intellectual property - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Time to give up on The Beatles on iTunes

  If there was any hope left that The Beatles' music would appear on iTunes in this lifetime, Yoko Ono just killed it.

• Skype avoids antitrust suit in settlement with IDT

  Three weeks ago, telecommunications company IDT Corp. filed a civil antitrust complaint against eBay and Skype, but the companies, which have also been in a patent dispute since 2006, have now settled all their differences.

• I4i wins final approval from USPTO in Microsoft dispute

  The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a final confirmation of a patent awarded to i4i that is at the heart of a dispute with Microsoft and that once threatened the sale of Word software.

• Why not to jailbreak the iPhone

  The United States Copyright Office ruled that jailbreaking an iPhone is not a copyright violation under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Be that as it may, there are still some very good reasons not to jailbreak the iPhone.

• Cisco may call home TelePresence 'UMI'

  Cisco Systems may be planning to give its consumer TelePresence system the friendly sounding name "UMI," according to a trademark application made last year.

• Hollywood pushes movie streaming standard, UltraViolet

  The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a group of 58 Hollywood studios and technology companies, is pinning its hopes for the future of entertainment on UltraViolet, an online digital locker that would allow you to buy a movie once, and stream it over the Internet for free on any other compatible devices.

• Disagreements on transparency fail to stop ACTA treaty leak

  Disagreements between the European Union and the US over whether to release the current negotiating text of a secretive international copyright treaty became moot this week, with the publication on a French website of a leaked version of the latest draft of the treaty.

• ipernica (ASX:IPR) reveals lapse of 720k shares

  Technology IP company Ipernica (ASX:IPR) has revealed that 720k options exercisable at $0.15 each have expired unusued

• UK royalty society suggests ISPs pay for pirated music

  A U.K. music royalty collection society has suggested charging ISPs for pirated content traded on their networks, as the organization claims piracy will worsen with faster broadband speeds.

• NTP sues smartphone makers Apple, Google and others

  Patent holding company NTP, which received a US$612.5 million settlement from BlackBerry marker Research In Motion in a patent infringement case, has filed patent lawsuits against six makers of smartphones or related software, including Apple and Google.

• Nokia asks Russia for help retrieving N8 prototype

  Nokia has asked Russian authorities to help retrieve what it says is an unauthorized model of a future phone that a blogger wrote about and photographed on a phone review site.

• Court patent ruling leaves software patents intact

  The U.S. Supreme Court has ducked the question of whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should continue to issue software patents in a ruling Monday striking down a business-method patent.

• US trade panel to investigate S3 complaint against Apple

  The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has launched a formal investigation into four patent complaints filed against Apple by computer graphics hardware maker S3 Graphics, which asked the agency to block Apple from importing the iPhone, iPad and other products into the U.S.

• Salesforce.com sues Microsoft for patent infringement

  Salesforce.com has sued Microsoft for patent infringement, making a move in response to an intellectual property suit Redmond filed against the on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor last month.

• U.S. government to crack down on piracy

  A new White House report says the U.S. government will pressure other countries on IP enforcement