Legal Archive

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."

Yes, even more copyright and intellectual property stuff. We have several stories on this one today, so I figured I'd throw them all together. First and foremost, ACTA has finally been dragged out of the shadows and into the light (thanks to the EU parliament), so we can take a look at what's in there. Is it really as bad as everyone thinks it is? Short answer: yes. Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Another article on intellectual property enforcement? Yes, since I consider this to be the most important struggle technology has to face over the coming decade. We already know that content providers don't care one bit about hard-fought concepts like freedom and privacy, but the joint proposals by the RIAA and MPAA to the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator really blew my brains out: monitoring software installed on people's computers, border inspections - it's all there, and then some.

Happy birthday to you... Happy birthday to you... Happy birthday dear copyright law... Yeah, it's April 10, the birthday of copyright (thanks, Arnoud). In 1710, 300 years ago, England enacted the very first copyright law, cutely named the Statute of Anne, after then-reigning Queen Anne. When reading about those early days of copyright, one can't help but hope we will return to those days - the Statute of Anne has little to nothing to do with modern copyright.

"Microsoft found its latest request for a multiple-judge review, in a long-running patent-infringement suit with Canadian tech firm i4i, rejected by a federal appeals court. Microsoft had asked for a panel of 11 judges to review its arguments in the case, in which i4i alleges that Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 violate its custom XML-related patents. In August 2009, a federal judge in a U.S. District Court ordered Microsoft to pay $300 million and pull copies of Word 2003 and 2007 from store shelves within 90 days, a ruling that set off months of legal maneuvering."

It's time for bed over here, but before I turn in with a nice cup of tea and a Gilmore Girls episode, we've got some good news for you: SCO has been dealt yet another major blow in its baseless lawsuit against Novell. A jury has ruled that Novell owns the UNIX copyrights - not SCO.

Andrew Tridgell recommends reading software patents, and describes how to do it right. "That first type of defence is really the one you want, it's called: non-infringement. And that is: 'we don't do that. The patent says X, we don't do X, therefore go away, sue someone else, it's not relevant for us'. That's the defence you want. Next one, prior art: Basically the argument is: somebody else did that before. It's a very, very tricky argument to get right. Extremely tricky, and it is the most common argument bandied about in the free software community. And if you see it in the primary defence against a patent, you should cringe because it is an extremely unsafe way of doing things."

Finally - after a few weeks, HTC has actually officially issued a statement regarding the patent infringement lawsuit Apple has thrown towards the Taiwanese phone maker. As you probably already anticipated, HTC states it will fully defend itself against Apple. It's on, it's on.

"With the release of hundreds of pages of court documents in the legal dispute between Google and Viacom over the presence of copyright material on YouTube, Google has released a statement on the case. The statement was attributed to Zahavah Levine, YouTube chief counsel."

It's no secret to anyone that while Apple sued HTC, the lawsuit is more about Google than HTC itself. Since Android is open source, and owned by no one, it's kind of hard to go after Google itself, and as such, HTC was the prime target, since it is the number one Android smartphone maker. The New York Times has an in-depth article up about the subject, with a whole boatload of quotes from people within the two companies, and it paints a picture of all this being a highly emotional and personal vendetta - especially from Apple's side.

While we are all busy discussing Apple suing HTC for patent infringement, we're almost forgetting that Nokia and Apple are also embroiled in about ten million lawsuits going either way. The most recent move comes from Nokia, who seeks to dismiss Apple's antritrust claims using pretty much the same arguments Apple used to counter Psystar's antitrust claims.