A US District Court in Arizona has just rejected the RIAA “making available” notion of copyright infringement.  In the case Atlantic v Howell, the decision states, “the general rule, supported by the great weight of authority, is that infringement of the distribution right requires an actual dissemination of either copies or phonorecords.”

The case centers around a married couple, the Howells, whose entire hard disk was being shared over Kazaa.  The decision states that the data collected by RIAA’s fact finding operation, Media Sentry, was not enough to prove that actual distribution had occurred.

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Xinhua News Agency said Zhou Cheng, 40, was jailed for one year and fined about $1,430 by the Chaoyang District People’s Court on Friday.

Cheng had been selling DVDs from his shop in Chaoyang for $2.15 each and upon his arrest was found with nearly 11,000 DVDs in his possession.  Pirated DVDs are extremely common throughout China and this is one of the first cases in which sellers have been prosecuted to such an extent.

Photo courtesy flickr user ernoldiño

TorrentFreak has a fascinating article about how Louis Vuitton is suing a 26 year old artist for copyright infringement because she is selling t-shirts and posters depicting a Darfur victim dressed as a Paris Hilton lookalike, complete with Louis Vuitton inspired handbag.  Louis Vuitton is asking for as much as $20,000 per day in damages until the student ceases selling her wares.

The Paris based fashion house Louis Vuitton has filed charges against a 26 year old student artist for selling posters and t-shirts of a Darfur victim, holding a designer bag inspired by a Louis Vuitton design. All of the profits had been going to charity but Louis Vuitton is still demanding massive damages.

Louis Vuitton Sues Darfur Fundraiser for Copyright Infringement | TorrentFreak

Bayer AG has filed patent infringement suits against Watson Laboratories, Inc. and Sandoz, Inc. due to their recent filings with the FDA for approval to market generic versions of Bayer’s Yasmin contraceptive prior to Bayer’s patent expiring.

Bayer’s patent is below as are the statements from each company:

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Watson’s statement
Bayer’s statement

Pure Digital Technology, which makes the Flip Video Camera that has captured 13% of the US camcorder market, has recently received a new lawsuit alleging that the camera’s video compression codecs violate US patent no. 5,781,788 that is held by a small Suffern, New York company, Advanced Video Technologies, LLC.  The patent is below and we are working on obtaining a copy of the lawsuit.

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Google Patents - Patent 5,781,788

Pure Digital

Xinhua, China’s state news agency, is writing today that 4,300 individuals were arrested for copyright infringement in China last year in just shy of 2,700 cases. Xinhua claims that this is an 18% rise over last year. China is under quite a lot of pressure to increase its safeguards against IP infringement and the article also states that the government is going about setting up 40 IP rights “service centers” around the country. It sounds like a good idea though it’s questionable the scheme will work in practice.

JK Rowling and Warner Brothers are suing to keep RDR Books, a small publisher in Michigan, from publishing a Harry Potter Lexicon.  Rowling was in court in New York yesterday, testifying against the publisher, RDR, and author, Steve Vander Ark.  Both Rowling’s declaration to the court and testimony were emotional, invoking the amount of hard work and emotional investment that had gone into the creation of her series of novels.  She classifies the Lexicon as “sloppy” and blatant copying.

Central to the case is whether the book constitutes scholarship and comment as is protected under the First Amendment, or whether the work is simply plagiarism as Rowling and Warner Brothers allege. Rowling enlists the support of Jeri Johnson, a Senior Tutor and Lecturer in American literature from Exeter College, Oxford.  Johnson’s statements allege that Vander Ark’s work indeed constitutes plagiarism rather than scholarly work.

Vander Ark’s defence includes two main points.  The first is that he has operated what he claims to be a well trafficked website that has similar information to that in his book.  Vander Ark had communicated several times, both in person and via email, with Cheryl Klein, a Senior Editor, Rowling’s US publisher.  The substance of their communications was Vander Ark requesting a position as an editor on a potential Rowling book of the same nature as the one that Vander Ark later wrote.  He makes his case, in the email correspondence that he is the perfect candidate based on the success of his website.  Vander Ark is using this correspondence to try to indicate that Scholastic approved of the content of the website, and that the content of the book is no different.

Continue reading for a CBS News report and some documents from the case:

Rowling’s initial statement:

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• Chery Klein’s, Scholastic editor who corresponded with Vander Ark, statement
• Correspondence between Vander Ark and Rowling’s representatives
• Jeri Johnson’s, Oxford Lecturer, initial statement
• Jeri Johnson’s second statement
• Rowling’s second statement
• Contract between RDR and Vander Ark
• Vander Ark’s statement

Seagate has delivered the first blow of its assault on SSD makers. STEC, a maker of solid state drives for industrial applications, today announced that Seagate has filed suit in a San Francisco court for patent infringement. Earlier this year, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins had foreshadowed the possibility of patent infringement lawsuits against SSD makers in the event that the newfangled devices start to impact Seagate’s sales of traditional hard drives.  Seagate did not contact STEC prior to filing the suit.

STEC is one of the first companies to build SSDs, having designed, manufactured and shipped SSDs as early as 1994, long before any of the suggested patents were issued to Seagate.

STEC believes that Seagate’s action is a desperate move to disrupt how aggressively customers are embracing STEC’s Zeus-IOPS technology and changing the balance of power in enterprise storage. Seagate is sending a clear signal that it recognizes STEC as the leader in the SSD business and is attempting to slow down part of the growth that STEC is gaining through its SSD offering, particularly in the enterprise segment.

STEC’s announcement

Seagate, for its part, had nothing of note on its website regarding the case.

Patents in Question:

1. Solid-state mass memory storage device (#6,404,647)
   
2. Surface mount IC stacking method and device (#6,849,480)
3. Hardware assisted memory backup system and method (#6,336,174)

Snoop Dogg, the well known rapper, is being sued by James D. Jenkins of Colorado, who alleges that when at a Snoop Dogg concert in 2006, he handed a tape of his music to Ice Cube’s manager.  He alleges that samples of the tape ended up in Snoop Dogg’s song, “Sexual Seduction”.

The suit is hand-written by Jenkins and names Calvin Broadus, Snoop Dogg’s real name, as the defendent: (continue reading to view the rather funny lawsuit)

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Image courtesy of flickr user Janet Dancer

Thousands of hours have been spent in negotiations to address the concerns of 100 Senators, hundreds of Representatives, and dozens of stakeholders

It seems that this handful of words is related to the regulation of damages arising from patent infringement. Some of the country’s largest corporations, such as Cisco, Bank of America, and Microsoft, are joined together in support of the bill, dubbing themselves the “Coalition for Patent Fairness”.