News picks
Articles from other sources; copy title, first paragraph, and put URL in body of post.
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Gemstar, currently partly owned by the Murdoch-run media business News Corporation (though apparently not for much longer), has announced initiation of patent litigation proceedings against Virgin Media in the English High Court. Gemstar allege that Virgin Media is infringing three of their European patents: EP0969662, EP1377049, and EP1613066.
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by:  zoobab 1201266997|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The IPKat notes that the Slovenian Presidency is in favour of consensus-based solutions. He hopes that the Presidency will appreciate something that has often eluded its predecessors: consensus isn't something that happens overnight, particularly in fields of IP protection in which the interests of the various sides involved are in conflict with one another and where what is agreeable to one industrial sector may not be agreeable to another (in other words, for example, the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries may find their point of consensus as between IP owners, their competitors, industry regulators and consumers, but it might be a different point of consensus to that struck within the electronics, engineering or other industries).
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For his part, Mr Stubb says he is not out to demonise lobbyists, whose activities have come to light recently during the ferocious lobbying on legislation that took place during the development of the chemicals, services and software patent laws.
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by: zoobab 1201259019|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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According to this cached page from 3 years ago, Cooper was on the Board of Directors of TechSearch before it was vastly sold to Acacia. He had over 43 patents as of that time. Cooper's company submitted an amicus brief in the eBay case re injunctions. His attorneys explained that Cooper could not compete against foreign copyists, "and thus turned to licensing and patent enforcement instead of manufacturing." Cooper recently told the Wall Street Journal that the Supreme Court's decisions have made his enforcement program harder, due to the difficulty of getting injunctions.
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As alleged in the complaint, N-Data obtained the patents knowing about National’s prior commitment and after the industry became committed to the standard, but N-Data has refused to comply with that commitment and instead has demanded royalties far in excess of that commitment.
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by: zoobab 1201188555|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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"I am proud to have been the proposer of an amendment in July 2005 which scrapped the proposal for an EU software patent. What worried me then, and still does, was the response from an EU Commission official at the time. I quote, "Colleagues, we are disappointed, WE will just have to bring this back before a more acquiescent Parliament"
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by: zoobab 1201091044|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Yahoo has filed a patent for 'smart' drag and drop. From the article: 'A computer-implemented method for manipulating objects in a user interface, comprising: providing the user interface including a first interface object operable to be selected and moved within the user interface; and in response to selection and movement of the first interface object in the user interface, presenting at least one additional interface object in the user interface in proximity of the first interface object, each additional interface object representing a drop target with which the first interface object may be associated.'
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by: zoobab 1201044315|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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It's been common knowledge that, generally, as a subject becomes more esoteric, the public relies more greatly on mainstream press coverage to formulate opinions. The recent media coverage of the U.S. patent system has caught the attention of scholars, practitioners and entrepreneurs, where commentators have increasingly referenced media coverage that casts the patent system in a negative light (e.g., "bad" patents, opportunistic litigation, etc.). While some suggest that the coverage accurately reflects fundamental systemic problems, others believe that some media accounts are inaccurate, or at least overstate problems in the system.
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by: zoobab 1200931989|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Q. When is a program not a program? A. When it is all the works ever licensed under GPLv3. Via the Software Freedom Law Center comes news that the Free Software Foundation has published a document clarifying its position on patent litigation related to the GPLv3 - specifically what constitutes a program under the GPLv3 for the purposes of patent infringement claims. [...] “Since software patents pose an unjust threat to all software developers, all software distributors, and all software users, we would abolish them if we could. Indeed, we campaign to do so. But we think it would have been self-defeating to make the license conditions for any one GPL-covered program go so far as to require a promise to never attack any GPL-covered program.”
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by: zoobab 1200931876|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The IPjur blog reports that Pieter Hintjens has stood down as the president of the FFII to be replaced by Spaniard Alberto Barrionuevo. And it does not look like it was an entirely happy handover. For those of you not familiar with the FFII, it has been the most prominent and effective campaigning organisation against software patents in Europe. Under Hintjens’ presidency it had also widened the scope of its remit somewhat to question many of the basic assumptions underpinning the patent system in Europe and has especially trained its eye on what it sees as an undemocratic and unaccountable EPO, as well as the EPLA.
