Displaying items by tag: Legal

As predicted Judge David Harvey (who called the US “The Enemy” in Copyright Law) has stepped down from presiding over the Dotcom extradition case. Yesterday we reported on Harvey’s views of the US Government’s (and entertainment industry’s) efforts to force US copyright laws on foreign countries as a requirement of trade agreements. This move, by the US, has sparked quite a bit of debate including whether the US Trade Rep has the authority to enact these deals without congressional oversight. With ACTA and TPP the USTR has had more meetings with the entertainment industry than with the congressional bodies that are supposed to handle oversight on these treaties.

The US Government has gone and done something that they have been trying to claim they would never do. They have put forward an Executive Order that outlines their ability to control communications in the event of an “emergency”. The new order has the interesting title of “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions”. You could say that the new Executive Order does assign functions to different offices in the government and also assigns duties to the rest of the country including “the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public”. If you read the new EO in its entirety (and we highly recommend you do) you will see that this is a precursor to the enablement of the US Government to require surveillance and control measures all across the internet. So it looks like the big content holders have managed to get their way all in the name of “National Security”.

We have been critical of Judge Lucy Koh for seemingly biased views towards Apple in many of the patent cases that have crossed her bench. Most recently we were appalled to see her go from a stance of not enough evidence of irreparable harm to a full preliminary ban on sales of the Galaxy Tab. This has prompted more than one person to complain and also to question her ability to properly discharge her duties. Apparently more than a few people are feeling the same way as a petition to have her “impeached” and removed from her position.

There are times in the US Legal system when I wished there was a review body that could not only reverse bad decisions, but also levy fines and consequences for bad and obvious prejudicial judgments on the part of our justices in the US. If there were I have a feeling that Judge Lucy Koh would be exceptionally poor right about now. This is due to her recent judgments in granting injunctive relief in favor of Apple despite the lack of sufficient evidence that Apple is being injured or that the devices in question actually violate Apple patents.

We have been following the MegaUpload case very closely since it was revealed that the FBI probably overstepped their bounds in both the requesting of search warrants for the Dotcom mansion and in taking evidence back to the US without judicial review to make sure the evidence was relevant to the case. Now there is the possibility that the MPAA and others met with Vice President Joe Biden to request he push for the MegaUpload take down. This is something that many already believe, but now it seems there might be some evidence to make this claim more credible.

There is an interesting item that has popped up on the internet. It seems that Nokia is concerned about Asus and Google’s new tablet, the Nexus 7. What makes this very interesting is the timing for Nokia coming forward and bringing this to light. According to a statement made by Nokia (and originally reported by The Inquirer) Nokia is not going so far as to file a law suit, but they do encourage both Asus and Google to get in touch… soon.

It looks like Apple and ProView have finally come to an agreement over the rights to the iPad Trademark. As most of you might remember Apple used a shell company to purchase the rights to the iPad trademark, but ran afoul of the fact that the company they thought they were buying everything from did not own all of the rights. It also turns out that the shell company Intellectual Property Application Development Limited (IPAD get it) also claimed they would not make any products that competed with ProView’s own Internet Personal Access Device. Things got very ugly very quickly and the result was a very long court battle with Apple and ProView each claiming they were in the right.

With the news that the warrants used to justify the storming of the home of MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom many are looking for reasons why this is important, unimportant and a few other things in the process. We have heard from news sites that say this is the death blow for the US case and others that claim just the opposite. But what few have mentioned is why the US tried to pull of this in the first place and why they hoped it would not be noticed by the authorities.

Two days ago we wrote an article about how NPE (Non-Practicing Entities) are hurting the economy and small businesses. Our article was based on a report that was put together by the Boston University School of Law which showed that the use of NPEs in patent lawsuits cost $29 Billion in direct costs. Despite this many companies are moving to this model as a method of protection from patent lawsuits. We have seen Microsoft and Nokia do this and it seems that Qualcomm is splitting their business into two entities now too.

As we follow the MegaUpload case and by extension the case of Kim Dotcom and six other managers in the company we are finding out more and more about the US governments case against the file sharing site. Yesterday we published a two part article about some of the tactics used in the case that has slid from being active and interesting into a long siege with the US attempting to stop access to both funds and legal representation. Now we are finding out more about the original “evidence” against the corporation and the seven individuals.