intellectual property

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

TorrentFreak pegs top pirating universities in U.S.

Restricting access to Web sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents has been a long-standing practice for universities in both the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Suffering under the strain of heavy traffic due to students streaming films and downloading gigabytes of data via torrents, academic institutions have attempted -- often in vain -- to curb the trend.

But when the next episode of "Game of Thrones" isn't out for another week and has been broadcast already in another country, the temptation is no doubt difficult to resist.

Universities are not unaware of this and have … Read more

AT&T set to start six-strike anti-piracy campaign?

Alleged documents obtained by TorrentFreak assert that Internet provider AT&T has begun internally training its personnel in a new anti-piracy campaign.

Warning notices will begin to be sent out on November 28, according to the documents. If subscribers are caught downloading content protected by intellectual copyright -- including videos, games and music -- they can expect to have access to frequently visited Web sites blocked.

So, can a subscriber expect a court summons to arrive in the mail? Perhaps not, at least, for now. Instead, you'll have to complete an "online copyright course," according to … Read more