Legal Archive

The UK Government has responded to a petition regarding software patents: "The Government remains committed to its policy that no patents should exist for inventions which make advances lying solely in the field of software. Although certain jurisdictions, such as the US, allow more liberal patenting of software-based inventions, these patents cannot be enforced in the UK."

Microsoft reached an undisclosed settlement in a lawsuit claiming it used its monopoly position to overcharge Iowa consumers for software products including Windows and Word. Microsoft reached the deal with a statewide class of consumers who had purchased Microsoft products since 1994. The plaintiffs claimed the company violated Iowa antitrust law to charge inflated prices by taking advantage of its monopolies in personal computer operating systems and software applications.

"In the US, France and a few other countries it is already forbidden to play legally purchased music or videos using GNU/Linux media players. Sounds like sci-fi? Unfortunately not. And it won't end up on multimedia only. Welcome to the the new era of DRM!" Update: Norway's consumer ombudsman has ruled that Apple's Fairplay DRM is illegal. This follows the news that France and Germany have sided with Norway.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California is investigating the stock options backdating activities of computer and consumer electronics manufacturer Apple. The federal action comes in the wake of the disclosure by Apple last month that it completed an internal investigation of options backdating and concluded that, although Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs recommended some backdating of stock options for himself and other Apple employees, he wasn't aware of the accounting implications of those recommendations. Luke Macaulay, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, confirmed the existence of the investigation, but did not provide additional details.

"A federal judge on Thursday gutted SCO Group's USD 5 billion, Linux-related lawsuit against IBM - renewing debate about the Utah company's future. Concluding a six-week review, US District Judge Dale Kimball upheld federal Magistrate Brooke Wells' June decision to strike down two-thirds of SCO's allegations. The Lindon-based software company contends IBM violated its contract and copyrights when it allegedly leaked SCO-owned Unix code into the freely-distributed Linux operating system.

"It's been a good week for Microsoft's documentation efforts as the company achieved important milestones with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. US antitrust authorities signed off on Vista and IE7 and announced that Microsoft was making good progress in its efforts to document certain server protocols in Windows. In Europe, where Microsoft has encountered more problems and increased fines over the state of its documentation, the company got a rare bit of good news as the European Commission completed its initial review of the revised documents."

When SGI's boss Dennis McKenna vowed to get serious about the bankrupt company's IP portfolio this summer, he wasn't kidding. "We have a hell of a lot of IP left," he told The Register at the time. A day after it returned to NASDAQ SGI has filed suit against ATI claiming patent infringement.

The EU has accumulated enough evidence to charge Intel with antitrust violations, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anonymous sources quoted by the paper claim that EU lawyers have prepared a draft of their case against the company, but are waiting to make it public until after an interior panel of legal experts meets to consider the arguments in the document.

A federal judge has dismissed a large portion of AMD's antitrust lawsuit against Intel, saying US law does not cover many of AMD's claims. The decision by Judge Joseph Farnan of the US District Court in Delaware follows several quarters in which AMD, the world's number-two maker of chips used in personal computers, had taken business from its larger rival.

European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said the US government tried to influence its decision over a 280.5 mln eur fine for software giant Microsoft, newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad said. The US embassy in Brussels had contacted Kroes and asked her to be a bit 'nicer' to Microsoft before she had taken the decision to fine Microsoft in July, Kroes said in an interview.

When Mac sales dropped off in 1985, Bill Gates personally wrote John Sculley suggesting that he license the Macintosh design to companies like Apollo, DEC and Wang, and establish the software as the industry standard. Apple declined, and Microsoft published Windows. Sculley was enraged, and eventually filed suit. After five years, Apple lost, but not before severely damaging its relationship with Microsoft (which accounted for 2/3 of all Mac software sales).

Microsoft has submitted documents required by the European Commission in an effort to avoid further fines for breaching an antitrust ruling, a spokeswoman for the European Union regulator said on Monday. "We received the technical documentation from Microsoft. The competition services are currently analyzingit with the help of the trustee. It's too early to say whether they complied with the decision," the spokeswoman said.

A computer user is suing Microsoft over the company's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy tool, alleging that it violates laws against spyware. The suit by Los Angeles resident Brian Johnson, filed this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle, seeks class-action status for claims that Microsoft didn't adequately disclose details of the tool when it was delivered to PC users through the company's Automatic Update system.

In the SCO case a new order severely limits SCO's claims. finding that 186 out of 294 items in SCO's final disclosures are not up to the standard ordered by the court. IBM disputed 198 items for not being specific enough and the court granted the motion on 186 of the items limiting the case to 107 items.