 |
| |
 |
| Wikipedia and the Ring of Gyges |
|
|
|
| Regulating Search, conference photos |
|
|
|
| Regulating Search? Conference, Introduction, Panel 1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Sunday, November 27 @ 11:41:49 EST
I was sent a link to this website after a friend watched the infomercial. This person seemed to think this was patented and approved like a regular drug. And, well, there's a lot of law going on in this product but that's not it.
First, it has a cosmecuetical tie-in with a lip plumping gloss. The Celadrol, apparently, improves your lip cells' communication. This is, obviously, an unregulated cosmecuetical claim.
The plain Celadrol cream is for "simple backache, arthritis, strains, bruises and sprains." Celadrol has a "TM" marker and not a registered trademark, but it did have a registered trademark which was mysteriously abandoned in August 2005. I'm dying to know why the trademark was abandoned.
Celadrol also claims to have a pending patent, but I couldn't find anything based on a quick search using the sparse details in the website version of the infomercial. Who knows what that patent was actually for... Of course, the application might be less than 18 months old and not published yet, but I doubt it because the trademark was in use in January 2004.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by chris riley on Friday, November 11 @ 23:21:08 EST
I realize this is more the province of Patently-O, and that it's already been covered on Gizmodo, but I can't resist comment. The USPTO issued Patent 6,960,975 on November 1, 2005. The object of the patent? A spaceship which moves by creating "a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle". I kid you not. Read it for yourself.
I'm taking an intellectual property law course this semester. One of the requirements of a valid patent is the "utility" requirement, which has three components. First, the technology must have general utility, or in other words, it must actually do something productive. Third (you'll see why these are out of order in a second), the utility must be beneficial/moral - you can't get a patent on a biological weapon, for example. The second component of the utility requirement is "operability" - the patent must work as described. Apparently this requirement is now optional.
My back-of-the-envelope analysis of the social value of this patent (caveat emptor, as always) is below the fold.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The Worst Idea Ever...Patented! |
|
|
|
Posted by Katherine McDaniel on Wednesday, November 09 @ 16:56:41 EST
[You can file this story under Tech-news-you-probably-don't-need-to-know- about-but-is-nonetheless-amusing.]
Nestec, part of the Nestlé family has filed patents in the United States and most major European and Asian markets for a "fermented coffee beverage" that supposedly looks like beer, but tastes like coffee. And like, Budweiser's B^E (that's B to the Eth power), Nestlé's coffee-beer hybrid contains both alcohol and caffeine.
|
|
|
|
| MySpace and message board accountability |
|
|
|
| MIT Tracks Students' Movements Via Network Connections |
|
|
|
| Fight, fight, fight! Google v. AFP |
|
|
|
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Monday, October 31 @ 13:44:43 EST
Finally, an update in the Google News lawsuit (previously covered here). AFP claims Google News infringed by using thumbnail photos, headlines, and bylines linking to AFP stories.
Google has filed a brief to dismiss the claim; they're fighting back! The fight is on! I was scared that Google would settle this or run away and promise to never do it again, but they have not. Google is now fighting on the edge of fair use. Make no mistake, this Google News case will redefine fair use and the way we link to and use material on the Internet.
|
|
|
|
| Creative v. Apple (Round I) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
matthewosborne writes "This past week, Creative Worldwide (the media company which developed the SoundBlaster) announced its intention to sue Apple for infringement of Creative’s recently issued U.S. patent no. 6,928,433.
The ‘433 patent refers to an “automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata,” which more specifically teaches a method of navigating a music library via nested menus. Upon a cursory examination, the ‘433 patent’s single independent claim (claim 1) – describing a three-tiered menu system of selecting a category, subcategory, and an item – seems to articulate a navigation structure different from Apple’s iPod music player, which requires a minimum of four screens to navigate to an individual item. However, subsequent dependent claims (claims 8 & 15) expand the scope of the patent to include any user interface which utilizes the three-tiered menu system within a system of greater navigational depth. Furthermore, dependent claims 9, 10 11, and 16 each describe specific applications of this hierarchical structure as embodied in the Apple iPod (in my third generation iPod, at least).
The patent appears to be pretty solid; I failed to discover any indefiniteness (§ 112) invalidity issues during my brief perusal of the ‘433 patent. As for possible anticipation or public use (§ 102) reasons for invalidity, Apple’s iPod was first introduced in October 23, 2001, nine months after the filing of the ‘433 patent, ruling out a public use bar via the Apple iPod itself.
