Technically Legal

Innocent infringement off the table, Apple sues HTC, and is it illegal to poach tickets?

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Innocent infringement off the table

5th Circuit rules innocent infringement defense not supported in Maverick v Harper
The opinion

Apple Sues HTC

Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents
Apple sues HTC–court filings
Apple HTC Complaint U.S. Google & HTC

Poaching Gaga Tickets

Couldn’t Get Those Coveted Gaga Tickets? Here’s Why
Four Charged in Bid To Buy, Resell Tickets

Comment on this post Posted in: Podcast on March 9, 2010

Yesterday I mentioned on our twitter feed that the Supreme Court released an opinion relating to copyright law. Evan Brown, of Internet Cases and a regular TWiL panelist, wrote up a post that goes over the facts and ruling of the case. This case is a little dry, but if you’re interested, please hop over to his blog and check it out.

Comment on this post Posted in: Links on March 3, 2010

What damages for false DMCA takedown notices, employer liability for employee statements, Facebook Patents the newsfeed.

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Damages in False DMCA takedown

Rare Ruling on Damages for Sending Bogus Copyright Takedown Notice–Lenz v. Universal
Rossi Case

FTC Guidelines on Employer Liability for Employee Blog Posts

Potential Employer Liability for Employee Online Statements: New Guidelines by the Federal Trade Commission

Facebook Patents the Newsfeed

Facebook’s news-feed patent could mean lawsuits
Facebook Patents The News Feed (Updated)
The Patent

UPDATE: There seems to have been a glitch with the first post. Hopefully this will fix it.

Comment on this post Posted in: Podcast on March 3, 2010

We’ve covered the Redbox suit before and are a little sad to report that they’ve agreed to Warner’s demands not to rent new releases for 28 days. Warner hopes that this will boost sales of DVDs. Presumably because if people didn’t want to see a movie in the theater, they will run out and buy the DVD, rather than just waiting another month before renting it. That makes sense? Right?

This announcement comes on the heels of Netflix caving to Warner’s demands in January.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on February 16, 2010

White House and Copyright, Streaming the Olympics, FBI and the Fourth Amendment

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White House and Copyrights

White House Makes Full Copyright Claim on Photos
Another Obama right-of-publicity violation; NY Times gets results!

Streaming the Olympics

Why you can’t see live streaming of Olympics — at least not legally

FBI and the Fourth Amendment

On the FBI, the Fourth Amendment and Your Cell Phone

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on February 15, 2010

Two quick updates:

The RIAA has rejected re remittitur in the Jammie Thomas case, meaning that there will be a third trial, this one only for damages. One wonders what this trial will look like, when the Judge has already ruled at $54,000 was the maximum that any jury could reasonably award for these damages.

Similarly, the RIAA opposed Joel Tenenbaum’s motion for remittitur, which is in no way surprising.

Comments Off Posted in: Links on February 9, 2010

The RIAA offered to settle Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s case for $25,000 this afternoon. An offer which Thomas-Rasset quickly rejected. From her lawyers:

[A]s our response makes clear, Jammie is standing on principle here, and will not accede to payment demands that the RIAA is making thru an unconstitutional statutory scheme (that they lobbied for the creation of) and we will ride this train to it’s appellate end no matter how many future remittiturs are rejected.

At this point, any amount that the RIAA is likely to collect, through the actual amount imposed, or through bankruptcy proceedings of Thomas-Rasset (at the end of all the litigation and appeals), is going to be far less than they’ve paid their lawyers for the endless motions and two trials. There’s no question in my mind that this litigation was a money loser for the RIAA. Removing DRM from MP3s probably converted more people to music buyers than the threat of litigation.

Comments Off Posted in: Commentary on January 27, 2010

FBI Spying, Jammie Thomas gets a Break, and Joel Tenenbaum Tries to Reduce his Verdict.

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FBI Takes Phone Records

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
The statute

Jammie Thomas-Rasset Gets a Break

The opinion

Joel Tenenbaum Asks for a Break

Department of Justice defends constitutionality of $675,000 award against Tenenbaum; p2p user caused ‘great public harm’

UPDATE: We’ve switched to a new recording system that results in a better quality, but for some reason, lower volume podcast. We’re aware of this, and looking in to it. In the meantime, if you have iTunes, turn the volume adjust on the mp3 to 100%, or download it directly from the website. Either of these seem to help solve the problem.

Comments Off Posted in: Podcast on January 25, 2010

In Podcast 34 (to be released later tonight), we talked about the order lowering damages in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case. As you will hear, we discussed whether the RIAA would challenge the order. What we failed to talk about is whether Jammie Thomas-Rasset would challenge the order. The judge’s ruling, which reduced the amount Jammie Thomas-Rasset owed to 1/36th the original verdict is still too high in the view of her lawyer. The main issue seems to be that the judge didn’t squarely decide whether or not statutory damages here are unconstitutional. A topic we address on this week’s podcast.

Comments Off Posted in: Commentary on January 25, 2010

The judge in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case just reduced the damages owed from $1.92 million to $54,000. The RIAA can now choose to accept the lower damages, or schedule a new trial on the issue of damages.

We will certainly discuss this more, either in a post or podcast, but we wanted to get this up now.

1 Comment Posted in: Links on January 22, 2010