intellectual property

The European Union's ombudsman has criticized the antitrust regulator in a recent case against Intel, saying the regulator did not include evidence that was potentially exculpatory for the chipmaker, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

In May, Intel was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) for engaging in, according to the Commission, illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips based on the x86 architecture--the design that both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices use in their microprocessors.

"Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep … Read more

A letter from The Securities and Exchange Commission to Intel is not likely to inspire a future episode of "24."

The June 4, 2009 letter (originally marked "confidential") to Intel from the SEC states: "We are aware of a May 2008 news report that PCs in Cuba contain your Celeron processors. Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are identified by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism, and are subject to U.S. economic sanctions and export controls."

The letter continues. "We note that your Form 10-K does not include disclosure regarding contacts … Read more

Faced with issues ranging from online ads to copyright laws, Google spent $950,000 lobbying Washington in the second quarter, according to a federal government database.

The amount compares with the $880,000 that Google spent on lobbying in the first quarter--and the $2.84 million it spent for all of 2008.

Among the issues that Google lobbied on: intellectual property, copyright related to the Google Book Search settlement, and privacy and competition surrounding online advertising.

Google has been under fire from the Justice Department over the company's settlement of a lawsuit with book publishers on digital rights issues.… Read more

European Union regulators want publishers and authors to weigh in on copyright issues with Google's book scanning and book search project, according to the Associated Press.

European Commission officials will meet with copyright holders on September 7 to discuss the search giant's $125 million proposed settlement with U.S. publishers and authors granting Google the right to digitize and publish books that are out of print but still protected by copyright law. The court overseeing the settlement has given authors a September 4 deadline to opt out individually if they don't not wish to participate. Google has … Read more

According to Nvidia on Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has initially rejected an additional eight Rambus claims that Nvidia challenged.

The additional eight claims are based on two patents that Rambus has asserted against Nvidia in litigation. This follows the USPTO's rejection last month of 41 other claims in seven patents that Rambus had asserted, Nvidia said.

Rambus filed patent claims against Nvidia in an International Trade Commission action in November. The ITC litigation involves memory controllers--which handle communications between memory chips and other silicon--related to graphics processors.

"We are pleased that the USPTO decided … Read more

"How do I calculate the size of meatballs?" That was the title of one of the seminal Intel science projects that late-night comedian Conan O'Brien covered in a segment last night on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

O'Brien was at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, billed as the world's largest pre-college science fair. Intel is one of the sponsors of the "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," which launched recently with the retirement (from that show) of Jay Leno.

"Even though Intel is one of the world'… Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium is opening the possibility of pushing back against an Apple patent on software updates that Apple had refused to license royalty-free for use in a proposed Web standard.

The W3C announced June 12 that it's seeking prior art relating to Apple's patent No. 5,764,992--in other words, examples of the patent's technology in use that predate the patent itself. The patent, which Apple applied for in 1995 and was granted in 1998, involves this scenario: "a software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version … Read more

Google, the company best equipped and most motivated to digitize the world's books, wants to offer the world an online Library of Alexandria. The decisions of the Justice Department, authors, book publishers, a federal judge, and Google itself likely will determine whether the company actually does.

Nobody in recent years has accused Google of lacking ambition, but its Google Book Search project is certainly among the company's top projects when it comes to chutzpah. That's not just because of the technical and financial hurdles of scanning, indexing, and displaying online millions of books, it's also because of the tangled intellectual property and legal concerns involved in the controversial project.

After revealing the book-search project in 2003, Google drew copyright infringement lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, but an October 2008 proposed settlement, now under review by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, has converted those groups from adversaries to allies.

The settlement, if approved, could neatly cut a Gordian knot of copyright entanglements though setting Google back $125 million. That's because it would enable Google not only to display books that are out of copyright and those that are in print by cooperating publishers, as it does today, but also those from the vast collection of in-copyright brooks that are out of print--even when those holding rights to those books didn't specifically agree to Google's plan.

The complicated proposed settlement invoked the wrath of some authors concerned it would grant Google monopolistic power over online publishing, and the court extended the deadline for authors to choose whether to opt out of the settlement from May to September. Then the other shoe dropped this month: the Justice Department signaled serious antitrust scrutiny by issuing subpoena-like civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to check into the matter.

AIG and General Motors apparently are too big to fail. But the way the opposition to Google Book Search is shaping up, it looks like some believe Google is too big to succeed. … Read more

Rambus has asked the International Trade Commission to terminate an investigation of Nvidia relating to four patents as part of a November 2008 complaint.

Rambus provides high-speed memory interface technology, though in recent years the company has become better-known for intellectual property litigation practices. Rambus has sued many of the world's largest chip manufacturers.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based company conceded before the ITC that Nvidia products do not infringe on its four patents, and also asked for termination of several claims from a fifth patent in the ITC action, according to an Nvidia statement.

"We are pleased … Read more