As a computer programmer myself, my gut instinct tells me that this patent should be held invalid for prior public use or for obviousness at the very least. I am somewhat troubled that I cannot think of any specific programs or devices which anticipate or make obvious the subject matter of the ‘433 patent, but I suspect grounds of obviousness could be formed from a once popular piece of mp3 playing software entitled WinAmp (released in 1997). If you have more concrete thoughts as to this patent’s invalidity, please email me at matt.osborne@richmond.edu."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| You shall not talk about Fight Club, I mean Apple |
|
|
|
|
|
|
jimcyl writes "According to Mac news website Think Secret, Apple may be trying to regulate what its employees do on their own time. The site said:
"Not surprisingly, Apple retail employees are ordered not to comment on rumors to customers under any circumstances. Furthermore, while Apple employees are granted permission by Apple to create their own personal Web pages and blogs, they are not allowed to comment on anything related to Apple on such pages. Furthermore, they are prohibited from posting in any capacity on any Mac-related Websites or forums, whether they identify themselves as working for Apple or not."
Inside Apple Retail: Pixel policy, price matching, employee restrictions
This seems to be unduly oppressive to me. Apple pays employees to work a designated shift. Then those employees go home. I can understand the need to protect proprietary information, but I think this could go way too far. Prohibiting people from talking about work in their free time strikes me as abusive in the extreme."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Wednesday, October 19 @ 14:03:02 EDT
Panic and more panic seems to have followed EFF's announcement that yellow dots track a printer's serial number, date, and time from a color print-out. Even Declan, who I rarely consider an alarmist, is concerned for religious pamphleteers' privacy. This is ridiculous.
Nobody is using this information to track down political/religious speakers. If the big, bad government were, EFF would already know about it, I am sure.
|
|
|
|
| Statutory Subject Matter Includes Paying an Employee |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Victory for Anonymous Blogging |
|
|
|
| WIPO Facing Legislative Fatigue from Policy Orgy? |
|
|
|
Posted by David Tannenbaum on Wednesday, September 07 @ 18:54:02 EDT
IP Watch is reporting that the deputy director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Francis Gurry, speculated in a press conference today that the latest deadlock between developed and developing countries may simply be "legislation fatigue" after a decade of WIPO's addressing "an orgy of policy issues." These comments come as U.S., Japan, and Europe have been trying without much success to ram a "patent harmonization" treaty down the throats of developing countries. Japan and the U.S. are apparently threatening to take their game outside of WIPO. According to the IP Watch report, Gurry went on to note that the "fatigue" is not necessarily so bad, since it could shift debate to other issues, like database rights.
There is all kind of spinning going on here. The deadlock is not a result of "fatigue," it's the outcome of vigorous mobilization by developing countries and civil society, a growing consensus among policy experts that expanding control over information in the digital age isn't so good for promoting development, and perhaps the growing public focus to WIPO's proceedings brought on by this clash and by WIPO's recent corruption scandals.
An "orgy of policy issues" sounds kind of fun, but that isn't an accurate idiom for what happened in WIPO in the 1990s. What we're witnessing is classic backlash. If debate at WIPO does shift to issues like database rights because patents are now too hot, we can only hope that these same forces will keep the IP maximalists at bay.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Monday, August 01 @ 16:09:32 EDT
A friend volunteering for the Innocence Project at Cardozo School of Law sent me this article (typo of Cardoza seems to be AP's) about a man released from prison following a DNA test after serving eighteen years of a wrongful rape conviction. The Innocence Project write-up has some different details than the AP version.
My friend was really happy about this. "Isn't this great?!" My feelings are more mixed. It's rather sobering that this can happen in the first place and that a few little mistakes can cost a man with small children so much of his life. I wonder how the victim feels, even if she honestly thought that was the right guy. So, I suppose it's great that science finally showed the truth, but those eighteen years are still lost.
|
|
|
|
| Robots.txt and Copyright: Not Yet |
|
|
| |
|
Survey |
|
|
|
|
|
User Login |
|
|
|
Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name. |
|
|
|
Main Menu |
|
|
|
|
|
Past Articles |
|
|
| Tuesday, July 12 | | · | Death Penalty for Hackers (0) |
| Monday, June 27 | | · | Additional Grokster Commentary (0) |
| · | MGM v. Grokster: A Victory for the Entertainment Biz? (1) |
| Saturday, June 18 | | · | Blizzard v. BnetD on Monday (0) |
| Friday, June 17 | | · | DRM Creep: Fair Use Dies Not with a Bang, but with a Whimper (0) |
| Tuesday, May 03 | | · | RE: P2P post; DoD photos of soldiers' coffins released via P2P (2) |
| Tuesday, April 26 | | · | China and Universal Music Take A Different Crack at Piracy (0) |
| · | Yale's Louis Vuitton® Sidewalk (1) |
| Tuesday, April 19 | | · | What Bobvila.com and Gevalia Coffee Have in Common (0) |
| Thursday, April 14 | | · | S.751, Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act (0) |
Older Articles
|
|
|
|
Recommendations |
|
|
|
|
