Google scored a legal victory in keeping its search source code secret from Viacom, but YouTube users were not so fortunate with their privacy.
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday (PDF) that the search giant doesn't have to turn over the code to Viacom, which filed a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google in 2007.
In granting Google's motion for a protective order, U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan agreed with Google's characterization of the source code as a trade secret that can't be disclosed without risking the loss of business.
"YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation," the judge said. "A plausible showing that YouTube and Google's denials are false, and that the search function can and has been used to discriminate in favor of infringing content, should be required before disclosure of so valuable and vulnerable an asset is compelled."
The judge also denied Viacom's motion for Google to produce source code for its Video Identification Tool, which helps copyright notify Google of copyright infringement.
However, the judge granted a Viacom motion that records of every video watched by YouTube users, including their login names and IP addresses, be turned over to the entertainment giant.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the ruling a threat to YouTube users' privacy.
"The court's order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users," the EFF said in a statement.
At stake in the legal battle is a key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the 1998 law that shields Web site owners from copyright infringement involving material published by users. The "safe harbor" provision in the law can protect against infringement claims as long as copyrighted material is removed upon notification.
After the suit, YouTube launched an antipiracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.
Some people might be embarrassed if their friends found an old copy of Mr. Big's "To be with you" or Paula Abdul's "Cold hearted (snake)" stashed away in their CD collection. But not EMI. They own those songs, and they want the world to know it.
The music giant is suing social-networking site Hi5, video advertising start-up VideoEgg, and 10 unnamed defendants for allegedly infringing on the copyrights of those and hundreds of other pop throwbacks.
The lawsuit alleges that Hi5 users have uploaded and disseminated hundreds of music videos the company owns rights to. VideoEgg is on the hook because it's a former partner of Hi5, and those allegedly infringing videos were uploaded to its servers. (On May 31, VideoEgg stopped hosting videos uploaded by the public and refocused efforts on its ad network, prompting rumors that the company was on its way out.) The lawsuit doesn't say much of anything about who the 10 John Does are.
The companies had attempted to work out some kind of deal for more than a year, a source told TechCrunch, but those efforts eventually failed.
Red Hat announced on Wednesday that it has reached a settlement with Firestar Software and DataTern over a patent infringement lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed two years ago in a U.S. District Court in Texas, centered on Firestar's patent for linking object-oriented software with relational databases.
Firestar, in its lawsuit, had alleged that JBoss, which Red Hat had acquired, violated its patent with the JBoss Hibernate 3.0 object-relational mapping tool for Java. Hibernate 3.0 had an open license.
Under the settlement, whose financial terms were not disclosed, all software distributed under Red Hat's brands and predecessor versions are covered, as well as Red Hat customers that use the software. The software protects derivative works, or combination products, that use covered products from the patent claim.
"Typically, when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself," Rob Tiller, Red Hat's assistant general counsel of intellectual property, said in a statement. "But that was not enough for us; we wanted broad provisions that covered our customers."
DataTern became involved in the lawsuit after Firestar assigned the patent to DataTern.
Hewlett-Packard announced Sunday that it has settled its patent-infringement lawsuits against rival PC maker Acer.
The confidential settlement agreement resolves three federal court lawsuits, as well as two U.S. International Trade Commission investigations between the parties.
HP sued Taiwan-based Acer in October 2007, alleging seven patent violations. The suits covered patents regarding technologies such as read/write optical drives, power management in notebooks, digital bus arrangement, thermal management and video control.
The suits sought to stop Taiwan-based Acer from exporting its PCs to the U.S. and selling them there. As a result of the settlement agreement, each action will be dismissed as to the parties.
For the first time ever, the federal government has successfully won a jury verdict against someone accused of illegally downloading music, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.
A jury in Alexandria, Va, found Barry Gitarts, 25, allegedly a member of Internet music piracy group, Apocalypse Production Crew (APC), was found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.
Gitarts faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and must make full restitution, according to a statement released by the DOJ.
