Legal Archive

The sand has hit the elephant. The buttons have dried the desert. The empty CD-Rs are dancing to Radiohead. The unicorns have left the building. The US International Trade Commission is going to be working overtime this year: after Nokia and Apple, Motorola, too, has now filed a complaint with the ITC, seeking a ban on imports of RIM devices.

Like many of you, I kind of lost my faith in the US justice system (when it comes to piracy cases) when a judge awarded USD 1.92 million in damages for downloading 24 songs in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case. At the same time, also like many of you, I was very pleased with the outcome of the OiNK case in the United Kingdom last week. As it turns out, some of my faith in the US system has been restored: the USD 1.92 fine has been reduced by 97%, to a mere USD 54000.

The Mac Observer has found out that Psystar has indeed decided to appeal the case it lost against Apple. "Psystar has officially filed its Notice of Appeal in the copyright suit it lost against Apple Inc., according to a court document obtained by The Mac Observer. The step was a formality in the appeals process, but until it was filed, it was unclear if the company would actually mount an appeal."

Ah, a lovely bit of news that to help us start the weekend off with positive thoughts! A UK jury has unanimously acquitted Alan Ellis, founder and administrator of the invitation-only OiNK music bittorrent tracker. This means that his 2 year-long trial has finally come to an end - there's no more room for appeal.

"Eastman Kodak has issued lawsuits against both Apple and Blackberry maker Research in Motion, claiming neither of them has licensed its patents despite using the technology described therein and having been warned about it by Kodak. The photography pioneer said the alleged infringement centred on intellectual property protecting a method for previewing colour images and the processing of images of different resolutions. It filed complaints against both Apple and RIM with the US District Court for Western New York."

Last Friday, January 8, the University of Amsterdam (I'm with the competition) handed out an honorary doctorate to Harvard prof. Lawrence Lessig, known to you all (I may hope!) as one of the founding members of the wildly successful Creative Commons project. During the acceptance ceremony, he held one of his keynote presentations - and one that is required listening material for everyone. And with everyone - I mean everyone.

I have no inherent problem with computer makers shipping their machines with Windows pre-installed. Of course, I'd much rather see a lot more diversity when I walk into an electronics retailer, but I can't really blame OEMs for taking the safe bet and focussing on what they know customers seem to want. Still, we need better ways to return our unused OEM copies of Windows, and apparently, a lot of people in Italy agree.

"Responding to Apple's vehement countersuit against Nokia, in which it leveled 13 patent infringement allegations against Nokia's 10, last December 29, Nokia added 14 more to the mix, including for concepts that may perhaps be as integral to the construction of modern telephones as power-conserving voltage-controlled oscillators, and a sensor that de-activates touchscreens while the phone is held against the ear."

Earlier this year, a judge ruled that Microsoft willfully infringed on an XML-related patent held by i4i, and ordered the company to pay 290 million USD. In addition, if the Redmond giant didn't comply within 60 days of the ruling, Word would be banned from the US market. Microsoft later received a stay on this injunction, pending appeal. This appeal failed for Microsoft, as the earlier ruling has been upheld.

Last week, OSNews received an interesting email from a German attorney. It informed us that a company called Smartbook AG has a trademark in several countries to the term "Smartbook" and admonished us (semi-threateningly) not to use the term for anything but his client's company's products. Our first reaction was, "huh?" But a quick search reminded us that several companies, most notably Qualcomm, have started referring to low-power mini-notebooks as smartbooks. It turns out that OSNews, and many other news sources, have been caught in a trademark dispute between Smartbook AG and Qualcomm. This prompted me to do a little research on trademark law.

The CrunchPad/Joo Joo soap opera continues. Michael Arrington remained silent during the introduction of the Joo Joo, but today he filed the lawsuit against Fusion Garage, and posted the actual document of it on the internet (naturally). The case presents, in great detail, Arrington's side of the story.

Back in October, Nokia sued Apple for patent infringement. In a response back then, Apple already stated it would defend itself vigorously. We now know just how vigorously: Apple has countersued Nokia, claiming the Finnish electronics company is infringing 13 of Apple's patents. It's on.

"Intel's legal dispute with graphics-chip maker Nvidia is being reviewed as part of an antitrust probe of Intel by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to people familiar with the matter. Regulators are looking at lawsuits between Intel and Nvidia, said the people, who declined to be identified because the federal investigation is continuing. The FTC is trying to determine whether a lawsuit filed by Intel earlier this year is an effort to disrupt Nvidia’s business, one person said."

The case between Apple and Psystar may in fact finally be over. AppleInsider is reporting on a document filed with the California court which says that the two companies have entered into a settlement agreement. However, since AppleInsider doesn't actually provide the document in question, and nothing shows up yet on dockets, it's all a little bit unclear. Update: Here's the filing. It does not cover the Florida case, but pretty much ends the California one. Round 1 a smashing victory for Apple, round 2 has Psystar starting heavily crippled.