intellectual property

Samsung has filed a lawsuit against LG Display in an effort to convince the court that seven of LG's OLED displays don't hold water.

Filed with an intellectual property tribunal in Korea, the suit is seeking to invalidate LG's patents on the grounds that they "lack innovation," according to the Yonhap News agency.

This is just the latest salvo in the ongoing legal turmoil between the two companies.

In September, LG Display filed suit against Samsung, claiming violation of the seven (organic light-emitting diode) patents in question. The lawsuit alleges that Samsung violated the design of LG's OLED panels, driver circuitry, and device design, … Read more

In an bizarre policy flip-flop, a group of more than 160 House Republicans appeared to endorse extensive digital copyright reform on Friday, then disavowed its position the next day.

The House Republican Study Committee, an influential collection of conservatives that tends to pull the House leadership to the right, published a set of recommendations that could have been penned by Larry Lessig and the Electronic Frontier Foundation: expanded fair use rights, lower penalties for "willful" infringement, and dramatically abbreviated copyright terms.

That seemed to be more evidence that Republicans had become copyright skeptics, especially since most of the … Read more

Some of Apple and Samsung's latest devices have been given the go-ahead to be included in an ongoing lawsuit between the two tech giants.

In an order yesterday, U.S. magistrate judge Paul Grewal granted motions from both companies that sought to add devices launched after a legal cutoff in mid-June.

That shortlist includes Apple's iPhone 5, which debuted in September, Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1, the U.S. model of the Galaxy S3, and, notably, Google's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS in conjunction with the Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

The new devices add to an … Read more

NEW YORK CITY -- Verizon and Time Warner Cable said today they won't pull the plug on customers accused of piracy through a forthcoming "six strikes" program.

Link Hoewing, Verizon's vice president, and Fernando Laguarda, Time Warner Cable's vice president, said at a forum organized by the Internet Society that after they repeatedly inform customers that that their activities appear to violate copyright law, the companies' obligation is fulfilled -- and no account termination will take place.

That could reduce some of the privacy and due process concerns about the Center for Copyright Information, a … Read more

Google is trying to convince the courts to throw out a book-scanning lawsuit filed against it by the Authors Guild.

In a brief submitted to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday, Google argued that a suit filed on behalf of all authors whose books have been scanned shouldn't be allowed because most authors support the scanning.

Backing up its claim, the company yet again cited a survey that found 58 percent of the authors polled approved of Google scanning their books so the content could be searched online. A full 45 percent said they had … Read more

Intellectual Ventures, the giant patent-holding company that's become synonymous with the term "patent troll," says it has settled a contentious infringement suit with camera-maker Olympus.

The suit, filed in Sept. 2011 against Olympus and fellow camera-maker Canon, claimed the companies infringed on nine image sensor patents, the first of which was filed in 1995 and granted three years later. Intellectual Ventures, founded by ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, is still pursuing the case against Canon, as well as a similar suit, filed a month later, against Nikon.

Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed. But the deal highlights … Read more

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

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 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