Tag Archives: monopolistic practices

Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own

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Avaya, for example, is known for suing service companies, accusing them of violating copyright for simply using a password to log in to their phone systems. That’s right: typing in a password is considered “reproducing copyrighted material.”

via Forget the Cellphone Fight — We Should Be Allowed to Unlock Everything We Own | Wired Opinion | Wired.com.

Because manufacturers have copyrighted the service manuals, local mechanics can’t fix modern equipment. And today’s equipment — packed with sensors and electronics — is too complex to repair without them. That’s a problem for farmers, who can’t afford to pay the dealer’s high maintenance fees for fickle equipment.

FCC: OpenBand Contracts ‘Anti-Competitive’, ‘Forbidden’

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Only one day after Dulles-based telecommunications company OpenBand filed a second lawsuit against two supervisors and the board’s of two of the Loudoun homeowners’ associations it serves in response to denial of its franchise agreement application, the Federal Communications Commission issued a statement claiming the company’s telecommunication contracts should not be upheld.

via FCC: OpenBand Contracts ‘Anti-Competitive’, ‘Forbidden’ – Leesburg Today Online—Daily News Coverage of Loudoun County, Leesburg, Ashburn: News.

Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone

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According to Heiner, Google has denied Microsoft’s YouTube app access to metadata that would allow it to deliver all of YouTube’s functionality, including such features as user ratings and the ability to search for videos by categories.

Because of this limitation, he says, Microsoft has been forced to deliver an app that’s really nothing more than a repackaged version of the YouTube website running in a browser – unlike the apps for other platforms, which offer richer experiences.

via Microsoft says Google trying to undermine Windows Phone • The Register.

Chicago options market goes nuclear, files $525 million patent suit

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However, a few key financial institutions have embraced patents enthusiastically. This week, the Chicago Board Options Exchange has taken finance-patent wars to a new level. CBOE filed a lawsuit against a competing options exchange, International Securities Exchange (ISE), demanding $525 million for the infringement of three patents: US Patent Nos. 7,356,498, 7,980,457 and 8,266,044. The board asked for the first patent in 1999, at the height of the patent-everything craze, and the patents were issued between 2008 and 2011.

via Chicago options market goes nuclear, files $525 million patent suit | Ars Technica.

Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets

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Here’s a better approach: circumventing copy protection schemes shouldn’t be against the law in the first place. DRM schemes harm legitimate users more than they deter piracy. Indeed, as the phone unlocking example illustrates, many uses of DRM have nothing to do with copyright infringement in the first place. Rather, they’re a convenient legal pretext for limiting competition and locking consumers into proprietary products. We shouldn’t be using copyright law as a backdoor means to give such anti-competitive practices the force of law.

via Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets | Ars Technica.

Why Your Phone, Cable & Internet Bills Cost So Much

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In his new book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use ‘Plain English’ to Rob You Blind, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston highlights these astounding facts:

  • Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
  • The French get global free calling and worldwide live television. Their Internet is also 10 times faster at downloading information and 20 times faster uploading it.
  • America has gone from #1 in Internet speed (when we invented it) to 29th in the world and falling.
  • Bulgaria is among the countries with faster Internet service.
  • Americans pay 38 times as much as the Japanese for Internet data.

via Why Your Phone, Cable & Internet Bills Cost So Much | Daily Ticker – Yahoo! Finance.

Google Objects to Acer-Alibaba Phone

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Google said it objected to the Acer device because Aliyun was a “non-compatible” version of Android, meaning that Alibaba allegedly created Aliyun by taking Google’s Android software and making changes to it.

via Google Objects to Acer-Alibaba Phone – WSJ.com.

After Acer postponed the phone’s launch this week, Alibaba issued a statement saying Google had told Acer that it would “terminate its Android-related cooperation and other technology licensing” if the phone was launched. An Acer official confirmed that Google had expressed concerns about the device.

Apple-Samsung Jury May Have Leaned on Engineer, Patent Holder

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Jurors who zipped through more than 600 questions in three days to arrive at their verdict in the intellectual-property battle between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) had as their leader an engineer with a patent to his name.

via Apple-Samsung Jury May Have Leaned on Engineer, Patent Holder – Bloomberg.

A nice summation of lots of links from all around the blogoshere can be found on Groklaw here.  Here’s a small tidbit from that summation:

Professor Michael Risch points out an even worse inconsistency:

How did the Galaxy Tab escape design patent infringement? This was the only device to be preliminarily enjoined (on appeal no less), and yet it was the one of the few devices to be spared the sledgehammer. And, by the way, it looks an awful lot like an iPad. Yet the Epic 4G, a phone I own (uh oh, Apple’s coming after me) — which has a slide out keyboard, a curved top and bottom, 4 buttons on the bottom, the word Samsung printed across the top, buttons in different places (and I know this because I look in all the wrong places on my wife’s iTouch), a differently shaped speaker, a differently placed camera, etc. — that device infringes the iPhone design patents….

Relatedly, the ability to get a design patent on a user interface implies that design patent law is broken. This, to me, is the Supreme Court issue in this case. We can dicker about the “facts” of point 2, but whether you can stop all people from having square icons in rows of 4 with a dock is something that I thought we settled in Lotus v. Borland 15 years ago. I commend Apple for finding a way around basic UI law, but this type of ruling cannot stand.

Question for TN 78th candidates: Internet access

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You can imagine the lasting economic damage that would have been incurred if similar legislation had prevented CEMC from borrowing to roll out electricity in the 1940′s. This is a textbook case of rent-seeking behavior on the part of private ISP’s and regulatory capture on the part of the legislature, and was no doubt passed based both on some mixture of ideology unrestrained by real-world results, and private ISP’s increasing their political donations that year by a factor of 100 (as Upton Sinclair bitterly mused, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”)

via Question for TN 78th candidates: Internet access | Mathew Binkley’s Blog.

He also has an interesting comment on slashdot.