the concept of patents. Most of us are aware of the significance of patents, we just believe the system has gone out of control and needs a serious kick in the butt. Well, it turns out not even the richest people on this earth are immune to the call of the patent troll. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a massive patent lawsuit, using broad and vague patents to sue just about any big name in the business - from Apple to Google.

We're far from done with the Oracle v. Google lawsuit. The search giant has responded to the lawsuit, and Miguel De Icaza has provided a very interesting insight into the case. His report has been confirmed by James Gosling, known as the father of Java who left Sun right after the merger. Icaza speculates that the potential to monetise on Java by suing Google was pitched by Jonathan Schwartz during Sun's sales talks with Oracle. Oh boy.

The entire complaint Oracle lobbed at Google has been available online for a while now, and after reading it through with my total lack of any knowledge of the inner workings of the American legal system, a few things did stand out to me as peculiar. We'll have to wait for a more detailed analysis by someone qualified to do so. Also, a few other notes about this case I've picked up online.

So, there I am enjoying a nice Gilmore Girls episode after a long day's work, and Engadget's iPhone application brings the good news: the US Library of Congress has added a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking or rooting mobile phones! This is a major blow to Apple, who actively tried to keep jailbreaking a criminal offence, and a major win for everyone who believes that the phone you buy is actually yours, and not the manufacturer's.

Canonical have become the first member to sign up to the Open Invention Network's new associate membership program. The Open Invention Network exists to acquire patents and license them royalty free to entities which, in turn, "agree not to assert their own patents against Linux or Linux-related applications." Current well-known companies involved with the OIN include Sony, IBM and Novell.