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"On February 13, 2014, the European Court of Justice - the Supreme Court of the European Union - appears to have ruled that anything published on the web may be re-published freely by anybody else. The case concerned linking, but the court went beyond linking in its ruling. This case has not really been noticed, nor have its effects been absorbed by the community at large."

"Over the Yule holidays, I'll be running a series of reminders of some of the most useful talkbacks. We open with one of the more common ones: copyright industry lawyers tend to insist that violation of the copyright monopoly is "stealing". But in the judicial field, lawyers always go by what the courts say, and the US Supreme Court says it isn't."

"Over the Yule holidays, I'll be running a series of reminders of some of the most useful talkbacks. We open with one of the more common ones: copyright industry lawyers tend to insist that violation of the copyright monopoly is "stealing". But in the judicial field, lawyers always go by what the courts say, and the US Supreme Court says it isn't."

"from the antitrust dept For many years now, we've been talking about the problematic practice of "pay for delay" in the pharma industry. This involved patent holders paying generic pharmaceutical makers some amount of money to not enter the market in order to keep their own monopoly even longer."

"from the antitrust dept For many years now, we've been talking about the problematic practice of "pay for delay" in the pharma industry. This involved patent holders paying generic pharmaceutical makers some amount of money to not enter the market in order to keep their own monopoly even longer."

"Today, open, uncopyrightable APIs continue to spur the creation and adoption of new technologies. When programmers can freely reimplement or reverse engineer an API without obtaining a costly license or risking a lawsuit, they can create compatible software that the interface's original creator might never have envisioned or had the resources to develop."

"Today, open, uncopyrightable APIs continue to spur the creation and adoption of new technologies. When programmers can freely reimplement or reverse engineer an API without obtaining a costly license or risking a lawsuit, they can create compatible software that the interface's original creator might never have envisioned or had the resources to develop."

"from the another-one-gone-and-another-one-gone dept We've written a few times lately about the fact that the Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank seems to have finally broken the dam in getting courts to recognize that most software isn't patentable."

"from the another-one-gone-and-another-one-gone dept We've written a few times lately about the fact that the Supreme Court's decision in Alice v. CLS Bank seems to have finally broken the dam in getting courts to recognize that most software isn't patentable."

[ From mashable.com - Today, 1:07 PM The Supreme Court rejected a warrantless wiretapping lawsuit in a 5-4 vote Wednesday on the basis the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. ...]

[Copyright by Mike Masnick Mon, Oct 3rd 2011 3:55pm from the thank-goodness-for-little-things dept Ah, ASCAP. The music collection group that keeps getting more and more desperate, seems to have finally and completely lost its quixotic attempt to claim that a music download represented a "public performance," which required a separate license, beyond the mechanical reproduction license. The group had been in a legal fight with Yahoo and Rhapsody over whether or not those companies had to pay extra to songwriters (whom ASCAP represents) in addition to the money they were already paying to license songs from the record labels for downloads. The district court sided with ASCAP and presented a bizarre formula involving a percentage of all revenue (such that Yahoo would have to pay some of its search revenue to ASCAP for no clear reason). Thankfully, an appeals court overturned the ruling, noting that a download is not a public performance, and that the bizarre calculation rate didn't make much sense. ]