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? [...]
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 [...]
It appears that Wikileaks, most recently in the news after a Swiss bank got it briefly shut down for revealing “trade secrets,” is now drawing the copyright-related ire of the Church of Scientology. Wikileaks says it is “developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,” and says it hopes the risks of [...]
What happens when you don’t post quite as regularly as you should? You get a little backed up. So, without further ado, a collection of happenings in the COO world.
In response to increasing pressure on ISPs to commence crackdown on file-sharing, stat, Charles Dunstone, head of Carphone Warehouse, tells the BBC it is not his [...]
As we’re agitating for greater and greater freedom of digital media, less restrictive digital rights management, and the arrival of sanity in the patent- and trademark-granting universe, I thought this Times editorial by Billy Bragg and this agreement by Nicholas Carr were worth noting. For background, Bragg argues that Bebo.com founder Michael Birch, who just [...]
… should it really be magenta? Thanks to Philip for tipping me off to the fact that Deutsche Telekom has evidently claimed trademark rights to the color magenta, and is, in fact, attempting to force a Dutch firm called Compello to change its corporate logo due to the color infringement.
And in a sign that the [...]
It looks like the mystery of TiVo locking down HBO’s John Adams miniseries has been solved–and it’s not a happy resolution. Dean writes:
I looked at the TiVo website that was displayed on my TV last night, and found this. I was watching the broadcast on a TiVo HD on a HBO HD channel, with [...]
UPDATE: Original post is now below; Dean emailed back to say, “HBO did in fact broadcast the series John Adams with the same TiVo copy protection that I emailed you about earlier.” This is the first instance I know of in which TiVo is allowing copy protection restrictions to be applied on non-VOD or pay-per-view [...]
Ars has an excellent story today on the growing problem of patents on video game mechanics. The story notes that Sega, for example, “has a lock on the idea of driving a car around a city with an arrow pointing towards the next destination,” and in fact sued Fox Entertainment, EA, and Radical Games when [...]