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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.

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Declare a license or risk losing participation | 751 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Declare a license or risk losing participation
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 03 2012 @ 04:16 AM EDT
"So here's the problem. If you share software on the Internet without using
a license, the software is protected by your copyright and all rights revert to
you"

It is my understanding that source code must have a copyright statement in order
to be covered by copyright. If source code does not have a copyright statement
when it is released then it is considered public domain.

What then happens if a contributor appends a copyright statement when modifying
a file that was released with no copyright?

I was never clear on the chain of copyrights with regards to software
modifications. Does the original author have to state in a license that
modifications belong to him or belong to the contributor? I guess it depends on
whether you wind up in equity court where "fairness" rules and law
means next to nothing or in common-law court where the rules are more important
than fairness.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Samsung Galaxy S3 sales hot despite iPhone 5
Authored by: soronlin on Wednesday, October 03 2012 @ 10:23 AM EDT
Samsung Galaxy S3 sales hot despite iPhone 5

PJ says people hate patent aggression. That's exactly the opposite of what both I and the author of the piece extract from the figures, at least the ones regarding the iPhine 5 release.

Galaxy S3 sales were flat in the week before the iPhone 5 announcement. That looks to me as if 7% of new phone users were waiting until they saw how phenomenal the new iPhone was, and on seeing how phenomenal it wasn't they bought a Galaxy S3 the next week.

No High-minded moral outrage, however much we may wish to see it. Instead pure materialistic pragmatism.

On the other hand, the verdict clearly did Samsung a lot of good, and that may be the reason that the next few weeks' figures were also raised. But even there my opinion would be that all the verdict did was to make the Samsung a viable alternative to the magical iPhone. If Apple is saying they are the same thing, then it must be true, and the Galaxy is much cheaper.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

P&G, Walmart, Coke And 30 Other Huge Advertisers Just Humiliated Microsoft
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 03 2012 @ 01:33 PM EDT
http://www.businessinsider.com/30-advertisers-write-letter-of-protest-to-microso
ft-over-ie10-2012-10

The chief marketing officers of Procter & Gamble, Walmart, Ford, Verizon,
Coca Cola, Unilever, General Electric, American Express, Kraft, and 30 other
companies signed a letter to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, complaining about the
"do not track" (DNT) function planned for Internet Explorer 10.

IE10 will launch with a default DNT position, preventing consumers from being
targeted by advertisers. Those advertisers spend $2.8 billion a year via
Microsoft. The letter was timed to rain on Microsoft's parade at Advertising
Week, at which it launched new native ad products for Windows 8 and a redesigned
MSN.

It is rare for advertisers to publicly criticize the media sellers they deal
with. It's rarer still for them to time their criticism to inflict maximum PR
damage. And it's rarest of all, for them to band together — even with
competitors — and sign a statement against a marketing partner that takes
billions of their dollars.

The letter is thus the most humiliating form of public dressing-down Microsoft
could have received from its clients. It also appears to be, in part, a response
to an August blog post by Microsoft chief privacy officer Brendon Lynch, which
effectively told advertisers to drop dead.

The advertisers' letter says:

... Microsoft’s announcement has been uniformly met with outrage, opposition,
and declarations that Microsoft’s action is wrong. The entire media ecosystem
has condemned this action. The Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, after
an initially supportive response to Microsoft’s announcement, released a
statement expressing his belief that the right standard is a default of “off”
for “do-not-track,” recognizing the harm to consumers that Microsoft’s decision
could create.

Apache, a provider of software that supports nearly two-thirds of Internet web
site offerings, has designed its software to ignore the “do-not-track” setting
if the browser reaching it is Internet Explorer 10, describing Microsoft’s
actions as a “deliberate abuse of open standards” developed by a standard
setting organization to recognize a default “off.”

The subtext: No tracking data, no ad dollars. (For context, Microsoft's
advertising division loses $8.1 billion a year, which tells you why the browser
division's decisions take priority over the ad division's clients.)

Ad Age reported that Microsoft advertising chief Rik van der Kooi indicated
Microsoft may be shifting back toward the ad business' position. He said Windows
8 would contain a setup prompt asking them to choose whether they want to be
tracked or not. That's significant, because a default DNT position doesn't
require such a choice.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

News Picks
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 03 2012 @ 11:53 PM EDT
Google withdraws recent ITC complaint in Motorola v. Apple case

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Oracle files appeal in android IP case
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 04 2012 @ 03:01 AM EDT

Not content with getting a drubbing in Alsup's courtroom, Oracle has filed the inevitable appeal

http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/03/oracle-google-android- java-lawsuit/

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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