Monthly Archives: March 2010

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Is Buying A Google Ad On Your Competitors’ Name A Privacy Violation?

We’ve seen tons of lawsuits from companies upset that their competitors were buying ads on their trademarked brand names. Obviously, these tend to be trademark disputes, and the suing companies rarely prevails, since most courts seem to realize that buying ads on competitor trademark keywords is perfectly legal, so long as the ad isn’t confusing. But, sometimes the arguments get quite bizarre. JJ sent over an article about two personal injury law firms in a legal fight over Google advertising — but the (initial) twist here is that the one firm is claiming that it’s a violation of Wisconsin state privacy laws to buy keywords based on the names of the partners in the firm. It’s difficult to see who’s privacy is being violated here. And, of course, to make the case a bit more exciting, the defendants surprised everyone in court by doing a search on YellowPages.com for their own law firm — and having an ad for the plaintiff show up. So, now the defendants are claiming that the plaintiffs have “unclean hands,” since they appear to be doing the exact same thing they’ve accused the defendants of doing. It sounds like quite a trial…

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Last version of Firefox 3.0 released

Firefox 3.0.19 is the end of the line for the browser version that debuted in 2008. Also released to fix security problems: Firefox 3.5.9 and Thunderbird 3.0.4.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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Rather Than Respond To Criticism Of Aussie Censorship Plan, Conroy Attacks Google

With more and more complaints coming in about Stephen Conroy’s plan in Australia to start censoring the internet, it appears that Conroy, rather than responding to the critics, has decided to just lash out at them. For example Google recently filed comments with the Australian gov’t suggesting that the plan was “heavy-handed” and raised “genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.” Now, these seem like legit concerns — and from what we’ve heard, many citizens in Australia agree. So you might think that Conroy, the main backer of the plan and Australia’s Communications Minister would take the complaints seriously and respond to them.

Instead, he just starts trashing Google over a variety of totally unrelated issues and taking quotes totally out of context:


“Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged ‘do no evil’ policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction, and people said well look aren’t you publishing private information?,” Senator Conroy said.

“[Google CEO Eric] Schmidt said the following: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place’. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, ‘we love cash’, so when people say, shouldn’t we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be….”

Of course, none of that has anything to do with the censorship plan. With the Buzz controversy, it’s also worth noting that within hours of the controversy coming out, Google changed its plans and corrected its mistakes. Has Conroy done that at all? Nope. The Schmidt quotes are then both taken totally out of context and also have absolutely nothing to do with filters. No one is saying that it should be Google who determines what the filtering policy is, but Google did raise important questions, which Conroy doesn’t even bother to address.

And it’s not just Google. As the article notes, these comments were made on a radio program where the majority of phone calls were against the censorship proposal. And yet Conroy wants to “defend” the proposal by attacking Google? On the whole, it seems like a lot more people are willing to trust Google than trust Conroy to tell them what they can and cannot do with their internet connections.

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House Passes Ban On File Sharing Use By Government Employees

For a few years now, one of the tactics of the entertainment industry to get another foot in the legislative door towards outlawing file sharing programs, is to push ridiculous stories about how secret gov’t documents were showing up on file sharing networks. Of course, there’s a reason why that’s happening: clueless gov’t staffers not being careful. But, in typical Congressional fashion, the response is to overreact, very much at the urging (and legislative guidance) of the entertainment industry. After trying for a few years, it looks like the industry has been marginally successful this time. Slashdot points out that the House has passed legislation that would bar government employees from using file sharing, but notes that the language of the bill is so broad that it likely forbids all sorts of useful applications.

Of course, this was only passed in the House, and it looks like the Senate is going in a different direction — instead preferring an equally pointless bill that would require any file sharing software (again, so broadly worded that it would include browsers, FTP software, backup software, etc.) to pop up an alert that you would have to click every time you opened the software.

Hey Congress, here’s a better idea: instead of passing dumb laws with serious unintended consequences, why not have a bit of basic computer security training for your staffers so they don’t do idiotic things like putting top secret plans in a shared folder?

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Microsoft Sued Over Buy From FM Zune Feature, Despite It Functioning Differently Than The Patent

Technically, we’re told, patents only are supposed to apply to specific inventions, and not general ideas. It doesn’t always work that way in practice, of course. AdamR points us to a lawsuit filed by some guy against Microsoft, claiming patent infringement in Zune’s “Buy from FM” feature that lets you buy a song that you hear over FM radio. The guy is claiming willful infringement and demanding treble damages, because he apparently wrote Microsoft a letter back in 2006. Of course, there appears to be a pretty big problem with the claim, in that the patents in question (6,463,469 and 6,473,792) appear to describe a process of unlocking music already found on a local harddrive — which is not how the Zune’s feature works.

