Thank goodness for Monster Cable. No, really. I mean, every cause needs a poster child, right? And the poster child for the excess of ownership in this country is, without a doubt, Monster Cable, which has sued everyone from a blue jeans maker to a mini-golf operator to the Boston Red Sox and their attempts [...]
Got an interesting press release today: the National Consumers League surveyed people about their DVD habits and desires, and found that nearly everyone who responded to the survey thought backing up a DVD to a computer ought to be an inherent and obvious right. From the release:
According to the survey, 90 percent (and 93 [...]
Discovery Communications (yes, that Discovery) has filed a lawsuit against Amazon over the Kindle and Kindle 2, alleging patent infringement. They cite a patent granted in 2007 (though it sounds like it was in the works as early as the 1990s, per Paid Content), which covers all sorts of alternative delivery methods for digital goods [...]
If you work in any sort of media at all (or you’re a small winery in the Olympic peninsula), you’re well aware that the Olympics Committees of the world are unbelievably rabid enforcers of trademarks related to the Games. But now, “trademarks related to the Games” is starting to include national anthems, numbers, and common [...]
Ok, here’s the deal. Everyone needs to stop paying any royalties on “Happy Birthday,” wait to get sued by Warner Music, and when they come after one of you, start a giant class-action lawsuit based on the findings of one Robert Brauneis of the George Washington University law school. Those findings, in a nutshell? [...]
As reported by Wired News, Los Angeles County has determined that intellectual property infringement “substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county’s citizens, its businesses and its [...]
On Thursday, Tennessee became perhaps the first state in the nation to adopt legislation aimed at forcing universities to police their own networks for pirated media. The Tennessee legislation mandates, according to this News.com article:
“any higher education institution in the state, whether public or private, to develop and enforce a policy that prohibits its students, [...]
Call this a “Bob Loblaw law flaw.” A respected law professor and intellectual property scholar says According to intellectual property scholar John Duffy, a well-respected professor at George Washington University Law School, billions of dollars of patent decisions made in the last eight years might have been made by patent appeals judges who were unconstitutionally [...]
Everyone’s atwitter (no, literally, I saw it from like three people on Twitter) about the absolutely fabulous response from Kurt Denke, president of Blue Jeans Cable, to a cease-and-desist order from legendarily litigious Monster Cable. I urge you to read it in its entirety, as the writing, the sheer scope of his demands, and the [...]
According to TorrentFreak, Neil Berkett, incoming CEO of Virgin Media, says he’ll happily slow down the Internet traffic of any media provider who doesn’t pay him a tidy little premium. In fact, he told the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine that if the BBC and and other public broadcasters don’t pay up for [...]