(Image: CNET/CBS Interactive) A U.S. appeals court “appeared skeptical” on Tuesday about handing Oracle a $1.3 billion damages package previously served by a jury, which was later overturned. According to the Reuters news agency, Judge William Fletcher called Oracle’s attorney’s figures that were used to drum up the damages figure as “pie in the sky dreaming,” which may lead to the software giant losing the damages it was first awarded. But if Oracle doesn’t get its way, seven years after the allegations first came to light, the company is gunning for a new trial, reported Bloomberg. Oracle is taking on German enterprise software powerhouse SAP in a legal ding-dong that led to it admitting massive infringement of Oracle’s copyright. A jury awarded Oracle the billion-dollar-plus sum in 2010 after an SAP subsidiary, TomorrowNow, unlawfully downloaded millions of Oracle files. SAP bought the company to begin supporting Oracle customers at a lower cost…
copyright infringement
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Aereo, backed by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp charges users a low monthly fee to watch live or recorded broadcast TV channels on computers or mobile devices - and does not pay any of the broadcasters.Aereo has urged the high court to hear the case even though it won in the lower court, as it would like a definitive and final answer in regards to the issue.Help end world hunger by going here. Justice Samuel Alito will not participate in it, according to The Supreme Court, which generally does not disclose why justices are excused. A ruling is expected by the end of this June. Aereo subscribers can stream live broadcasts of TV channels on mobile devices using miniature antennas. Launched in March 2012 in the New York area, Aereo has since expanded to about 10 cities and plans to enter several more. The four broadcasters…
A U.S. federal court has found file-hosting website Hotfile liable for copyright infringement, according to movie industry body Motion Picture Association of America.The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida also held that Hotfile’s principal, Anton Titov, was personally liable for Hotfile’s infringement, MPAA said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “This case marked the first time that a US court has ruled on whether so-called cyberlockers like Hotfile can be held liable for their infringing business practices,” it added. The order was marked on online court records as “restricted/sealed until further notice.” The opinion will be made public by the court in about two weeks, after confidential and proprietary information has been redacted, MPAA said. The court agreed with the movie studios’ complaint that Hotfile gave incentives to post copyrighted content. Five U.S. movie studios filed a copyright infringement suit against Hotfile in 2011, alleging that the company…
In recent years, though, a decidedly unsexy brand — derided for decades, with little sign of an image improvement — has become one of the city’s most imitated: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Powered in part by the rise of online shopping, which has helped small-time entrepreneurs market their subway-inspired creations widely, the transit agency now issues up to 600 notices a year for copyright infringements to protect trademarks on train line logos, subway maps and other system imagery. That represents a more than twentyfold increase since 2005. But the authority’s focus has not been limited to New York’s starving artists. It has flagged Massimo Vignelli, the designer of the beloved if confounding 1972 subway map, whose 2008 update for Men’s Vogue used trademark route symbols without permission. There have been illicit pastries resembling MetroCards, and earrings made of surviving subway tokens. A stern letter was sent regarding an amateur, all-female…
A recent federal court decision confirms that, without more, merely linking to content of copyrighted content is not direct infringement of the copyright in that content.Plaintiff sued defendants for copyright infringement based on defendants’ alleged unauthorized sale of educational materials online. A paralegal in plaintiffs’ law firm sought to buy some of the infringing materials, and one of the defendants sent her a link to material that had been uploaded to a file locker. Plaintiff moved for summary judgment, arguing in part that the link constituted infringement.The court denied plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion, but not because of the linking. It found that there was a triable fact as to whether defendant had uploaded the infringing content to the file locker. The court held that “as a matter of law, sending an email containing a hyperlink to a site facilitating the sale of a copyrighted work does not itself constitute copyright…
Fox News Channel sued TVEyes, a $500-per-month TV and radio broadcast search service, for copyright infringement on Tuesday. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, alleges that TV Eyes makes versions of the cable news network’s “award winning programming” available on its site for paid users without Fox News’ permission. The lawsuit accuses TVEyes of misappropriating “the entirety of the works that Fox News has developed at great expense and to reproduce, to distribute, to publicly perform and/or to publicly display verbatim copies of the works” without authorization. Also read: Fox News’ Shepard Smith Stumping For ‘True Blood’ Cameo According to the suit, Robert Bruder, director of client relations for TVEyes, admitted that the site was already using Fox News’ content when he approached the channel seeking a license to use that work. “Mr. Bruder notified Fox News that TVEyes had been using Fox News’s content without…
Zynga claim that the app’s name abuses the ‘With Friends’ moniker they use for their family-friendly games. Bloomberg reports that Zynga are accusing the app’s developers of selecting “the name Bang With Friends for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga’s game trademarks fully in mind.” Launched in January, Bang With Friends works by signing into Facebook. Users select the friends they’re “interested” in and if those lucky individuals have also installed the app and already selected them, then both parties are sent an email. Forbes writer Kashmir Hill has already pointed out that the app doesn’t live up to its own promises of anonymity, as users who go to add the app on Facebook will be told if any friends of theirs have. Until recently the founders of the app had chosen to be anonymous, though in June this year, CEO Colin Hodge was interviewed by Business Insider. Hodge…
Internet mogul Kim Dotcom said Thursday he was considering taking legal action against tech giants such as Twitter, Google and Facebook for infringing copyright on a security measure he invented. Dotcom, who is on bail in New Zealand as US authorities seek his extradition in the world’s biggest copyright case, said he invented “two-factor authentication”, which many major sites have adopted as a security feature. Twitter became the latest major player to introduce the measure on Wednesday following a series of cyber-attacks which saw hackers take over the accounts of high-profile targets such as media organizations and send out fake tweets. “Twitter introduces Two-Step-Authentication. Using my invention. But they won’t even verify my Twitter account?!,” Dotcom tweeted. “Google, Facebook, Twitter, Citibank, etc. offer Two-Step-Authentication. Massive IP (intellectual property) infringement by U.S. companies. My innovation. My patent,” he added. To back his claim, the 39-year-old posted a US patent describing the…
Know your rights! Read about the DMCA Act DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998. What is copyright? Copyright is a form of legal protection automatically provided to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. U.S. copyright law generally gives the author/creator or owner of an original creative work an exclusive right to: Reproduce (copy) or distribute the original work to the public (e.g., create and sell copies of a film) Create new works based upon the original work (e.g., make a movie based on a book) Perform or display the work publicly (e.g., perform a play) Violation of one of these rights is called copyright infringement. However, the use may be authorized by copyright limitations (such as fair use) described below. What types of works are protected by copyright? Literary works Music and lyrics Dramatic works and music Pantomimes and choreographic works Photographs, graphics,…