Category Archives: IP

Intellectual Property issues and news

Nokia seeks more leverage in the forever mobile patent war

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Chief among the ITC complaint was patent 5,570,369, a power saver designed for the GSM system and based on TDMA technology. Although, on the surface, ‘369 appears to have been tossed in the recycle bin with other 2G relics, the 1996 patent helps serve as a warning shot to competitors recycling Nokia’s technology. At the same time it reveals a possible ulterior motive to stop Google’s momentum. HTC seems to be straight in the crosshairs of Nokia’s legal assault, with three relevant – and curious – phones singled out in the ITC complaint. HTC’s Sensation 4G, Amaze 4G and Inspire 4G are all driven by Android. While similar phones based on the Windows Phone platform were missing from Nokia’s accusations.

via Nokia seeks more leverage in the forever mobile patent war | Patexia.com.

“Defensive Patent License” created to protect innovators from trolls

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The pledge might help Twitter attract ethical engineers, but ultimately it’s just one company taking a stand among a sea of litigators that are happy to prevent the sale of competitors’ products or extract licensing fees. A potentially more ambitious project called the “Defensive Patent License” aims to take the same basic idea practiced by Twitter and spread it across a big part of the technology industry.

via “Defensive Patent License” created to protect innovators from trolls | Ars Technica.

The commitment is both daunting in that it requires submitting all of a member company’s patents to the pool, and forgiving in that members can still sue the pants off non-members. Schultz said his team thought long and hard about the exact implementation of the Defensive Patent License.

AACS encryption key controversy

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A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing demand letters[2] to websites publishing a 128-bit (16-byte) number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0[3][4] (commonly referred to as 09 F9),[5][6] which is one of the cryptographic keys for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

via AACS encryption key controversy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Fark.com founder links patent trolls with ‘terrorists’

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A recent case shows how patent litigation works. EveryMD sued Facebook over an infringement on hosting a home page, posting comments and rating information.

The company has since decided to pursue patent suits against presidential candidates like Mitt Romney over their Facebook pages. EveryMD did not immediately return FoxNews.com requests for clarification.

via Fark.com founder links patent trolls with ‘terrorists’ | Fox News.

Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin

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The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

via Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin | Technology | The Guardian.

He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

Worlds Inc. Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and Activision Publishing, Inc.

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Worlds Inc. owns US patents numbers 8,082,501, 7,493,558, 7,945,856 and 7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space” and has additional continuation claims in process before the U.S Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). These patents relate to computer architecture for three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world systems. Such systems are utilized in Massive Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG).

via Worlds Inc. Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Activision Blizzard, Inc., Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and Activision Publishing, Inc. – MarketWatch.

Oracle thinks you can copyright a programming language, Google disagrees

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Google then goes on to explain that “a given set of statements or instructions may be protected, but the protection does not extend to the method of operation or system — the programming language — by which they are understood by the computer.” Google is arguing that a computer language is “inherently a utilitarian, nonprotectable means by which computers operate” and merely provides the structure, selection and organization of the software.

via Oracle thinks you can copyright a programming language, Google disagrees | The Verge.

Tweet seats suit claims the process has been patented

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Whether you love tweet seats or loathe them, you probably never thought they were patentable. But one company, Inselberg Interactive, insists it has already patented the seats, and is pressing Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut to license their patented platform or desist from hosting “tweet seats” nights

via Tweet seats suit claims the process has been patented.