They [Congress] knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the file-sharing site Napster emerged, and that direct employment in the industry had fallen by more than half since then, to less than 10,000.

There are two caveats here worth noting. The first is that when Mr. Sherman talks about sales and the “music industry” generally he means his organization’s members — specifically the four (soon to be three) “major labels” and all of their various sub-labels and subsidiaries. This is important because in 1999, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the major labels were engaged in an illegal price fixing scheme. The major labels agreed to discontinue their price-fixing practices as part of settlement decree in May 2000. Not surprisingly, once the major labels stopped violating antitrust law, their artificially inflated profits declined and independent competitors saw a significant rise in profits....It would be embarrassing for those not explicitly in the pay of the music industry to believe that it is the responsibility of government to return the industry to glory days of price fixing and monopoly profits. - Harold Feld, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Old media, after all, is built on the premise of large organizations competing for resources; its narrative is dependent on pitting two powerful representatives against each other to portray their respective interests and let them battle it out in public. Old media consists of large corporations that can only portray conflicts between other large organizations....The copyright monopoly industries had no problems producing a trained, charismatic debater who would probably win in any televised debate against a random person of one of the millions of activists. But in the end, it didn't matter: it was the millions that made the difference and won....

There are two important things to learn from this: We don't need old media to tell our story to succeed, and we're able to tell the story ourselves. This, if anything, is what should have old media really worried. - Rick Falkvinge, TechDirt

Tim O'Reilly, who worked with Pei back in 1992 and 1993, celebrated the verdict on a Google+ post, and added this warning:

"The current patent system is a terrible tax on invention, as it requires real inventors to spend time in court rather than focusing on making real things happen. We must remember that the patent system was supposed to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," not to enrich people who know how to work the legal system."

Amen to that. - Matt Rosoff, SF Chronicle

An eight-member federal jury in East Texas deliberated Thursday for just a few hours before concluding that all of Eolas’ asserted claims of ownership to technology allowing access to the interactive web were invalid. That means the three upcoming trials that were scheduled to rule on infringement and damages, for Google, Yahoo and other companies, have been canceled. The eight defendant companies who resisted the lawsuits won’t pay anything to Eolas or its partner, the University of California, for using the web....

At “Rick’s on the Square” opposite the courthouse, defense lawyers were celebrating. There was a giddy atmosphere; these folks truly felt like they saved the Web today. ...

As for the many companies that settled with Eolas, they might be regretting that pragmatic decision in light of the verdict.

Those companies include: Apple, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, JP Morgan Chase, New Frontier Media, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises International, Rent-A-Center, Sun Microsystems (bought by Oracle while this litigation was underway), and Texas Instruments.

[PJ: Maybe the USPTO needs to think about what it almost enabled.] - Joe Mullin, Wired

Later Tuesday, Wei would testify that he had demonstrated interactive elements working in the Viola browser to Sun Microsystems in May 1993 — several months before Doyle claims to have come up with his invention.

Finally, Doan turned to Berners-Lee’s book, in which he described Wei as “a very inventive student at UC Berkeley.” Berners-Lee described how the web community at that time wasn’t focused on patents or even money — Wei simply put his invention online for free. “It was ahead of its time,” said Berners-Lee. “The things Pei was doing would later be done in Java.” Java was heavily used in the late 1990s to add interactivity to web pages, later to be supplanted by Flash, Javascript and now HTML5.

[PJ: Even though the verdict is in, I was sure you'd want to see this testimony. It goes on to show the lawyers for Eolas asking about his views on software patents. You'll enjoy his answer.] - Joe Mullin, Wired

Apple says that because Motorola has a licensing agreement with Qualcomm for that patent, as does Apple, Motorola is in breach of its contract with Qualcomm: "Motorola’s German lawsuit is in direct breach of a Patent Licensing Agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm. As a Qualcomm customer, Apple is a third-party beneficiary of that contract."

This breach, Apple claims, means that Motorola’s rights to the patent, both in Europe and the U.S., are exhausted, and it wants the courts to make Motorola drop its claims against Apple for violation of patents in Germany. - Matthew Panzarino, TheNextWeb

Named as the three defendants in the suit are Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., of Korea, Samsung Electronics America, Inc., based out of New York, and Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC., a Delaware company. The patent infringement suit has been assigned to Judge Lucy H. Koh. - AppleInsider

Under pressure from the United States, the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement has been expanded to combat online piracy. The main focus of the protests is the threat to an open internet, the ban on free downloading and the prospect of providers, search engines and users being vulnerable to prosecution. - Radio Netherlands