A group of 20 inventors urges Congress not to pass a bill that would reform the way the U.S. Patent system works.

About 20 inventors and U.S. company executives, visiting Washington, D.C., encouraged Congress to defeat the Patent Reform Act, a version of which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month. The Senate has not yet voted on its version of the bill.

First GPL lawsuit in the U.S. settles out of court

Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.

What is unusual about this case is that it actually went to a court. Nearly all GPL complaints are resolved without an actual court appearance.

There have been lively discussions this past week on the Harvard Free Culture mailing list about an interesting Creative Commons case where a woman's photo was used in an advertising campiagn without anyone getting a model release (subject "CC Licensing Issue"; see also an extensive discussion on Flickr.) and also one on whether the Harvard Coop can prevent a student from copying ISBN numbers of books for the purpose of comparing prices (multiple threads, subject "This Coop Thing").

RIAA ordered to pay attorneys' fees.

Nicole sent in another link to this story about Atlantic v. Andersen in which the RIAA has been ordered to pay Tanya Andersen's attorneys' fees. The RIAA accused Andersen in January 2005 of copyright violations and dismissed their complaint two and a half years later without ever producing any evidence of Andersen's alleged wrongdoing.

Lance Armstrong Foundation sues Oklahoma pet collar company

Nicole sent in a link to a story about a trademark dispute between the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Animal Charity Collar Group Inc., a manufacturer of pet collars. The Armstrong Foundations sells colored wrist bands under the name LiveStrong as part of its program for cancer research and help for survivors of cancer. The pet collar company sells collars for dogs and cats under the names BarkStrong and PurrStrong.

In a move which might have taken one or two industry pundits by surprise, SCO has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection from its creditors. This automatically puts on hold the trial by Novell for damages due to SCO violating copyrights held by Novell.

SCO, which is headquartered in Linden, Utah, was scheduled to appear in federal District Court in Salt Lake City Monday as a defendant in a trial to determine how much it has to pay Novell in licensing fees for violating Novell’s copyrights for Unix and UnixWare software. U.S. District Court Judge Dale Kimball, who was to preside over the trial, was the same judge who ruled Aug. 10 that Novell, not SCO, owned the copyrights.

In a related story, SCO CEO Darl McBride blames Linux for his company's woes. The mind boggles.

Filmmaker Christopher Knight has prevailed against Viacom by filing a counterclaim notice with YouTube:
VIACOM SITUATION UPDATE: YouTube has restored my clip

Knight goes on to say:

Very special thanks to Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their terrific assistance in this matter! Folks, I cannot begin to describe how impressed I have become with the Electronic Frontier Foundation because of this. Theirs has been the kind of service that is so rare to witness nowadays that when you do see it, it practically comes as a shock. There's no telling how much grief and headache that Fred and his crew have prevented not just for me, but for a lot of other people also. And if you find that you are capable of doing so, I would really like to suggest making a contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is one organization that really does merit a tremendous amount of respect for the work that it does.

The Recording Industry of America is in the news again. Judge Rudi M. Brewster dismissed the RIAA's case on the grounds that the plaintiff has failed to state a case upon which relief can be granted.

Last week the Computer and Communication Industry Association issued a report saying that more than 4.5 trillion dollars of annual revenue in the US economy is due to exceptions to copyright law, such as Fair Use:
Fair Use Economy Represents One-Sixth of U.S. GDP

The Fair Use exception to U.S. copyright law, as codified in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 states, “The fair use of a copyrighted work … is not an infringement of copyright.” Fair use permits a range of activities that are critical to many high technology businesses such as search engines and software developmers. As the study indicates, however, fair use and related exceptions to copyright are crucial to non-technology industries as well, such as insurance, legal services, and newspaper publishers. The dependence of industries outside the high-tech field illustrates the crucial need for balanced copyright law.

The study itself is available for download from the CCIA Web site.

