Patents Roundup: TiVo Wins, VirnetX vs Microsoft Decision Imminent, Patent Rackets Thrive
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-03-08 14:15:15 UTC
- Modified: 2010-03-08 14:15:15 UTC
Summary: Dish Network Corp. and TiVo; VirnetX and Microsoft; Todd Bishop and Eric Engleman on RPX et al; Katherine Noyes on Microsoft and Amazon
●
TiVo Shares Surge on Court Ruling (see the
report from AP and recall
Microsoft vs TiVo)
A federal appeals court Thursday handed a key legal victory to TiVo Inc. in a long-running patent dispute with Dish Network Corp., sending shares of the maker of digital video recorders surging 62%.
TiVo said the court ruling clears the way for it to collect about $300 million from satellite-television provider Dish and sister company EchoStar Corp.
●
VirnetX stock soars as Microsoft patent trial nears (here is
the press release)
On the surface, it sounds just like any patent-infringement claim against Microsoft: A relatively small technology company files a lawsuit in a plaintiff-friendly court and alleges a giant corporation has violated its patents for years.
●
Microsoft headed back to East Texas to fight another patent infringement case (more on VirnetX in [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5])
On March 8, Microsoft will be back in U.S. District Court in East Texas to defend itself against another patent-infringement case.
The new case is being brought by real-time communications vendor VirnetX Inc. and involves three VirnetX patents which that company claims Microsoft is using improperly in Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server, among other products.
●
IP unites, divides tech companies
“There’s more awareness of patents as an asset class,” said John Amster, a former executive at Intellectual Ventures who now heads up RPX, a San Francisco-based firm that buys up patents on behalf of technology firms. “Companies are understanding the value of patent aggregation.”
Some of the most recent developments:
● A broad patent cross-licensing agreement announced between Microsoft and Amazon on Feb. 22 gives the companies new opportunities to collaborate while promising to keep them out of the courtroom, even as they increasingly find themselves in competition.
● A licensing pact between Bellevue-based patent firm Intellectual Ventures and Verizon gave the wireless giant extra ammunition in a dispute with TiVo.
● Apple this week sued smart-phone maker HTC Corp., which makes devices for Google and Microsoft, alleging that it violated Apple’s patents on technologies behind its popular iPhone.
●
Questions and Challenges For Defenders of the Current Copyright Regime (links to
this fine example)
I can't help but suspect that there is some major hypocrisy at work here in how copyright law is selectively applied in order to benefit special interests at the expensive of incentives for maximizing the creation and distribution of new works. (And please spare me the 'fair use' argument. I would completely agree that this should be considered fair use. But if it is, then one must concede that fair use should be applied by the courts far more generously that it currently is - so much so that it would effectively altogether omit the copyright protections which currently prevent the creations of 'derivative works'.)
●
The Echo of TomToms in the Amazon Deal (more on this in [
1,
2,
3,
4])
Why would Amazon want to cozy up with Microsoft on a patent cross-licensing deal? "Amazon isn't the kind of company you can push around with the threat of lawsuits everybody knows you can't win," noted Slashdot blogger Mhall119. "It's entirely possible that they have agreed to be interoperable with each other in order to ensure their unobstructed existence in the reader market," said Slashdot blogger Eldavojohn.
[...]
Then again, "So long Amazon, it was nice knowing you," chimed in Richy_T.
[...]
Still, "Microsoft has never successfully proven any patent infringement against Linux," noted Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site.
●
Will Microsoft Hold Android Hostage?
Right now, we're all worrying about Apple's patent claims against HTC, but Android may face a similar attack from Microsoft.
