International

Apple files iTunes trademark covering new gadgets, services

http://www.macnn.com/blogs/?p=521

On april 21, Apple expanded its trademarks wuth the European Trademark Office from 4 to 19 categories. This will help Apple expand its iTunes accesories and capabilities in Europe.

This patent allows an American company to be that much more protected overseas and allow Apple to grow that much more.

Universities’ Intellectual Property Stance Criticized

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/22/ip

The issue in this article is about international pharmaceuticals. There are negotiations with the Wirld Health Organizations that would replace interantional property rights with international contests with huge cash prizes. Some say that the system in place is good enough but others say that this would encourage innovation even more in this field.

This would greatly affect how medical innovation gets into and benefits developing countries who need the cures medicine can provide. Just as talked about in class, medicine is huge money and the outcome of this will affect how people get paid.

LG accuses Whirlpool of patent infringement

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSWNAS959120080424

LG as filed suit against Whirlpool for copyright infringement for stealing ideas from the South Keorean company which include food storage and water dispencers. LG had already filed with the ITC in January to stop Whirlpool from selling the infringing products.

These two companies will probab;y have to get some kind of arbitrator it act as the middle man, which would probably be the ITC because they are already involved, to settle the suit.

DRM Articles

BitGravity Employs Dynamic DRM to Protect Web Video

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2284982,00.asp

BitGravity just released new software to protect its flash downloads from being played beyond where it was intended to be played. Instead of downloading the flash in sequence onto a user's cache where they can replay it are their own leisure, the downloading is randomized until the media player assembles it correctly and plays it. This is to help boost protection already in place like SecureAccess which locks the content under certain parameters and CacheControl which deletes the content off the computer.

Exec: NBC wants back on iTunes, anti-piracy measures

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/14145/

George Kliavkoff, NBC chief digital officer, says the before it puts content back up on iTunes, Apple needs to do more about preventing priacy. NBC's TV shows were pulled from iTunes last December after a contact disputue. Kliakoff said that too much content on mp3 players are pirated and because of taht networks like NBC are losing money that they could otherwise put back into the product. Kliakoff suggested that there should be some way to put sercurity in software like iTunes to prevent pirated content to get onto iPods and other players. Apple does have DRM software in place currently, Apple's Fairplay, but it apparently does not hit the NBC standards.

Wal-Mart Ditches DRM... And Lots Of Major Label Music With It

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080408/003857784.shtml

On its online music downloads, Wal-Mart got rid of its DRM software, citing that it did not help and only made customers mad. Upon hearing this Sony/BMG and Warner music pulled its content away from Wal-Mart among other music labels. This greatly limits what Wal-Mart can provide, especially while trying to contend with iTunes, and also hurts the Music labels because it is one less place to have their music distributed.

Trade Secret Claims

Microsoft Releases 14,000 Pages Of Trade Secrets

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207100353

On 4/8/08, Microsoft released trade secrets regarding its Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007, and Server Exchange 2007 on a website. Much of the information includes how the software communicates with other parts of the Microsoft software. This is just the beginning of the information they are going to release. There are plans to release more information about their SQL Server in June. Still with releasing this information, Microsoft still has patents on their information so they are still charge licensing fees to commercial developers.

This story is all about Microsoft releasing a lot of information on their trade secrets to the public. Instead of people having to try and break the code and figure it out for themsleves, Microsoft did all the work for them, but Microsoft is still protected though because they still have patents on most of thier information so they can still get royalties from programmers that decide to use their code.

Green laws hide too much

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=d9530261-008a-44ff-b36e-2695ef783234

Right now in Canada there are two bills are trying to be passed to help make British Columbia the world leader against global warming. The bill would include lower emission standards and using greener fuels. The problem is that businesses would have to give up a lot of their proprietary information about their products and building processes which would include the companies' trade secrets. The businesses are worried that their secrets could be leaked and they would lose their competitive advantage and thier profits along with it.

This is all about a company's right to keep their trade secrets secret. They would be forced to give the government thier information and they just want to make sure that they do not hurt their company in doing so.

Allstate is faced with 3rd inquiry

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080410/NEWS/804100502/1661

Allstate was forced to give up over 160,000 pages of information to the Florida Senate building for an investigation for charging their customers more than necessary after the government pledged money to help those in need after the hurricane disaster. All gave up their customer list which would be considered their trade secret. Allstate gave up all the information asked for but believes it is way more than is necessary.

04/04/08 Articles Privacy, Publicity, and Defamation

Go-Daddy pulls cop ratings site
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/GoDaddy-Pulls-Plug-On-CopRating-Website-92554

Go-Daddy pulled a site that allowed people to rate and view officers in the area. They did not give an offical reason why. One representative said that it was because of "suspicious activity" while another said that the site was simply being viewed too much. The privacy policy does include Go Daddy's ability to shut down sites if they defame people among other reasons.

This case can be seen as an invasion of privacy of the cops who patrol the areas. They are being rated by those who have no power to rate their performance. These kinds of ratings could greatly hurt the the performance of the cops in the area if people realize that some areas are more laxed on security.

Defamed Lawyer
http://www.lvrj.com/news/17123421.html

David Rivers, a Las Vegas lawyer, sued the Las Vegas Tribune for defamation for an article that they printed saying that Rivers was a drunk and beat his wife. It would be okay for the newspaper to print this but it is not true and Rivers is suing for a million dollars in damages. Rivers admitted to have a bad past but thie accusations have been unproven.

This is a simple case of character defamation. The newspaper printed a story that they have yet to prove and as such Rivers have to right to sue the Tribune for all the damage caused by esentially thier careless reporting.

Google and privacy protection
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9909637-46.html

Google is being critized for their current privacy policy. Google uses users search inquires to improve results, but in order to do that they have to catalogue the inquiries and as such can see what people have searched for thus intruding on the privacy of the users. Thier G-mail email service is also unprotected. The encryption technology casts too much to accounts can be easily broken into.

This focuses on the invastion of privacy of the users of Google. All the users can have thier searches looked into by anyone in the Google network and as such have embarassing searches come back to protentially haunt them. Regardless personal information can still be potentially seen by those who have no right to see it. The same thing applies to their Gmail service and how information can be invaded.

2/29/08 Student Article Summaries

RIAA loses in file sharing case
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060713-7257.html

In this artcle a mother decided not to settle out of court with the RIAA over supposed illegal music downloads. Debbie Foster requested dates and files of the downloads but she did not recieve the information she wanted and the RIAA in turn dropped the suit. They were asking that she pat $5000 to settle but Foster fought against it.

No More Buster Swords, Square-Enix Cracking Down
http://www.otakutimes.com/category/legal/

Squire-Enix, a game developing company, is suing sword manufacturers because of the manufacturers copying weapons from the Final Fantasy game series without getting the proper licensing agreements to do so. The suit was filed in California and they are seeking the damages from the infringements. Square-Enix sent out a message saying that it appreciates the enthusiasm but it must protects is IP.

Warner Sues Seeqpod, tests digital copyright
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/01/25/warner.sues.seeqpod/

Seeqpod is a search engine type of service that allows people to search for music online and stream it to their computers but not download it. Warner is suing Seeqpod for up to $150,000 per song. Warner claims that it is infringing on copyrights as well as guiding people to get illegal bootlegs. Seeqpod says that they are not responsible because they do not host any music on their site and are not aware of any music it has "infringed" upon.