Monday, August 3, 2015
Can the FTC ban digital goods? Brent Kendall, writing at The Wall Street Journal: The current case is about patents, but the ITC also can take action against goods that infringe copyrights, an issue important to Hollywood and other rights holders. They are eyeing the ITC as a new venue for …Friday, February 6, 2015
How the DMCA criminalized DIY farm equipment repairKyle Wiens, writing at Wired: Manufacturers have every legal right to put a password or an encryption over the tECU. Owners, on the other hand, don’t have the legal right to break the digital lock over their own equipment. The Digital Millennium …Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The image above is the first screen you see when you open Popcorn Time. The app, available on Mac, Windows and Linux, streams movies from the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent. The technology is similar to what old school music swapping service Napster used from about 1999 to 2001, …Saturday, February 22, 2014
Disgraced Scientist Granted U.S. Patent for Work Found to be FraudulentIt’s hard to believe this patent should ever have been approved by a patent examiner acting in good faith, especially considering the criminal convictions standing in stark contradiction of the purported “inventor’s” affidavit of …Monday, February 17, 2014
CrossFit sends trademark takedown demand The lesson here: the Digital Millennium COPYRIGHT Act contains no enforcement mechanism for TRADEMARK rights.Sunday, February 16, 2014
What is Intellectual Property Law?It’s not surprising that more scholarship self-identifying as IP-focused is about patents. After all, they drive much of commerce and innovation (and arguably the problems with the two) in the industrial and technology sectors. It’s worth noting though that, unlike …Sunday, April 7, 2013
Select YouTube partners exempt from fair use policyYouTube’s well within their rights to refuse to leave a video up, or to re-post it after fair use has been reasonably well-defended. But it’s another reminder that when stuff is free for consumers, the interests of the producers providing the …Wednesday, April 3, 2013
The trolls are now trolling themselvesThis great post by Seattle attorney John Whitaker sums up the state of affairs in the absurd debacle that is Prenda Law’s trainwreck porn-infringement trolling.Monday, April 1, 2013
2nd Circuit: Aereo streaming of individual over-the-air TV feeds via internet doesn’t violate copyright lawThe Second Circuit has held in WNET v Aereo (PDF) that sending a unique stream of over-the-air TV signal to customers via the internet isn’t a copyright violation. Aereo assign each of …Monday, March 25, 2013
OUYA and EmulationDarrell Etherington, reporting at TechCrunch: OUYA forum admin and owner Ed Krassenstein said in a post on his site that EMUya, a NES emulator, has been submitted to OUYA for review and should definitely be available at launch, and a couple of SNES emulation options are confirmed, …Friday, March 15, 2013
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behaviorEarlier this week I mentioned that the EFF was going to represent a couple of anti-trolling websites in a case brought by porno copyright troll Prenda Law. The Ars Technica article by Megan Geuss is well-written and really conveys the absurdity …Tuesday, March 12, 2013
EFF will represent targets of copyright troll Prenda LawCopyright trolls sue lots of people to extract settlements from those who can’t afford to litigate in the face of potentially massive statutory damages. Their claims are often facially lacking in merit and instead leverage intimidation and …Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Apple store trade dressI wonder if there are any retail stores out there that have looked like Apple stores since before Apple stores, and before this trademark was granted earlier this month. I don’t mean knock-off stores, though. I’m thinking make-up shops, art galleries, and other entities that …Thursday, November 22, 2012
USPTO director defends software patentsDirector of the United States Patent and Trademark Office David Kappos, quoted by Timothy B. Lee at Ars Technica: In a system like ours in which innovation is happening faster than people can keep up, it cannot be said that the patent system is broken. Of …Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Invention as ArtThis is a great article on patent drawings and models, as selected for Co.Design by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan.Friday, October 12, 2012
Deli sues feds for refusing to trademark its ‘Philadelphia’s Cheesesteak’Michael Hinkelman, writing at the Philadelphia Daily News: Campo’s claims in its civil complaint that its sandwich is “so superlative” and “gloriously gluttonous” that only it could be called “Philadelphia’s …