After two and a half years of calls for more public scrutiny, the current draft of the once-secret Anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) agreement has been released to the public, as the tech press has reported. The name notwithstanding, ACTA has little to do with counterfeiting and everything to do with copyright in the digital age. In a misguided…
Co-writing today’s post is Jonathan Band of policybandwidth, with CCIA’s Matthew Schruers, on the recently-announced retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens: JUSTICE STEVENS INVENTED THE INTERNET Justice John Paul Stevens’s announcement that he will resign from the Supreme Court at the end of this term has caused a flood of newspaper articles and blogs about the…
Last week, Microsoft got taken to the cleaners in an East Texas patent infringement case to the tune of over $100 million. With the patent system in shambles, these days even six figure damages don’t come as much of a surprise. It’s when you dig deeper that the case becomes interesting. The plaintiff in the case…
We have to tip our caps to Zusha Elinson, who has done more than anyone to expose the inner workings of Nathan Myhrvold’s secretive enterprise, Intellectual Ventures. Elinson previously broke the story of IV handing off patents to an NPE, Picture Frame Innovations. Sure enough, Picture Frame used the patent to bring Kodak to court for patent…
We have to give former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz credit—he’s nothing if not interesting. After all, how many Fortune 500 presidents resign via Twitter haiku? Schwartz now occupies his time blogging and commenting on the latest tech trends. His most recent post on the increasingly litigious nature of Apple caught our attention. Buried towards the bottom, he…
It is unclear how the release of a Senate draft proposing to remove or change some key reforms from the patent reform bill previously reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be received in Congress. So far House Judiciary leaders have alerted their Senate colleagues publicly that they want to see changes. In the…
Much ink has been spilled over the future of the Google Book Settlement, but never before has anyone attempted to squeeze it onto one page. This flow chart, by Jon Band for the Library Copyright Alliance, maps out many of the possible legal outcomes in this important case. Check it out at www.librarycopyrightalliance.org
Since Steve Lohr’s New York Times critique on Intellectual Ventures, last month the blogosphere has lit up with discussion about back door schemes to file or threaten to file patent lawsuits. Revelations of IV’s skyrocketing lobbying expenses and political contributions as well as new strategy of licensing patents to lawsuit-happy NPEs have prompted a flurry of anti-IV sentiment.…
Ever had a leaky ceiling? You can place a bucket under it and delay the inevitable, but ultimately the steady dripping is going to take its toll and that bucket is going to overflow. Eventually, the ceiling may even collapse. The latest drip in the unraveling of secretive Intellectual Ventures came last week in the…
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