Legal Archive

The two organizations haven't been what you'd call snuggle-buddies, but they're certainly adamant about certain aspects of software enough to agree and collectively petition a legal group for redress of a document. In a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have joined forces in writing and signing a letter to the American Law Institute asking for the group to hold off on submitting a document entitled "Principles of the Law of Software Contracts" for adjustments.

With things like the Pirate Bay trial and the French three strikes law still very fresh in memory, it's easy to forget that sometimes, offence can be the best defence. In light of this ancient wisdom, Dutch website FTD.nu has filed a lawsuit against the Dutch variant of the RIAA, BREIN. FTD.nu is backed and supported by two key Dutch copyright lawyers. Note that most links in this story will be written in Foreign for most of you.

Remember SCO? They just don't know when to quit, do they? "The Department of Justice's Trustee program, which has finally had enough of SCO's stalling tactics and failed reorganization attempts, has filed a motion to transition the company to Chapter 7. SCO CEO Darl McBride says that the company will oppose the motion and will present a new reorg plan to the court."

The Federal Trade Commission in the United States has started an inquiry into the close ties between the boards of Apple and Google. They are wondering if the close ties constitute a violation of antitrust laws now that the two companies are increasingly participating in the same markets.

It's been relatively quiet around the whole Psystar case lately. The case is supposedly going to trial somewhere in November of this year, and the two opposing parties are probably preparing their cases. We've finally got some news on this front, as Apple is accusing Psystar of withholding financial information. Apple made its accusations in a partly censored letter to judge William Alsup.

The Open Innovation Network has found a few of Microsoft's patents in dealing with the past TomTom/FAT case a bit fishy and have therefore submitted them for review of prior-art to the Linux community at large.

The verdict in the Pirate Bay trial surprised many people, seeing as how many errors the entertainment industry's lawyers had made, and how little understanding they seemed to have of how BitTorrent works. The height of the sentence also surprised many; for aiding in sharing just 33 copyrighted items, the four founders were sentenced to one year in jail, and a massive fine of 3.6 million USD. Well, as it turns out, we now know why we were all relatively surprised: the judge in the case, Thomas Norstrom, is member of the same pro-copyright groups as many of the people representing the entertainment industry in the case.

Old World 1, New World 0. The four defendants in the landmark The Pirate Bay case, taking place in Sweden, have all been found guilty, and sentenced to one year in jail. They also received a hefty fine of USD 3.58 million to 17 American media companies, among which are Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision. The defendants have already stated they will appeal the decision.

Microsoft on Wednesday was hit with a USD 388m verdict in a long-running patent-infringement case. In the suit, Uniloc alleged that Microsoft used its patented technology as part of the software giant's product-activation methods. A federal jury in Rhode Island found that Windows XP, Office XP and Windows Server 2003 infringed on a Uniloc patent.

Navigation device maker TomTom and Microsoft have resolved their patent dispute by entering into a settlement agreement out-of-court. The outcome of the agreement is that TomTom will license the infringed patents, but that they will remove the encumbered code from their implementation of the Linux kernel within two years.

"Two Middle Americans have sued Acer over its low-cost Aspire notebooks, claiming that the Taiwanese PC giant pre-installed Windows Vista on machines ill-equipped to run Microsoft's latest OS. With a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Francisco, California, two residents of Fostoria, Ohio seek damages and relief from the world's third-largest computer maker after purchasing a sub-$600 Aspire notebook that included Windows Vista Premium and a gigabyte of shared system and graphics memory."

Winner of this and last year's PWN2OWN contest Charlie Miller made some bold statements last week, stating that Mac OS X is easier to exploit than Windows. In a new interview with Tom's Hardware, Miller explains that that doesn't mean users should avoid Mac OS X for security reasons. He also gives a little more insight into his winning exploits, and what exactly they do.

"The judge in the ongoing Vista Capable row has denied PC buyers a motion for partial summary judgment in a lawsuit against Microsoft, citing a lack of evidence to show the company had hoodwinked customers. The issue will be decided in a forthcoming trial instead, ruled US District Judge Marsha Pechman late on Wednesday."

Following Microsoft's patent claim against TomTom, the Dutch mobile navigation device maker has countersued Microsoft, claiming the company infringes upon four of its patents. "The GPS device maker, based in The Netherlands, filed the countersuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday. TomTom says Microsoft's Streets and Trips products infringe on four patents it owns related to vehicle navigation software."