Seems like the European Palrliament has done the right thing and finally driven the stake through the heart of the malinformed software patent directive. The Commision may try something, but it seems that under the present political climate they will not try something for a while. I can hear thousands Read more…
This one practically writes itself. The Register reports that a man in the United States is suing the makers of a herbal penis enlargement pill for misleading advertisement. He says that the ads claimed that he would gain three inches, but that nothing happened. I wonder how they are going Read more…
As the fight against European software patents heats up, we can find a lot of opinions about the subject. We have irony-filled pieces, like the one where Richard Stallman calls Bill Gates a communist. Then witness this debate between Karl Lenz and Alex Horns. The arguments are not about the Read more…
Loki Torrent was one of the most popular bittorrent sites on the net. It had decided to fight and they were raising money from users to pay for their legal defense; apparently they had made about $40,000 US dollars from this, and leaves one to wonder how is it that Read more…
Paraphrasing my colleague Lilian Edwards, where on Earth do things happen in cyberpsace? Techdirt has a small report about the latest case to muddle the question of cyberspace jursidiction. This case is Dow Jones & Co Inc v Jameel [2005] EWCA Civ 74 (note that link is only for the Read more…
Next week should give us a better idea of what is going to happen with software patents. Earlier in the week, there were some reports that it was possible that software patents were going to be adopted next week. Since then, the Dutch Paliament has adopted a motion to block Read more…
Technollama has spent some time in London at the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute for the launch of the Patenting Lives project. This is pretty good project, we will keep an eye on it (and link to it often).
This is a column about the growing amount of litigation found in the United States related to computer games. We all know about the preposterous case brought by Marvel Comics against City of Heroes for allowing its players to dress up as *GASP* superheroes. Then there is the story of Read more…
There has been some talk recently about the possible death of P2P, particularly in the popular media. The argument is that P2P networks have seen a sharp decrease from the actions of the music industry and their lawsuits against users. A new study called “Is P2P dying or just hiding?” Read more…
Yahoo is suing small company Xfire for alleged patent infringement. Xfire provides a chat application that allows online gamers to chat with each other. However, Yahoo claims that it owns a software patent that protects precisely that, U.S. patent 6,699,125. This patent, applied for in 2001, claims to protect a Read more…