The Recording Industry Assoc. of America (RIAA), which said it helped develop evidence against APC, applauded the jury verdict.
"For the first time ever, a criminal online music piracy case went to trial, and the jury rendered a swift and unanimous verdict," said Brad Buckles, executive vice president for the RIAA. "The crimes committed here -- as well as the harm to the music community -- are severe, and so are the consequences. We congratulate and thank the U.S. Attorney's office for its work on this case."
APC was among the pioneers in music piracy according to the blog TorrentFreak. The group is considered by many to be the first to coordinate pre-release uploading of MP3 files, TorrentFreak reported. Gitarts is accused of participating in the group for nearly a year, the DOJ alleged. The government has convicted 15 APC members so far.
What is different about Gitarts' case is that unlike any of the other APC members, he decided against striking a plea agreement and took his case to court.
What makes APC members different than average Lime Wire users is the group was sophisticated and specialized in releasing copyright music on the Web, according to the DOJ's statement. Gitarts operated a server where APC members stored hundreds of thousands of song files, the DOJ alleged.
Alcatel-Lucent scored a victory Tuesday when the U.S. International Trade Commission rebuffed a patent infringement claim filed by Microsoft.
The commission reversed an earlier ruling by an administrative law judge, who found Alcatel-Lucent had violated one of Microsoft's patents.
The commission ruled that Alcatel-Lucent did not infringe on patent No. 6,421,439 patent, which deals with technology to identify and affiliate a user in a telephone network, according to the commission's decision.
In its ruling, the commission noted Alcatel-Lucent did not infringe on three of Microsoft's claims because of the way in which the wording for the claims had been modified.
"We are pleased with the decision and always believed we had strong case," an Alcatel-Lucent representative said.
Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.
Last year, Microsoft filed a complaint with the ITC, alleging Alcatel-Lucent had violated four of its patents. The other three included patents 6,430,289, 6,263,064 and 6,728,357, which also relate to communications technology. The administrative law judged had ruled in Alcatel-Lucent's favor regarding those three patents.
A federal appeals court issued a split ruling on Alcatel-Lucent's patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Dell.
The U.S. Court of Appeals on Thursday issued a ruling Thursday that kicks one of Alcatel-Lucent's claims back down to the lower courts for further review. This particular allegation centers on a communications protocol (Ackerman, or 131) patent designed to allow a host computer to communicate with a "terminal device."
The appeals court, in remanding the case back to the lower courts, said the lower court erred in its construction of the term "terminal device."
The appeals court, however, sided with the lower court's ruling on Alcatel-Lucent's digital speech compression (Atal, or 954) patent. The technology is designed to produce natural sounding speech at lower bit rates.
According to the ruling, the appeals court found the lower court was correct in its construction of the phrase "each successive iteration including the steps of."
"We are very pleased with the court's decision on the Ackerman patent and respect its decision on the Atal patent. And we appreciate the careful attention the court paid to our appeal," said Mary Lou Ambrus, an Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman.
Microsoft, meanwhile, also considers the court ruling a victory.
"We are gratified that the Federal Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling that speech coding technology in Microsoft's products did not infringe the '954 patent," said David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman. "We look forward to demonstrating at the district court level that Microsoft did not infringe the '131 patent and that the patent is invalid."
The software giant noted it expects to be only a minor player in that dispute.
The appeals court decision has no bearing on Alcatel-Lucent's appeal in another Microsoft lawsuit, in which a a lower court nixed a $1.5 billion jury award to the telecommunications giant in an MP3 case.
Alcatel-Lucent is still awaiting for its appeal to be scheduled with the court.
A group of academic publishers filed a lawsuit against Georgia State University officials on Tuesday, alleging a systematic abuse of copyrighted works in the online distribution of coursework reading materials.
Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Sage Publications allege the university "facilitated, enabled, encouraged, and induced" professors to upload the copyrighted materials to its online system for students to download, without first obtaining the necessary permissions or paying licensing fees.
