patent

The music industry and Microsoft: A sign of bad things to come?

The Register ponders the question, "Why does the music industry make licensing its catalogs so cost prohibitive?"

For years, the Big Five (now Four) have preferred to litigate rather than license their catalogues, but we were told that was no longer the case.

"We have to license... and think like the publishers," said UMG's digital chief Larry Kenswil back in January, setting the tone for the year.

The problem is that the music industry sets its license fees so high that its licensees are doomed to fail, notes Michael Robertson (in "Imeem gets license and death sentence"). Could this be Microsoft's game plan in its patent initiative? Put on the guise of cooperating while pricing its competition into oblivion?… Read more

Update on the Sun/NetApp ZFS patent litigation

I received this update from Sun Microsystems on Tuesday on the ongoing ZFS patent litigation with NetApp. While colored by its source, the news seems positive for Sun (and, given the importance of ZFS, for the open-source development community). Sun has succeeded in getting the venue changed to California and it appears that its public request for examples of prior art have yielded fruit.

What follows was sent to me by Sun:

As of Friday, December 14, Sun has filed reexamination requests for three Network Appliance patents as part of its response to a lawsuit initially filed by Network Appliance against Sun on September 5, 2007. This follows the agreement last month with Network Appliance to transfer Network Appliance's lawsuit from Texas and litigate it along with the case Sun filed in California. The motion to transfer was filed on November 21 and the cases are now assigned to a mutually agreed upon judge. With each company being headquartered in northern California and the majority of inventors and innovation in dispute originating in California, it makes sense for this case to be litigated in this jurisdiction. We are pleased that Network Appliance agreed to Sun's request and retracted its imprudent choice of venue for this litigation.… Read more

Vonage in legal tussle with Nortel

Just when you thought its legal troubles were over, Vonage gets involved in another legal squabble with telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks.

On Friday, Nortel filed a lawsuit against Vonage claiming that the voice provider has violated nine patents related to its Internet phone service, including features such as 911 and 411 calling and click to call.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, comes in response to a suit Vonage is pursuing against Nortel. In 2004, a company called Digital Packet Licensing sued Nortel for infringing on three of its patents. Vonage acquired Digital … Read more

Gene-sequencing guru creates new life forms, patent issues

J. Craig Venter, the rock-star bad boy of genetics research, is patenting new life forms. Rather, he's patenting certain manufactured genetic sequences, which is a fuzzy legal area to begin with. But he and his team are also defining their patents on genetic-engineering processes so broadly that he's being compared to Bill Gates.

It seems they're attempting to claim intellectual property rights for an entire industry's worth of methodology. This would be akin to Yours Truly trying to patent the use of the English language. So the genetics research world is fighting back, claiming Ventner and … Read more

While we're on the subject of patent covenants not to sue...

Novell has taken its share of heat for its Microsoft lovefest that sought to privilege SUSE Linux as patent-protected while everyone else's Linux was ripe for a lawsuit...or 20.

But Novell isn't the only one to have entered into this kind of exclusionary patent covenant with Microsoft, as news from Ars Technica shows. Sun, too, has such an agreement with Microsoft, but it covers StarOffice, not Linux, and leaves users of OpenOffice to sweat.… Read more

Nokia patent reveals 8-megapixel N-series slider

You know the drill. Patents get dug up first with rumors and blurry product shots trailing behind. And before long the manufacturer bares it all with an official announcement.

One of the more recent applications discovered by Unwired View reveals a Nokia N-series slider with an 8-megapixel camera that resembles the N93. The difference is it's not just an incomprehensible schematic drawing that no one understands, but actual mockups of the handset. Perhaps this time, the future may come earlier than expected.

(Source: Crave Asia)

Apple, AT&T sued over iPhone's visual voice mail

Apple has been sued for patent infringement over the iPhone's visual voice mail feature.

Klausner Technologies announced Monday that it has filed suit against the company in everyone's favorite rocket docket, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Klauser is claiming that the visual voice mail feature infringes on two patents that are said to cover the iPhone's method of selectively listening to voice mail messages rather than in the order in which they were received.

Unlike the other inane iPhone lawsuits filed since the device made its debut in June, Apple might … Read more

A convict behind LANCOR's patent lawsuit against OLPC's

The Boston Globe is reporting that LANCOR, the Nigerian-owned company that has filed suit against the One Laptop Per Child project for patent infringement, is actually helmed by a man convicted of bank fraud. He spent a year in prison. Apparently not much has changed:

OLPC also has been hit by a patent-infringement lawsuit in Nigeria filed by Lagos Analysis Corp. of Natick. The suit claims the foundation stole the company's keyboard design. Negroponte said the lawsuit is without merit, because OLPC uses a keyboard programming technique developed in 1996, long before the Nigerian patent was filed.

The founder … Read more

Episode 614: CyberCommand is go

Where are all of those donated XO laptops going?

Given all the interest around One Laptop Per Child's "Give One Get One" program, I've been wondering just where all those laptops that are being donated are actually going.

For those who have been in the dark, the organization is trying to boost its low-cost laptop program through a promotion in which people in the U.S. can pay $399 to donate one of the rugged Linux laptops and also get one for themselves. The program's terms and conditions say little, other than that it will go to a child in a country on the … Read more