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The last time I had jury duty, I spent several hours waiting as prosecutors and defense attorneys horse-traded their way to a plea agreement behind closed doors.  Before being dismissed, the judge on the case addressed us to say thank you for our service.  Your time wasn’t wasted, she told us.  Even though we weren’t impaneled, we served a valuable role as leverage.  Our presence, and the ability to carry the case to trial it represented, was the point. 

That same kind of brinkmanship seems to be at play in an increasingly nasty patent battle being waged by Gibson Guitars at all things Guitar Gaming related.  The question is: are the lawsuits aimed at Guitar Hero and Rock Band threat enough to force a settlement, or are the patent issues so inapplicable in the eyes of the defendants that they’ll let the courts make the call.    

In court anything is possible. But having read the files and studied up on patent law, this doesn’t look like a case on the settlement path.  Readers can be their own Jury on this one.  Here are the details: Click to Read More

It’s an election year, so it comes as no surprise that political issues large and small are getting extra attention.   Tuesday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin used a CES panel discussion as an opportunity to address the regulatory commission’s stance on the bandwidth throttling complaints that put the nation’s second largest broadband provider, Comcast, into a boiling cauldron of bad PR in October and November.

In no uncertain terms, Martin told the audience, “Sure, we’re going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked.”

At issue is a debate over the policy concept: Network Neutrality. The issues date back to the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Click to Read More

In February 2006, notable executives from Internet companies and Telecom giants converged on Capital Hill to lobby to consider revising a ten year old Telecom bill.   The issue at stake was the concept of Net Neutrality, a divisive idea suggesting that all internet content (regardless of format) should be treated equally.   

On one side of the debate fell Internet and software companies.  Businesses like Google and Yahoo wanted to insure that all websites – from blog to portal, could be accessed equally.  Even more so, they wanted legislation that would protect different types of content like video, or music, or the technologies that deliver them (like Peer to Peer) from arbitrary exclusion.  Their goal was to insure nothing was singled out and taxed by the ISP’s who control the supply pipeline, the network infrastructure over which Internet traffic flows.  The software and Internet companies wanted to insure their content would always flow freely without tax or toll.

The Telecom companies, on the other side of the stage, wanted the freedom of an unregulated market.  Click to Read More

If someone provides a service that can be used by their patrons to break laws, there are legal questions of responsibility that get asked.  With user-generated content, and the websites that act as repositories for it, these issues center on copyright liability.  It’s a question of how much responsibility a site that acts as a forum should take. 

Is a service like YouTube responsible for policing their site and actively looking for infringement?  Or is it enough to remove an offending article (video/etc) when notified it’s a copyright violation (via a formal  DMCA “Take Down Notice”) ?  The experts aren’t in agreement.  The Digital Millennium Copyright laws provide guidance but in many cases the legislation falls short and interpretation is being sent the courts.  As of now, there’s already a billion dollar case on dockets with more likely to follow.

So, rather than wait for court or Congress, Thursday a group of broadcasters and web power houses,  a mix of content owners and distributors,  announced they would take the responsibility themselves. Click to Read More

Score a small victory for Fair Use and the rights of cable TV viewers (at least indirectly). Today, in an obscure agreement, administrative oversight consortiums representing cable companies (CableLabs) and electronics makers (5C), and with the approval of the content industry (TV/Film studios),  agreed to support an encryption and data management standard for streaming content within home networks.

At issue is the ability to watch and record digital programming within your home and then stream it from one device to another on a local network.   Imagine, record a TV show on your DVR, stream it live, or delayed, to your home office computer, or shift it to the TV in your bedroom.  Store it on a network hard drive rather than the drive on board your Tivo box.  Watch it in one room, while recording something else in another.

But wait you ask? Isn’t place shifting technology already here?  Isn’t this already possible?  The answer is, yes, it is available but with caveats. Click to Read More

It was a busy day at the courts.  In unrelated intellectual property cases Google saw its list of adversaries expand and Microsoft received a $1.5b dollar judicial reprieve.  (a Metue article on the Microsoft news is here.)

For Google, it’s been copyright, copyright, copyright.   For months, the company has been battling with Viacom over YouTube and the claim that the popular video-sharing site is a conduit for copyright infringement; essentially a service encouraging copyright violation.

The billion dollar infringement suit was filed in New York as a class action complaint on May 4th.  Since then, plaintiffs have been lining up to participate.  Now, in addition to Viacom (which is the parent of MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures) and the English Premier League (soccer/football), eight new plaintiffs were revealed Monday. Click to Read More

Over the years, the courts haven’t always been kind to Microsoft.  Monday, the technology giant had their day in court, and this time the day was good: $1.5 billion good. 

Back in February, a jury found Microsoft guilty of infringing on two patents held by French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent relating to MP3 technology. The patents, which focus on MP3 Compression, date back to when Lucent was known as Bell Labs.   For the violation, the jury awarded Alcatel damages in the amount of $1.52billion.  It was the largest patent verdict in US history (and not a good day at Microsoft).

Microsoft, needless to say, appealed that verdict, especially the assessment and calculation of damages. Yesterday, in San Diego, U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster, after spending about two weeks deliberating, gave the damage ruling a toss to the circular file.  Click to Read More