The lawsuit, filed in a U.S. District Court in Georgia, may mark the first time publishers have challenged universities over the electronic distribution of written copyrighted works, noted the plaintiffs' attorney.
"Our clients believe this is a widespread problem," said Bruce Rich, an attorney with Weil, Gotshal & Manges, who is representing the plaintiffs.
The problem first cropped up a couple years ago, noted Patricia Schroeder, head of the Association of American Publishers, of which the plaintiffs are members.
"A couple years ago, we noted a drop-off in universities seeking copyright permission as they shifted to the digital world," Schroeder said. "Even though technology changes, the law doesn't."
The publishers allege Georgia State University permitted its professors to reproduce vast amounts of copyrighted materials and combine them into course packets for students.
Although the problem of copyright infringement is believed to be widespread among colleges and universities, the majority of those institutions contacted by publishers generally cooperate and take steps to remedy the situation, Rich said.
The key issue for the publishers is harm to the market, Rich said. For example, he questioned whether professors would be able to continuing publishing their research, given the related costs involved, if their respective publishers were not compensated for providing the materials.
Although the reproduction of copyrighted materials is permitted under fair use laws, it's limited in the extent the materials that can be copied, such as excerpts verses chapters upon chapters, Rich noted.
A spokeswoman for Georgia State University declined to comment, noting the institution and the parties cited in the lawsuit have not yet been served with the complaint.
To begin with, the fact that one is practicing the prior art doesn't prove they're not also doing something that infringes. For example, if I design and build a car that uses a gasoline engine and has LED headlights, I'm practicing the prior-art inventions of Daimler and Benz for a gas-powered automobile. If a patent holder claiming to have invented the combination of LED headlights sues me, the fact that I'm practicing the prior art makes no difference. The real question is, do the patent claims cover the use of LED headlights on an automobile--and does my car infringe those claims. An infringement analysis is determined by comparing the claims of the patent to my device, "not by comparing the accused device to the prior art."
What people really mean when they say they are practicing the prior art is that they are not doing anything new. In other words, if the patent claims cover what they are doing, then they must be invalid because they read on the prior art. So why does it matter whether the issue is infringement or validity?
The answer lies in the burden of proof in patent cases. To prove infringement, a patent owner must convince a jury that, in light of all the evidence, it is more likely than not that the defendant infringes. At trial, the jury will see the patent and the accused product, and will hear testimony from experts on both sides of the case to inform its decision. Jurors realize that most of the witnesses they hear from have some bias in the case, so they rely on their judgment to decide which side is telling the truth. On the other hand, when the validity of the patent is challenged, the jury is asked to question the judgment of the Patent Office--which the jury knows is unbiased. To prove invalidity, the defendant must prove by the much higher "clear and convincing evidence" standard that the patent is invalid. In other words, the jury must decide that the Patent Office clearly made a mistake.
During the past 12 months, the U.S. Patent office issued approximately 182,000 utility patents containing millions of patent claims. Many of them are very likely invalid. But, they are all presumed valid until proven otherwise. Given the choice between convincing a jury that the U.S. government got it wrong in any particular case and proving that the plaintiff has it wrong, most of us would rather take on the plaintiff, which is why lawyers and their clients continue to argue the "practicing the prior art" defense.
If you thought that the issue of whether a patent covered the use of a microprocessor could only concern the computer or semiconductor industry, think again. High tech has extended its reach to zapping rats (literally).
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Such were the aspirations of Bob Noe, the founder of Agrizap--maker of the patented Rat Zapper, a trap for dispatching pests through electrocution. Agrizap's Rat Zapper, which is about the size of a shoebox, is powered by four AA batteries, and is sold online for about $40 at RatZapper.com.
The slightly larger Rat Zapper Ultra uses D-cell batteries which, according to the Website, enables it to kill "even bigger, badder rats and mice." In the event of serious infestation, or for those with an overdeveloped desire to integrate their equipment, Agrizap also offers the ultimate high-tech equipment including its Battle Station command post and radio-monitoring equipment for use with its traps.
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