News
August 29, 2007
Patent Troll Sues Online Companies Over Automated Emails
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on August 29, 2007 at 3:25:58 PM
I love how we grant patents to things that are obvious, even when they were filed. This patent company is suing many online companies over their use of automated response emails. I believe that vacation responders and the like have been around for much longer.
Quote
A more likely scenario appears to be a payday for the plaintiff. "It looks like Polaris IP is in the business of licensing patent rights and has no desire to enforce its requested injunction," said Dennis Crouch, associate professor of law at University of Missouri School of Law and the author of the law blog Patently-O, in an e-mail. "I expect that Polaris IP will be willing to settle these cases for what it believes is a reasonable six- or seven-digit figure." Crouch pointed out that the message routing patent at issue has been involved in litigation many times. "There are no published opinions associated with these cases and they have all been settled," he said. Polaris IP, Crouch observed, "appears to be part of a web of IP-related companies associated with attorney David Pridham." These companies include Orion IP, Constellation IP, IP Navigation Group, Cushion Technologies, CT IP Holdings, Triton, Circinus IP, and Firepond.
April 8, 2007
Gaim Now Pidgen IM
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on April 8, 2007 at 2:56:15 PM
Tragic news as Gaim is renamed to Pidgen IM. There goes me saying it is better than AIM. Another grave misuse of IP and copyright laws.
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Many years ago, when this project was first started, it was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." AOL naturally complained, and Mark Spencer changed the name to "Gaim." AOL was appeased, and no one really ever heard of it because there were very few users back then.
A few years passed, AOL trademarked "AIM," and started refering to their IM services under that name. They complained. The issue was brought up on Slashdot, and the developers at the time got some legal support. That legal support advised that the ongoing discussions with AOL be kept confidential until fully settled, and so it remained. Everyone thought the issue went away then. It sorta did, in that AOL stopped responding to the legal support for a while.
Our legal support has changed several times, and each group of lawyers have recommended silence & secrecy. Around the time of the first 2.0.0 beta, AOL came back into our lives in a very strong way, this time threatening to sue Sean.
This represents a clear pattern. AOL received more pushback than they expected, and would sort of let things stand for a while. They they woudl threaten a different Gaim developer. Each time a new Gaim developer was threatened, we had to look at new legal support.
December 7, 2006
UK Report Wants Stronger IP Laws
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on December 7, 2006 at 2:38:37 PM
Why do governments waste their time on these meaningless issues? IP laws are way to strict and are given too much time for the IP holder for a monopoly of their garbage. I support a small time monopoly for copyrights. Remember that the value is NOT the copyrighted material but the government mandated monopoly granted. Once people realize this, the actual content is worthless to anyone except society as a whole as it should be.
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The Gowers Report was commissioned by the government to look at modernising UK copyright laws for the digital age. While it proposes new powers against copyright infringement, it also says private users should be allowed to copy music from a CD to their MP3 player. It also recommends the 50-year copyright protection for recorded music should not be extended. Former newspaper editor Andrew Gowers said piracy and counterfeiting was probably the biggest challenge the intellectual property (IP) system faced.
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