It's not terribly well known that Microsoft claims that it owns significant intellectual property used in Linux, the operating system at the heart of Android. Starting in 2006, Microsoft began reaching licensing deals with a number of companies that use the open source OS, among them Novell, I-O Data, Samsung, LG Electronics and most recently, Amazon.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM Culling Workers or Pushing Them Out (So That It's Not Framed as Layoffs), Red Hat Mentioned Repeatedly Only Hours Ago
- We all know what "reorg" means in the C-suite
-
- Jonathan Carter & Debian: fascism hiding in broad daylight
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Gunnar Wolf & Debian: fascism, anti-semitism and crucifixion
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 01/05/2024: Take-Two Interactive Layoffs and Post Office (Horizon System, Proprietary) Scandal Not Over
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 01, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 01, 2024
- Embrace, Extend, Replace the Original (Or Just Hijack the Word 'Sudo')
- First comment? A Microsoft employee
- Gemini Links 02/05/2024: Firewall Rules Etiquette and Self Host All The Things
- Links for the day
- Red Hat/IBM Crybullies, GNOME Foundation Bankruptcy, and Microsoft Moles (Operatives) Inside Debian
- reminder of the dangers of Microsoft moles inside Debian
- PsyOps 007: Paul Tagliamonte wanted Debian Press Team to have license to kill
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- IBM Raleigh Layoffs (Home of Red Hat)
- The former CEO left the company exactly a month ago
- Paul R. Tagliamonte, the Pentagon and backstabbing Jacob Appelbaum, part B
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 01/05/2024: Surveillance and Hadopi, Russia Clones Wikipedia
- Links for the day
- Links 01/05/2024: FCC Takes on Illegal Data Sharing, Google Layoffs Expand
- Links for the day
- Links 01/05/2024: Calendaring, Spring Idleness, and Ads
- Links for the day
- Paul Tagliamonte & Debian: White House, Pentagon, USDS and anti-RMS mob ringleader
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Jacob Appelbaum character assassination was pushed from the White House
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Why We Revisit the Jacob Appelbaum Story (Demonised and Punished Behind the Scenes by Pentagon Contractor Inside Debian)
- If people who got raped are reporting to Twitter instead of reporting to cops, then there's something deeply flawed
- Free Software Foundation Subpoenaed by Serial GPL Infringers
- These attacks on software freedom are subsidised by serial GPL infringers
- Red Hat's Official Web Site is Promoting Microsoft
- we're seeing similar things at Canonical's Ubuntu.com
- Enrico Zini & Debian: falsified harassment claims
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- European Parliament Elections 2024: Daniel Pocock Running as an Independent Candidate
- I became aware that Daniel Pocock had decided to enter politics
- Publicly Posting in Social Control Media About Oneself Makes It Public Information
- sheer hypocrisy on privacy is evident in the Debian mailing lists
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 30, 2024
- [Meme] Sometimes Torvalds and RMS Agree on Things
- hype around chatbots
- [Video] Linus Torvalds on 'Hilarious' AI Hype: "I Hate the Hype" and "I Don't Want to be Part of the Hype", "You Need to Be a Bit Cynical About This Whole Hype Cycle"
- Linus Torvalds on LLMs
- Colin Watson, Steve McIntyre & Debian, Ubuntu cover-up mission after Frans Pop suicide
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 30/04/2024: Wireless Carriers Selling Customer Location Data, Facebook Posts Causing Trouble
- Links for the day
- Frans Pop suicide and Ubuntu grievances
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 30/04/2024: More Google Layoffs (Wide-Ranging)
- Links for the day
- Fresh Rumours of Impending Mass Layoffs at IBM Red Hat
- "IBM filed a W.A.R.N with the state of North Carolina. That only means one thing."
- Workers' Right to Disconnect Won't Matter If Such a Right Isn't Properly Enforced
- I was always "on-call" and my main role or function was being "on-call" in case of incidents
- Mark Shuttleworth's (MS's) Canonical is Promoting Microsoft This Week (Surveillance Slanted as 'Confidential')
- Who runs Canonical these days? Why does Canonical help sell Windows?
- A Discussion About Suicides in Science and Technology (Including Debian and the European Patent Office)
- In Debian, there is a long history of deaths, suicides, and mysterious disappearances
- Federal News Network is Corrupt, It Runs Propaganda Pieces for Microsoft
- Federal News Network used to be OK some years ago
- What Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Can to Remedy the Damage Done to Frans Pop's Family
- Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical as a company can at the very least apologise for putting undue pressure
- Amnesty International & Debian Day suicides comparison
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Meme] A Way to Get No Real Work Done
- Walter White looking at phone: Your changes could not be saved to device
- Modern Measures of 'Productivity' Boil Down to Time Wasting and Misguided Measurements/Yardsticks
- People are forgetting the value of nature and other human beings
- Countries That Beat the United States at RSF's World Press Freedom Index (After US Plunged Some More)
- The United States (US) was 17 when these rankings started in 2002
- Record Productivity and Preserving People's Past on the Net
- We're very productive these days, partly owing to online news slowing down (less time spent on curating Daily Links)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 29, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 29, 2024
- Links 30/04/2024: Malaysian and Russian Governments Crack Down on Journalists
- Links for the day
- Frans Pop Debian Day suicide, Ubuntu, Google and the DEP-5 machine-readable copyright file
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich), the mentality of sexual violence on campus
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- [Meme] Russian Reversal
- Mark Shuttleworth: In Soviet Russia's spacecraft... Man exploits peasants
- Frans Pop & Debian suicide denial
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Hard Evidence Reinforces Suspicion That Mark Shuttleworth May Have Worked Volunteers to Death
- Today we start re-publishing articles that contain unaltered E-mails