intellectual property

Defense attorneys representing the operators of the Pirate Bay made their final case Tuesday for the legitimacy of the site, as the Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm came to a close.

Prosecutors have accused the defendants of making available copyrighted material in violation of the law, and in their closing arguments on Monday, said each of the four defendants should be sentenced to a year in prison, according to news reports.

Defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and Carl Lundstorm have argued that Pirate Bay does not host infringing content on its servers, but merely acts as … Read more

WASHINGTON--Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress on Tuesday introduced a patent reform bill (PDF) that aims to pick up where previous patent reform efforts left off.

The controversial provisions of the legislation will be subject to serious debate and may very well be altered before the bill is passed, the bill's co-sponsors said Tuesday. Nevertheless, they said, they are confident the legislation--some form of which has gone before Congress three times over the last five years--will finally pass this year.

"This is the Congress and this is the year bipartisan patent reform should be enacted," said Senate … Read more

Psion Teklogix has answered Intel's claims regarding the chipmaker's right to use the term "Netbook." The Canadian company claims that Intel is being "unjustly enriched" by unauthorized use of the trademark.

Last week, Intel filed for a declaratory judgment against Psion Teklogix, claiming that the the term "netbook" is a "widely used generic term that describes a class of affordable computing devices, much like the term 'notebook' or 'ultra-mobile PC,'" Intel said in a statement last week.

Not surprisingly, Psion had a firm response: "Intel has acted willfully and … Read more

Members of the U.S. Congress plan to introduce a pair of patent reform bills on Tuesday, lending stronger support to a complicated political topic that has failed to win congressional approval in previous years.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and former chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), along with House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and ranking minority member Lamar Smith (R-Texas), will discuss the reforms they see as necessary at a Capitol Hill press conference Tuesday.

The Patent Reform Act of 2007, a bill that would have introduced sweeping changes to the U.S. patent system, passed in the House … Read more

One of the most difficult tasks for companies that sell copyrighted music, movies, or computer software is estimating how much money they lose due to piracy. So they have been known to--how to put this delicately?--exaggerate.

That's the topic that The Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm explored on Wednesday when John Kennedy, the chief executive of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, testified that every MP3 file that is swapped online represents a lost sale. The IFPI is the Recording Industry Association of America's international affiliate.

Kennedy answered "Yes" to Pirate Bay defense attorneys … Read more

Intel has filed for a declaratory judgment against Psion Teklogix in order to continue using the term "Netbook" generically. The legal filing also revealed, as a separate matter, that Google would prohibit search advertisements that include the term "netbook."

What's the difference between a Netbook and a notebook? More than the design, according to Psion Teklogix.

Psion "purports to be the owner of U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2404976 issued on November 21, 2000 for the mark Netbook for use in connection with laptop computer," according to an Intel legal filing in the … Read more

On the first day of the long-awaited criminal trial involving The Pirate Bay file-sharing site, Swedish prosecutors unexpectedly dropped half of the charges against the site's operators.

Prosecutors previously accused the defendants, who have insisted that their Web site is legal under Swedish law, of assisting in the distribution of copyrighted material. The amended charges focus on the act of making the material available.

This represents a preliminary win for defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and Carl Lundstorm, who have argued that no infringing content is located on their servers. Instead, The Pirate Bay acts … Read more

A rodeo association has agreed to pay $25,000 to an animal welfare group to settle a lawsuit over the improper removal of videos from YouTube that showed roped calves being dragged off to die and tasers being used on tame horses to get them to buck.

In December 2007, YouTube removed dozens of rodeo videos after getting takedown notices from the Colorado-based Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association that claimed copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The group that posted them, Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the rodeo group last summer. … Read more

WASHINGTON--With a new administration and a Democratic Congress, now is the time to overhaul copyright law, advocates for reform said Wednesday--but the complex nature of the issue makes copyright legislation nearly as unrealistic as ever.

Representatives of songwriters and the recording industry faced off against open Internet advocates at the Future of Music Coalition's Policy Day here in Washington, demonstrating the entrenched divisions that remain within Democratic constituencies over copyright issues.

While the public interest group Public Knowledge disputed the meaning of Net neutrality with the Recording Industry Association of America, the Songwriters Guild of America butted heads with … Read more