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by: zoobab 1200925941|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Patent lawsuits have long been used as a competitive weapon in many industries. Telecom is now getting their fair share. Vonage suffered a series of patent lawsuits from competitors last year, and now Verizon is suing Cox Communications on similar grounds. Four of the same patents, which focus on technology used to complete IP calls, used as a suit basis against Vonage are also the focus of the Verizon suit against Cox. Verizon filed suit in the Eastern District Court of Virginia on January 11 alleging that Cox infringed on a total of eight patents.
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by: zoobab 1200922786|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Amberwave is an R&D firm focused on advanced materials development for high technology applications. Patents are its lifeblood; which is why Amberwave is fighting to retain semblance of sanity in the patent arena. In our continuing series on "Heroes of the Patent Wars," an Amberwave snapshot.
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by: zoobab 1200922733|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The impetus for a change in law is the concern, particularly by large technology companies, that they are being harassed by illegitimate patent owners trying to make a buck from a legal settlement. These companies include many large hardware companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel Corp. [...] “We want to discourage patent trolls,” says Gary Fazzino, vice president, government affairs at Hewlett-Packard Company.
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AmberWave is one of the founders of the Innovation Alliance, a lobbying group mostly made up of small tech companies (although Qualcomm is also a founder) that wants to stop the passage of a federal overhaul of the patent system. This puts them up against tech giants such as Microsoft, which supports the federal Patent Reform Bill that the Innovation Alliance opposes. The bill has been approved by the U.S. House and is coming up for a U.S. Senate vote.
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by: zoobab 1200922444|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Marks & Clerk, a patent attorneys firm, is organizing a pro-software patent conference "Software Patents - What IT Practitioners Need To Know" in London next 31st January. From the lawyers point of view: "Many American businesses are adept at using software patents to their advantage".
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by: zoobab 1200922015|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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This invention is about the method to boot Linux OS on removable storage which is attached to the USB port of PC. It is implemented in a way that firstly, setup Linux OS in the removable storage; then enter BIOS of the PC, to change the boot sequence to USB-HDD or USB-ZIP first; now boot the system, so user can choose the Linux version, and Linux kernel with initrd will be loaded by bootloader from the removable storage to PC memory; then boot the Linux kernel, initialize system and run tasks; mount filesystem of initrd, then switch to root filesystem on the removable storage; [...]
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by: zoobab 1200869483|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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We are living in a crazy world at least I have one proof collected from the semantic-web mailing list. Someone is making an auction on some patents he filled around 1997 about some concepts of the semantic web. I don't want to dig into those patents and the potential prior art. I was just surprise that the business of patent trolling is going one step forward by proposing an auction platform to sell "intellectual capital" (as stated on the Ocean Tomo website.) and creating fear about a potential bidder having bad intentions. But if you want to join the auction, you have to pay a "small" fee to be a bidder. But maybe everything is just a bad joke (yes the gala dinner will be the 1st April ;-) but this looks so real…
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by: zoobab 1200869385|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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The first morning saw heated debate between the panel and the audience, specially after the Communications Minister defended software patents as a way of helping young entrepreneurs get financial support for their projects. Some speakers from the floor demanded better access infrastructure for rural areas, and a majority demanded stronger commitment from the government. [...] In the afternoon, one of the most entertaining presentations took us on a tour of gnuLinEx, the Extremenian Debian-based distro, with the bonus of a hotel-made anti-patent video (in Spanish).
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by: zoobab 1200869284|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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EU governments on 22 November approved the main elements of a pan-European patent litigation system (IPW, European Policy, 23 November 2007). The proposal for such a system has been under discussion for several years but stalled after it was reintroduced in 2006.
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by: zoobab 1200712969|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover |
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Software patents continue to chill adoption of innovations. Fight the corresponding legislation at every opportunity.
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