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Russian WWII Veterans Asked To Pay Up For Singing Old War Songs

We’ve talked in the past about how the Russian Authors’ Society has made bands pay up to play their own songs, and now apparently it’s going after some Russian WWII veterans for getting together and singing old war songs. Patriotism and nostalgia, apparently, aren’t free. We’ve discussed this before, of course. The value in artistic works is often in the shared culture around them — but thanks to copyright, we’re putting up a big tollbooth on any attempt to further share those experiences. It’s a huge hindrance on actually spreading culture and seems to go against the very purpose of copyright law.

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Amazon’s new patent could make returns harder

In an odd twist, Amazon has patented a process for videotaping its outgoing packages being prepared for shipment. Is this for quality control, or a next generation of the shipping confirmation e-mail?

Originally posted at Web Crawler

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Novell Wins Yet Again; Says SCO Never Got Unix Copyrights

Could the case that never ends finally end? As you may recall, years back SCO sued IBM, claiming that Linux infringed on Unix, whose rights SCO acquired earlier. Except… in 2003 Novell tossed a bit of a firecracker into the whole thing by noting that it still owned the copyrights on Unix. The case went back and forth for ages, with a lot of questionable activity (including questions concerning Microsoft’s supposed funding of SCO’s activities), including accusations that the whole thing was an attempt to pump-and-dump SCO stock. Back in 2008, we thought it was finally over when a judge ruled that Novell owned the copyrights, leading many to expect SCO to finally just die off. Instead, it declared bankruptcy, got a lifeline and continued the fight — leading to an appeals court ruling that the question over copyright ownership needed to be determined by a jury rather than a judge. As we noted at the time, this was hardly (as SCO’s Darl McBride insisted) a vindication for SCO — it was just another chance for SCO to lose in court.

And lose, it did. As was widely expected, the jury has that Novell owns the copyrights on Unix and SCO basically has no case. Once again, this suggests that SCO has never had a case, and has just been wasting everyone’s time (and a lot of people’s money) for a long, long, long time.

But, of course, it’s probably not over yet. SCO says it will continue the original lawsuit against IBM, saying that it won’t be over copyright, but breach of contract claims. Of course, it’s now been almost a decade and we still haven’t seen what it is that IBM did wrong. SCO still hasn’t shown anyone what code breached what contract. However, as Groklaw notes, even if SCO (with what money?) keeps fighting the lawsuit against IBM over contract terms, that’s a much more limited lawsuit, as the terms are just between IBM and SCO — and wouldn’t impact the wider “Linux” ecosystem, since others did not sign any kind of contract with SCO. Still, at some point, you would hope that the folks still left at SCO involved in this case realize enough is enough and just let it die.

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And… Here Come The iPad Patent Claims

Back when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, one of the points he made clear in his presentation was how Apple had applied for over 200 patents on the device. And, yet, despite all of that, Apple has been sued over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And, of course, only recently did Apple file a patent lawsuit in the other direction.

Given all of this, it was really only a matter of time until the patent litigation began flying over the iPad. Slashdot points us to the news that Elan Microelectronics is seeking to ban the import of iPads into the US via the ever-popular ITC loophole. Amusingly, the whole point of the ITC injunction process is supposed to be to protect American companies against foreign companies importing in patented technology. Yet, in this case, it’s a Taiwanese company suing an American company. This seems like a pure money grab, like many of the iPhone patent lawsuits, and once again demonstrates the problems of the patent thicket around mobile devices these days.

The patent in question 5,825,352 is for multi-touch screen inputs, and was apparently originally held by Logitech. Of course, in many ways this really highlights the points we’ve talked about. What Apple did with the iPhone was quite innovative, but wasn’t really that inventive. It took concepts that had been out for a while, including multi-touch, and did something really cool with it: putting it into a compact, mobile device that people really wanted. The other players in the space weren’t working on anything like that at all, and now patent battles are simply a waste of time holding back more innovation, rather than letting companies actually continue to come up with the next great thing.

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Google Sued For Using The Term ‘Gadgets’; Tiny Company Afraid People Will Think They Support Google

Ah, more trademark insanity. Eric Goldman points us to the news that Google has been sued, yet again, this time over a trademark infringement claim, with a company called Firefly Digital that makes some sort of content management system that it trademarked as “Website Gadget.” As you may know, Google’s iGoogle customized page lets you add various “gadgets.” In fact, many of you read Techdirt via just such a gadget. But apparently, Firefly is very upset that when you see Google’s gadgets, you’ll automatically assume that they were built by Firefly — and thus, the company is suing:

My favorite line in the filing?


Google has thereby induced purchasers and others to believe–contrary to fact–that
Firefly has provided, sponsored, authorized, licensed or approved Google’s business, goods, and
services, or that such business, goods and services are in some way connected with Firefly.

I’d love to see the evidence that any user of iGoogle got confused and somehow thought that the gadgets were provided, sponsored, authorized, licensed or approved by Firefly. Later in the lawsuit, Firefly claims that Google’s intention is to “deceive” users into believing there was a connection with Firefly. Somehow, I doubt it.

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