One of our topics at last month's meeting was an article which argued that the fashion industry could not thrive in an arena where strong IP protection prevails. A recent paper by Jacob Loshin of the Yale Law School discusses How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law

From the abstract on the Social Sciences Research Network:

Intellectual property scholars have begun to explore the curious dynamics of IP's negative spaces, areas in which IP law offers scant protection for innovators, but where innovation nevertheless seems to thrive. Such negative spaces pose a puzzle for the traditional theory of IP, which holds that IP law is necessary to create incentives for innovation.

This paper presents a study of one such negative space which has so far garnered some curiosity but little sustained attention - the world of performing magicians. This paper argues that idiosyncratic dynamics among magicians make traditional copyright, patent, and trade secret law ill-suited to protecting magicians' most valuable intellectual property. Yet, the paper further argues that the magic community has developed its own set of unique IP norms which effectively operate in law's absence. The paper details the structure of these informal norms that protect the creation, dissemination, and performance of magic tricks. The paper also discusses broader implications for IP theory, suggesting that a norm-based approach may offer a promising explanation for the puzzling persistence of some of IP's negative spaces.

Two and a half years ago, NTP won a 600 million dollar judgement against RIM, makers of the Blackberry communicator, over claims of patent violation. Last week they took aim at most of the wireless telecomm companies:
NTP Brings More Suits

This case is especially problematic because the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary ruling around the time of the RIM settlement that several of the patents were invalid.

Software Freedom Day is being celebrated by groups world wide this Saturday, September 15.

In Boston, the sponsors are the Free Software Foundation, BinaryFreedom, and Boston Free Culture. Come join us in downtown Boston for an afternoon of talks, activities, and outreach.

The Copyright Alliance returns the volley from the Computer and Communication Industry Association complaint to the FTC from last month:

Patrick Ross article

This misleading statement presents considerable irony, given the fact that CCIA is filing a complaint alleging deceptive language. Fair use, as CCIA must surely know, is not a "consumer right," but rather an affirmative defense. And this is an important difference.

Here is some commentary about the CCIA complaint.

The British goivernment has responded to a petition calling for the BBC to make its iPlayer work on platforms other than Microsoft Windows:

iPlayer e-petition response

In the case of the iPlayer, following the consultation, the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems. The BBC Trust made it a condition of approval for the BBC's on-demand services that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.

House passes patent overhaul bill

ITWorld reports on legislative action by the House

The House passed the Patent Reform Act by a vote of 225-175. The Senate has not yet acted on a similar piece of legislation.

However, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a statement on Thursday saying it opposes the bill. It said that the changes in assessment of damages would "introduce new complications and risks reducing incentives to innovate." The OMB objections raise the possibility that President George Bush could veto the legislation.

Filmmaker Christopher Knight posts in his blog:
Viacom hits me with copyright infringement for posting on YouTube a video that Viacom made by infringing on my own copyright!

It's a tangled story. From the blog:

So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip.

Prior to the September 2 vote by the ISO, I should have posted this link to other articles about OOXML:
An "OOXML is a bad idea" blog entry compendium

However, as things turned out, Microsoft lost its bid. In addition to allegations of ballot stuffing in the USA, Sweden invalidated its vote due to double voting by a committee member:
Sweden's SIS Declares OOXML Vote Invalid - Will Change Vote from Yes to Abstain - Updated

The US committeee INCITS voted in favor:
INCITS confirms: U.S. to vote for Open XML in ISO

The ISO official press release says:
Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard

A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

Microsoft is now faced with the task of addressing numerous comments made during the procedures each ISO member followed in its internal balloting, in preparation for a Ballot Resolution Meeting to be held in February 2008. The decision of that meeting is final.

The next meeting of Cambridge/Boston CopyNight will be at 7:30 PM on Tuesday, September 25, 2007.

We meet at the Hong Kong restaurant in Harvard Square (see "Meeting Place" for details).

This month we're back on the ground floor of the newly renovated restaurant.