Legal Archive

So, we have Apple who is paranoid about people installing legally purchased copies of its operating system on non-Apple labelled machines. Just when you thought it couldn't get any more ridiculous than that, we have a hardware company trying to prevent people from installing operating systems on its hardware. Wait, what?

Now that all the nastiness of the discovery phase is behind us in the Apple vs. Psystar case, both parties are trying to get the case settled before it goes to court, much like the recent Vernor vs. Autodesk case. Both Apple and Psystar have filed motions asking for a summary judgement.

The patent wars rage on. Eolas, a company that before won US$585 million from Microsoft in 2003 in a suit that challenged the use of ActiveX and AJAX, is now after twenty-three separate companies allegedly because their precious patent was spoiled by all of them.

"US regulators will for the first time crack down on bloggers who fail to disclose fees or freebies they get from companies for reviewing products. The Federal Trade Commission, decided to update its nearly 30 year old guidelines to clarify the law for the vast world of blogging. Offenders could face eventual fines of up to $11,000 (GBP 6,900) per violation."

A long-term patent battle between Microsoft and a California- and Singapore-based security software company known as Uniloc has found Microsoft on the winning side... again. The said battle began about six years ago when Uniloc first sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing a patent of a technology that decries piracy by way of an activation key. Microsoft was supposed to have violated the patent by integrating the technology into the Windows XP and Office products' activation sequences that we all know and love. In short: Microsoft won the original case in 2003, Uniloc appealed and eventually won the appeal in April 2009 after many years of long and drawn out legal proceedings, and Microsoft appealed the appeal and won that appeal just recently, now not having to pay the US$388 million from the last appeal. Oh, and Uniloc already has plans to appeal.

A very simple question for you. How often have you resold software that you legally purchased? Often enough, right? Well, if it's up to Autodesk, the company behind AutoCAD, you will no longer be allowed to resell your software. Update: As it turns out, the matter has already been resolved: Autodesk lost. A win for all of us.

There's news in the Apple vs. Psystar saga, and even though I know I promised not to report on this for a while, this news is a pretty important development, and we're more than two weeks down the road anyway. As you all know, Psystar filed a second lawsuit concerning specifically Snow Leopard in Florida, and Apple motioned to have the case combined with the Apple vs. Psystar case running in California, claiming there is no difference between the two. Judge Alsup has denied this request.

European antitrust regulators on Monday published internal e-mails that detail alleged antitrust behavior by Intel. The European Commission Monday published a non-confidential version of its its May 13 decision against Intel, which imposed a fine of $1.45 billion against the chip giant. That decision found that Intel broke EC Treaty antitrust rules (Article 82) by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 processors. The EC action was based on complaints from Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices.

Earlier this year, the European Commission imposed a massive fine upon Intel for its anti-competitive practices in the OEM space. Intel has been given the opportunity to respond, as is usual in cases like this, and the chip maker is claiming that the fine should be thrown out, because the EC did not prove that Intel's practices hurt the competition.

The French download law has passed the lower house (285 votes to 225). "The law must still be approved by parliament as a whole and the opposition Socialists have already announced they intend to challenge the measure in the constitutional court."

And the Apple vs. Psystar case continues to roll onwards. A lot of mud is going back and forth between the two companies: Apple has accused Psystar of making information public which was under a protective order, and obviously, Psystar denied. In addition, Groklaw's Pamela Jones continues to suspect that this Psystar case is related to the SCO case, and is part of a concentrated effort to destroy the GPL. Update: I've just been emailed (on behalf of Psystar's lawyers, actually) the outcome (in the form of a court order) of the hearing held this morning. Sadly, it's very late here, so I won't be able to analyse it properly until tomorrow.

Microsoft has been granted a stay of a landmark injunction in a patent infringement case that would have required the software giant to stop selling its popular Word in its current form by next month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday granted Microsoft's motion for a stay, pending appeal, of an injunction issued in August by a federal judge that bars sales of Word that include a custom XML code found to infringe on patents held by i4i - the plaintiff.

The week isn't even over yet, and we already have another instalment in the Apple-Psystar soap opera. Psystar has filed a new lawsuit in the Florida Southern District Court in Miami, asking for an injunction and damages because of Apple's "anticompetitive attempts to tie Mac OS X Snow Leopard to its Macintosh line of computers".

Earlier today we reported that while Apple doesn't encourage it, the Snow Leopard upgrade disk can be used to upgrade machines that have Mac OS 10.4 Tiger installed as well. However, this is actually forbidden by the accompanying EULA, which raises an interesting question: do you have any moral problems ignoring said EULA? And on a more general note, do you actually care about any EULA at all?