Legal Archive

"The row between Google and Apple over the strict iPhone analytics information sharing policies, which Google and its AdMob subsidiary claim unfairly shuts them out of iPhone and iPad advertising in favor of Apple's iAd, may face antitrust scrutiny. According to the Financial Times, US regulators are looking into the situation, though it's not yet clear if a formal investigation will happen."

"SCO was dealt yet another blow in court today when District Judge Ted Stewart rejected the company's motion requesting a new trial or judgement of law. In a ruling issued today, Judge Stewart sided with a jury that issued a verdict against SCO in April, finding that Novell was the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. According to Judge Stewart, SCO failed to demonstrate that the jury's verdict contradicted the evidence presented in the case."

Well, this was as inevitable as the tides rolling in. The New York Times is reporting that the US Department of Justice is investigating Apple's tactics in the digital music market. The antitrust probe is still in an early phase, and is said to focus on "the dynamics of selling music online".

Nero AG, a company with one of the most fitting names ever (can you imagine a company called Hitler or Stalin 2000 years from now?), has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the MPEG-LA. The German technology company claims the licensing body has abused its monopoly power, and that is has not honoured agreements made with the US Department of Justice. There's some juicy stuff in here.

European antitrust regulators have fined nine semiconductor manufacturers more than USD 404 million following a years-long investigation into price fixing in the market for DRAM memory chips. The European Commission said all of the companies submitted settlements admitting their liability for infringement. The companies fined are Samsung Electronics, Infineon, Hynix Semiconductor, Elpida Memory, NEC Electronics, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Electric and Nanya Technology. A tenth company, Micron, escaped a fine since it told the Commission about the cartel in 2002.

"Apple has been slapped with another patent infringement lawsuit - but the suit says more about the festering sore that is the US patent system than it does about the individual patents involved. The lawsuit was filed by Austin, Texas inventor Eric Gould Bear, President and CEO of interface design firm MonkeyMedia. The core of his infringement claim is that his patents cover a user-interface concept that he calls 'Seamless Contraction' - essentially a set of techniques to narrow the display of information to that which is most 'salient', to use his term, to the user's needs."

Well, this is about as surprising as the tides rolling in: HTC has sued Apple for patent infringement. Earlier this year, Apple sued HTC, focussing on the Taiwanese phone maker's Android devices. HTC has now responded with a patent suit of its own.

"The Business Software Alliance, an industry trade group that represents many software vendors, has made stamping out software piracy a major initiative. To that end, it commissions an annual survey of global piracy, performed by IDC. There's not a whole lot of information about the methods employed in producing those numbers, so it's difficult to know how reliable they are in absolute terms. But said figures may be valuable for detecting trends, in which case the news is good for the BSA: although piracy remains substantial, it isn't growing at the rates it once was, and many industrialized countries have seen rates of piracy drop below 25 percent."

And so the suing continues. Apple and Nokia aren't particularly friendly towards one another as of late, with both companies accusing each other of infringing upon one another's patents. Several shots have been fired back and forth already, with the latest one coming straight from Espoo.

While Eugenia has already detailed just how intricate and impressive the MPEG-LA's efforts have been to basically set up the foundations that would allow them to sue just about everyone - their vague and unclear licenses are used in everything from DVD players to digital camcorders, and as such, it's hard to avoid them. Many others claim that the MPEG-LA won't ever go rogue (or this, take your pick). I think those people will be interested to know that one of the MPEG-LA's subsidiaries, a cut-and-clear patent troll, has launched several patent infringement suits earlier this year. This patent troll's CEO? Larry Horn - yes, the same Larry Horn who's also CEO of the MPEG-LA.

CNet investigates whether H264's licensing is really a legal minefield. John Gruber, proponent of H264, concludes from the article, which uses the MPEG-LA and several legal experts as sources, that no, it is not a legal minefield. He's probably been reading a different article than I did, though, because even the legal experts have trouble understanding the licensing structure. Heck, even the MPEG-LA's head of licensing's language is remarkably unclear and broad. So, is it a legal minefield? Most certainly - this article does nothing to quell the worries.

All the way back in 2007 (The Year Gilmore Girls ended), a company called IP Innovation sued Red Hat and Novell over a patent related to the concept of virtual desktops. It seems like common sense hasn't been drained entirely from the US justice system, since yesterday, the courts declared said patent invalid.

Well, this certainly explains a whole lot. Both Apple and Microsoft have stated that the legality of Theora is highly debatable, and as it turns out, they knew more than we do - most likely courtesy of their close involvement with the MPEG-LA. Responding to an email from Free Software Foundation Europe activist Hugo Roy, Steve Jobs has stated that a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora. Update: Monty Montgomery of Xiph (Ogg and Theora's parent organisation) has responded on Slashdot: "If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents'). He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."

Well, this is unexpected. The iPhone 4G saga just got a whole lot crazier - dare I say it, a whole lot more ridiculous. Have you ever reported anything like a phone or something similarly small stolen to the police? What was their reaction? Did you ever get the device back? Did they send an army of officers to get your device back? No? Odd. They raided Jason Chen's house, and took four computers and two servers. Update: And thus our true colours reveal. "The raid that San Mateo area cops conducted last week on the house of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen came at the behest of a special multi-agency task force that was commissioned to work with the computer industry to tackle high-tech crimes. And Apple Inc. sits on the task force's steering committee." Update II: According to TechCrunch, the investigation has been put on hold while the DA ponders Gizmodo's shield defence. Update III: Some legal insight from a constitutional law and first amendment expert and a law professor. The gist? The DA has said no one has been charged with anything here, making this just an investigation - however, this makes the search and seizing of material worse. "If the police are literally just gathering information, with no suspect targeted yet, then a subpoena against a journalist would have probably been smarter than a search warranted that resulted in the front door of Chen's home being bashed in."