There’s been a lot of talk about “defensive” patents lately, as many companies in the tech industry try to acquire patents and claim they’re only doing so for “defensive” purposes — to act as a kind of deterrent to a patent nuclear war. Of course, th… Continue reading →

Apparently the TSA is planning to roll out some changes to its screening process in the coming months, including embracing at least some of the “Israeli method” of airplane security, which tends to focus much more on behavior, rather than what you have… Continue reading →

Toilet humor might be funny to a wide audience, but to some folks, toilets are not a laughing matter — it’s business. Here are a few projects that are attempting to improve toilet technology.

Some MIT business students are headed to Nairobi to start… Continue reading →

Wow. I just came across Intellectual Ventures’ almost entirely content-less “perspective” concerning the recent This American Life episode that compared Intellectual Ventures to an organized crime shakedown outfit, noting that the company appeared to … Continue reading →

We’ve talked about some massive data breaches in the past, but a recent hack attack in South Korea apparently resulted in personal information on 35 million people being copied. The country has a population somewhere around 49 million… meaning that … Continue reading →

Another day and another loss for Righthaven, as yet another judge (this makes four) says that Righthaven has no standing to bring the suit, because it did not technically hold the copyright, since its agreement with Stephens Media only really transferr… Continue reading →

Back when the Supreme Court ruled on the Bilski case, many people were upset that it so narrowly tailored the result, so that it didn’t include any real statement on the patentability of business methods or software. Reading the tea leaves, it wasn’t … Continue reading →

As various governments have tried to clamp down, censor and/or filter the internet, all it’s really done is increase interest and usage of encryption tools such as VPNs. Every so often we have commenters who insist that outlawing encryption is the obv… Continue reading →

It’s kind of funny to see the entertainment industry make totally contradictory statements about cyberlockers and usenet access providers in talking about infringement. On the one hand, they complain about how it’s “impossible to compete with free” be… Continue reading →