intellectual property

Obama faces piracy, privacy tests in his second term

The most controversial technology topics in President Obama's second term are likely to be two political flashpoints: piracy and privacy.

When Internet activists allied with an hastily assembled coalition of Silicon Valley companies blocked votes on a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright bills early this year, they didn't end efforts to slap stiffer anti-piracy sanctions on the Internet. They merely postponed the fight.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are dead, of course. Those names have become radioactive on Capitol Hill, thanks to a broad public outcry that involved millions of Internet users and actually … Read more

CNET Tech Voters' Guide 2012: Romney vs. Obama on the issues

Technology topics can mark a rare bipartisan area of political agreement: Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama say they would make cybersecurity a priority, and both like to talk up government funding of basic research.

If you look a bit more closely, however, differences emerge. They're perhaps most marked over federal regulation, where the two major parties have long-standing disagreements, but also exist on topics like WikiLeaks, copyright legislation, and whether to levy a new tax on broadband providers.

Keep reading for CNET's 2012 Tech Voters' Guide, in which we highlight where the four candidates -- we've … Read more

Apple's mea culpa: U.K. site posts apology, new statement

Apple has reissued and updated its Samsung "apology" statement on its British Web site after a U.K. Court of Appeal found it to be "untrue" and "incorrect."

It comes off weeks of back and forth from the U.K. courts after Samsung scored a rare legal win over Apple, after the iPhone and iPad maker lost an iPad design patent suit it brought to the British court against rival tablet maker Samsung.

On October 18, U.K. High Court Judge Colin Birss originally ruled that Apple must run notices on its U.K. … Read more

Apple facing FaceTime patent suit

Apple is the latest company to feel the patent infringement pinch from a firm called Intercarrier Communications.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, contends that Apple's FaceTime and Messages apps violate ICC's Patent No. 6,985,748.

The patent in question refers to an "inter-carrier messaging service providing phone number only experience" and describes a method to send messages between different carriers using just a phone number.

ICC has been keeping the patent courts busy lately, according to PatentlyApple. In just the past five days, the company has … Read more

MPAA: No MegaUpload data access without safeguards

The Motion Picture Association of America told a federal judge in Virginia today that any decision to allow users of the embattled file locker to access their own files risks "compound[ing] the massive infringing conduct already at issue in this criminal litigation" unless proper safeguards are taken to prevent the further dissemination of illegally copied material. (See the MPAA's brief embedded below.)

MegaUpload's servers with approximately 25 petabytes of data are currently unplugged, offline, and in storage at Dulles, Va.-based Carpathia Hosting.

When an FBI raid took down MegaUpload's U.S.-based servers … Read more

Will Supreme Court protect your right to resell your own stuff?

The U.S. Supreme Court spent this morning wrestling with an obscure section of copyright law that could curb listings of used DVDs, CDs, books, and even GPS devices through marketplaces including eBay and Amazon.com.

Large copyright holders -- including software companies, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America -- have urged the court to limit Americans' right to resell legally purchased products manufactured outside the United States.

Many of the justices seemed skeptical. Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the copyright holders' reading of the law would invoke a parade of "horribles,&… Read more

John Mellencamp: Congress must target search engines

John Mellencamp, the rock musician turned political activist who jointly launched the Farm Aid concert series, has found a new cause: attacking Internet copyright law.

Mellencamp says that U.S. copyright law should be rewritten to compel Google and other search engines to police Web pages they index -- that number in the billions -- and delete links to infringing Web sites.

The musician, once known as John Cougar Mellencamp, wrote in an op-ed yesterday that:

What's happening is your search engine leads you to an illegal downloading site where you can download -- you name the artist -- … Read more

Apple wins boatload of patents

Apple is having a busy week, not just with its iPad Mini event, but with a slew of new patent wins.

The company recorded 34 patent awards from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today, as counted by Patently Apple.

One patent, dubbed "Content abstraction presentation along a multidimensional path," ventures into technical territory, as the name alone implies. But the patent apparently ties into Apple TV by talking about digital video and audio players that can play stored content, browse recorded content, and save different types of content chosen by the user.

"These various functions … Read more

Apple ordered by U.S. court to reveal iPhone profit margins

Apple won its recent U.S. patent case against Samsung, but the company may have to pay a price by revealing key profit details about the iPhone.

Judge Lucy Koh has ordered Apple to go public with information about its sales, earnings, and profit margins on the iPhone. As a corporation, Apple does report unit sales on its various products each quarter. But it stops short of divulging how much profit it makes on each iPhone.

Apple has maintained that revealing such information would benefit its competitors. But apparently Koh didn't buy that argument.

"Apple has not established … Read more

Patent activists: Let's light up Intellectual Ventures' IP portfolio

One of Intellectual Ventures' biggest secrets is under attack.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based patent firm and invention lab, co-founded in 2000 by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myrhvold, owns more than 40,000 patents or pending patents and keeps a tight lid on its collection. So tight, in fact, that you can't see it unless you partner with the company and sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The end result can be that companies with products that might infringe on one of those patents, or that simply want to license one of IV's patents, don't exactly know what they're … Read more