decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Microsoft back to major OS anti-trust violation. | 400 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Bad patents in medicine/chemistry too.
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 11 2012 @ 08:14 PM EDT
A Long-Delayed COX2 Issue Gets Settled - For $450 Million?

The Rochester story is one that many readers will be familiar with. The university, famously, obtained a patent for compounds that exerted a therapeutic effect through inhibition of COX-2, without specifying what compounds those might be. They did not, in fact, have any, nor did they give any hints about what they'd look like, and this is what sank them in the end when the university lost its case against Searle (and its patent) for not fulfilling the "written description" requirement."
Seems like bad patents aren't limited to software. Why do people think they can just write out some nonsensical patent on a bare idea without telling someone how to actually implement it? Oh, right, because some "inventors" want to use them as a get-rich-quick scheme. I'm just glad that part got shot down.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

IP Czar: Voluntary Industry Agreements Could Be Key to Combatting IP Infringement
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 01:03 AM EDT

The types of voluntary industry agreements to deal with online intellectual property theft that began popping up in the United States in 2011 need to be expanded domestically and copied abroad, the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator said during a Senate Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearing May 9.

“I think we have established a good model for other countries, and I want to see other countries encourage these voluntary agreements,” Victoria A. Espinel said during her testimony.

Bureau of National Affairs

The article identifies agreements with major U.S. payment processors — American Express, Discover, MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa — to block payments to web sites that allow downloading of infringing materials as well as agreements with 6 unidentified major ISPs that will notify users when they download infringing material. There is no discussion of the means or persons who will determine which web sites and ISP users have infringed, nor of who will determine which materials infringe.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Under the radar
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 02:59 AM EDT
This would be the perfect time to release unwanted information, when the
Groklawers and the world are busy with covering this trial. Any news on SCO, for
example?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Hands On With the World's Simplest Android Phone
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 03:45 AM EDT
linky

I have a feeling that this design might ironically catch on as feature/basic phone replacements.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Patenting mathematics
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 12:45 PM EDT
It seems the US has been allowing people to patent natural phenomena and
mathematics for a long time. I was just researching dice, and found a claim at
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagonal_trapezohedron that "the US
patent office has a patent showing a similar die dated 1906".

Even if you assume that the "idea" patented is the concept of making a
solid instance of the mathematical model, it still seems blindingly obvious.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Holy moly, Mueller was actually right about something.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 02:58 PM EDT
Naturally he was so surprised that he has devoted a new article to it.

(The test files issue that oracle just got JMOL on, that he originally brought
to
light.)

I Suppose when you are that prolific, some stuff has to end up right , like the

monkeys with typewriters.

Anyway it will be interesting to see if the infringing profits that they want
will
even pay for a day in court. I doubt it, and the judge doesn't seem too
impressed with the case either.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft back to major OS anti-trust violation.
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 04:50 PM EDT
Is Microsoft blocking Chrome and Firefox from native Windows RT a big deal?

Microsoft is back with big time anti-trust violation. Microsoft is including the Win32 API on Windows RT (running on ARM) for its own use, but blocking others from accessing it. Microsoft is attempting to use the fact that it has no market share on ARM devices yet to avoid anti-trust action. However it is clearly a blatent abuse of anti-trust law since Microsoft has a desktop OS monopoly on the Win32 API, and it is abuse this monopoly by extending the Win32 API to Windows RT devices while blocking others from using it, in order to leverage and extend its Windows desktop monopoly to ARM devices.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

It costs Google over $300/employee to upgrade Ubuntu
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 09:01 PM EDT
GOOG has about 33,000 employees.

---

Ubuntu systems at Google are upgraded every LTS release. The entire process of upgrading can take as much as 4 months and it is also quite expensive as one reboot or a small change can cost them as much as 1 million dollars.
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/05/how-google-developers-use-ubuntu.html

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Alison Courses - Introduction to Copyright Law in America
Authored by: Davo.Sydney on Saturday, May 12 2012 @ 09:11 PM EDT
Alison Courses have a lot of free online training (There are ad's and one pay's for the certificates) and one course just released is "Introduction to Copyright Law in America" I haven't done the course (yet), but if someone can review it and let the Groklaw Community know if it's a good place to learn about the USA Copyright laws that might be of some help to someone.

Extracts from the course description:

"This free online course is an introduction to copyright law as practised in the United States, however, the principles and concepts will be of interest to legal professionals in other jurisdictions."

"It also reviews software licensing, and the General Public License and free software."

"Introduction to Copyright Law in America is originally from and published by MIT and has a duration of 4-5 Hours for the average learner. "

Alison Courses - Introduction to Copyright Law in America

Davo

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why doesn't Joshua Bloch license RangeCheck to Google?
Authored by: symbolset on Sunday, May 13 2012 @ 12:18 AM EDT
He wrote this code while working at Google, where he still works. It's his
code. The contributor doesn't lose ownership of the copyright by contributing
the code to Java - it's a joint assignment. So this Joshua Bloch guy can just
grant Google a license out of his own rights, and they're good to go. Shouldn't
take five minutes to scribble out. Why isn't this done?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

We can build the first generation of the USS Enterprise – so let’s do it !
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 13 2012 @ 01:59 AM EDT
site might be overloaded

http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/

Our Space Problem

  • Visions of Enterprise
  • FAQ
  • Images
  • Ship Size
  • Ship Specs
  • Conceptual Design
  • Cost & Mass
  • Universal Lander
  • Missions
  • Infrastructure
  • Mars & Moon Bases
  • Funding & Politics
  • Schedule
  • Backup Plan
  • Compare to Star Trek
  • Can You Help?

    [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
    All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
    Comments are owned by the individual posters.

    PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )