Swatch succeeds in trademark case over Apple 'iWatch'; BBC, 9/13/16

BBC; Swatch succeeds in trademark case over Apple 'iWatch' :

"The UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) upheld Swatch's opposition, which was filed in March 2014...

"This decision shows the difficulty global brands can have when it comes to launching a new product around the world," said Sharon Daboul, a trademark lawyer at law firm EIP.

"Trademarks are territorial, which means that a trademark must be available for registration in every country of interest."

Not being able to secure the iWatch trademark around the world would have been a "key factor", Ms Daboul added, in Apple's decision not to use the name for its smartwatch."

Apple wins patent on technology to stop fans filming gigs; Guardian, 6/30/16

Guardian Music, Guardian; Apple wins patent on technology to stop fans filming gigs:

"Pitchfork reports that Apple has won approval from the US Patent and Trademark Office for technology that could be used to prevent fans filming or taking photos of gigs on their iPhones."

China Smartphone Makers Snap Up Patents in Fight for Market Dominance; Wall Street Journal, 6/20/16

Juro Osawa, Wall Street Journal; China Smartphone Makers Snap Up Patents in Fight for Market Dominance:

"China’s smartphone makers increasingly are turning to patents as ammunition as they try to reel in global leaders Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co."

Samsung’s Patent Loss to Apple Is Appealed to Supreme Court; New York Times, 12/14/15

Steve Lohr, New York Times; Samsung’s Patent Loss to Apple Is Appealed to Supreme Court:

"The case, if heard, could have far-reaching implications for design patents, which cover how a product looks, and the sort of financial penalties allowed under the law. Design patents are far less common than utility patents, which cover how a product functions.

The legal framework for design patents, according to Samsung, some other major technology companies and legal experts, is largely shaped by a 19th-century law intended to protect the designs of carpets, fireplace grates and ornamental spoons.

Back then, the design was the heart of such products, so seizing most or all of the gains of a copycat — known as the “total profit rule” — was justified. But today, a complex product like a modern smartphone is a dense bundle of intellectual property with more than 100,000 patents conceivably laying claim to some small aspect of the phone...

Beyond this case, design patents will probably get more legal attention in the future, said David J. Kappos, a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. As high-tech products become increasingly complex, the skill that yields a competitive advantage is making products easy to use. “And usability comes down to design,” said Mr. Kappos, a former director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office."

Apple and Amazon Take Baby Steps Toward Digital Sharing; New York Times, 9/18/14

Molly Wood, New York Times; Apple and Amazon Take Baby Steps Toward Digital Sharing:

"In the physical world, you can share a book or DVD or CD that you bought with as many friends and family as you like. You can even sell those items if you want, thanks to the first sale doctrine.

But digital media has been excluded from that doctrine, because, essentially, when you buy a digital song or movie or book, you’re being granted a license to use that media, but you don’t actually own it.

As a result, there are far more restrictions on what you can do with an MP3 than on what you can do with a CD...

So, while Family Sharing and Family Library seem like a victory at first, “to me, this is really a failure of our copyright law,” said Corynne McSherry, who heads intellectual property policy research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“It presupposes that the content owners should be able to have that kind of control over what they buy,” she said. “Copyright law isn’t changing with our times, because what doesn’t change is that people want to be able to give someone a copy of a book or song that they legally bought.”

“The fact is,” Ms. McSherry said, “that we need Amazon or Apple to have elaborate license agreements in order to make it possible for their customers to be able to do what they should be able to do anyway.”"

Apple Makes Questionable Copyright Claim To Pull Down iTunes Contract; TechDirt.com, 10/14/13

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Apple Makes Questionable Copyright Claim To Pull Down iTunes Contract: "There had been some buzz a while back when Digital Music News published an entire iTunes Radio contract, which was targeted at smaller indie labels, showing how Apple got to throw its weight around, presenting terms that were very much in Apple's favor over the labels if they wanted to participate in iTunes Radio. However, while it took a few months, Apple's lawyers finally spotted this and they have apparently made a copyright claim to get the contract taken down... That said, I question whether or not this really is a legit takedown. While Apple can claim a copyright on the contract, it seems that DMN has a really strong fair use claim."

The Apple ebook price-fixing lawsuit has terrifying implications; Guardian, 4/13/12

Alison Flood, Guardian; The Apple ebook price-fixing lawsuit has terrifying implications:

"The DoJ lawsuit plays, it seems to me, right into the hands of Amazon. Yes, we'll have cheaper books, but at what cost? Is it worth paying a little bit less for a title if it threatens the future existence of the publishers who are bringing us the books? Or will we be happy getting everything we read from a vastly reduced pool of presses?"

Justice Department Threatens Apple, Publishers over E-Book Pricing; Time, 3/8/12

Jared Newman, Time; Justice Department Threatens Apple, Publishers over E-Book Pricing:

"Did you notice that e-books became a little more expensive after Apple entered the game with iBooks? So did the U.S. Department of Justice, which may be threatening to sue Apple and e-book publishers for allegedly colluding to raise prices.

The Wall Street Journal reports that along with Apple, five publishers are facing a potential government lawsuit: Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, Macmillan and HarperCollins. Some publishers are trying to settle before the Justice Department takes legal action, but not every publisher is involved in negotiations, the Journal reports."

iPhone 'Jailbreaking' Legal Under New Government Rules; Huffington Post, 7/26/10

Joelle Tessler, Huffington Post; iPhone 'Jailbreaking' Legal Under New Government Rules:

"Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven't been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected works.

For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it from liability. Apple claims that jailbreaking is an unauthorized modification of its software.

Mario Ciabarra, founder of Rock Your Phone, which calls itself an "independent iPhone application store," said the rules mark the first step toward opening the iPhone app market to competition and removing the "handcuffs" that Apple imposes on developers that want to reach users of the wildly popular device.

Unless users unlock their handsets, they can only download apps from Apple's iTunes store. Software developers must get such apps pre-approved by Apple, which sometimes demands changes or rejects programs for what developers say are vague reasons.

Ciabarra noted that Google Inc. has taken a different approach with its Android operating system, which is emerging as the biggest competitor to the iPhone. Google allows users of Android phones to download applications from outside the Android Market.

Although Apple has never prosecuted anyone for jailbreaking, it does use software upgrades to disable jailbroken phones, and the new government rules won't put a stop to that. That means owners of such phones might not be able to take advantage of software improvements, and they still run the risk of voiding their warranty.

Apple spokesman Natalie Kerris said Monday that the company is concerned about jailbreaking because the practice can make an iPhone unstable and unreliable.

"Apple's goal has always been to ensure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone, and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience," she said.

In addition to jailbreaking, other exemptions announced Monday would:

_ allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

_ allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.

_ allow college professors, film students, documentary filmmakers and producers of noncommercial videos to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism or commentary.

_ allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

_ allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

Although the jailbreaking exemption is new, all the others are similar to the last set of exemptions, which were announced in November 2006. The new rules take effect Tuesday and are expected to last a few years.

The exceptions are a big victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had urged the Library of Congress to legalize several of them, including the two regarding cell phones.

Jennifer Stisa Granick, EFF's civil liberties director, said the rules are based on an important principle: Consumers should be allowed to use and modify the devices that they purchase the way they want. "If you bought it, you own it," she said."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/iphone-jailbreaking-legal_n_659272.html

Music Business Heads Into Virtual World; New York Times; 12/16/09

Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Music Business Heads Into Virtual World:

"It seems likely that the idea of music ownership will never go away, and that newer methods of accessing music will exist alongside old ones. Bobby Mohr, a 23-year-old music fan from Brooklyn who has accumulated 100 gigabytes of songs, keeps some of them on free Web-based storage services, so he can download tracks when he travels and burn them onto CDs to play in the car.

But Mr. Mohr is hesitant to abandon the idea of owning music altogether, citing the unreliability of wireless networks and the fact that his collection would be inaccessible at his job at a police oversight agency, where he is not allowed to use the Internet.

“I like having external hard drives that are troves of my music,” he said. “You just collect it, you have this library. You discover new genres every year and you go through it and look at what you have, and that’s nice.”

Bob Lefsetz, who writes an influential music industry newsletter, the Lefsetz Letter, acknowledged that some people bristle at the idea of not owning their music, but he compared them to people who once said they would never rent a videotape.

“If you ask anybody today, they’ll tell you, ‘I need to own it.’ But once you have these services, you get to the point of, ‘Why would I own it, because I have access to everything?’”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/technology/internet/16tune.html?em

Psystar Loses Big To Apple; Tech Dirt, 11/16/09

Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt; Psystar Loses Big To Apple:

"When Psystar first started selling PCs with Apple OS's installed on them, we knew there would be a lawsuit -- though it took a bit more time than we expected. Originally, Psystar tried to claim that Apple was violating antitrust law, which seemed like a wasted path for exploration -- and, indeed, a court rejected that claim. Then Psystar went back to more reasonable defenses... or so we thought.

The court hearing the case didn't seem to think any of Psystar's main lines of defense had any validity at all and granted summary judgment to Apple on all of the major points, saying that a trial wasn't even necessary. The "fair use" claim was already weak, and the judge noted that Psystar didn't even try to discuss any of the four factors generally used in determining fair use. The two (I thought) stronger claims were that (a) the right of first sale applied, and once Psystar purchased OSX legally, it could resell it, provided it was only installed on that one computer, and (b) that Apple went too far in its EULA terms, which demanded that OS X could only work on a Mac. Unfortunately, the judge didn't agree to either one, though I find the judge's reasoning perplexing and hardly convincing."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091114/1813376929.shtml

OpEd: Pioneers such as Google need to be policed; Observer, 8/30/09

OpEd: Observer; Pioneers such as Google need to be policed:

"THERE HAS BEEN frenzied speculation in recent weeks that Apple is about to launch a revolutionary, hand-held device called the Tablet. Meanwhile, Google is mired in a protracted legal dispute over its right to create an online archive of the world's library books, including millions still in copyright. At first glance, these two pieces of news don't have much in common, but both are part of a battle being waged by the world's big-tech companies for dominance of the digital future.

One way to get a handle on the digital world is to think of it as a new, uncharted landmass, one that has become navigable thanks to the internet. Beyond this new frontier – a kind of 21st-century wild west – lies a terrain where scarcely unimaginable wealth is waiting to be unlocked. Only this time the key battle isn't over a physical resource but over a non-physical one: information. Information is the real estate of the digital age and it is this that the likes of Google, Microsoft and Apple are in the business of exploiting, whether by providing it free, by owning it or by controlling the channels through which it can be sold and delivered.

The opening up of this frontier raises big questions. What do we want the digital realm to look like? Do we want it to be controlled by a few large companies or should it be more pluralistic and democratic? The distrust that many of us feel toward a company such as Google (even while we enthusiastically use its products) stems from a fear that it may be seizing control of this territory before most of us even quite appreciated what was there.

We are both right and wrong to be worried. Right, because it is true that there is a potential for monopolies to be created, and because crucial legal rights, in particular, intellectual property, are in danger of being trampled on as we highlight elsewhere in the paper.

But at the same time, it is important to remember that we have reasons to be grateful for the existence of big, innovative corporations. Just as in the 19th century it was only the railway companies that had the muscle to "open up" the American west, so it is the Googles and Apples of our day that have the vision and wealth to unlock the resources of the digital realm. Apple can create wonders like the Apple Tablet because it has the money to hire the world's best inventors; and Google can scan most of the world's library books because it has the vision and chutzpah to undertake such a venture.

However, it is imperative that such companies are subjected to rigorous scrutiny and proper regulatory vigilance so that dangerous acquisitions of power don't take place."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/apple-google-microsoft-tablet-books

Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books; New York Times, 8/13/09

Brad Stone via New York Times; Sony Plans to Adopt Common Format for E-Books:

"On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub format, an open standard created by a group including publishers like Random House and HarperCollins.

Sony will also scrap its proprietary anticopying software in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied.

After the change, books bought from Sony’s online store will be readable not just on its own device but on the growing constellation of other readers that support ePub...

“People need to remember, when they buy books that come with digital rights management, they don’t have the freedoms they normally would have with a book,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manger of the Free Software Foundation, which obtained the signatures of nearly 4,000 authors and tech pundits on a petition saying Amazon’s anticopying software was a “clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.”

Companies like Sony and Adobe do not want to abandon anticopying measures, fearing that piracy of books would run rampant. Rather, they want to push the e-book industry toward common standards to avoid a replay of Apple’s domination of the digital music business.

Early this decade, Apple sold music from its iTunes store that was protected by its own FairPlay software and could be played only on the iPod.

The result was what is known as “lock-in.” Apple built up extraordinary market power and leverage to dictate terms to the major music labels on matters like the price of digital songs. Then, as now, second-tier players banded together to promote the increased flexibility and choice that open standards gave to consumers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/technology/internet/13reader.html?_r=1&hpw

New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds; Ars Technica, 8/4/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds:

"It was that decision to link the Kindle hardware and store with a new DRM scheme that led the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to add the Kindle to its "Defective by Design" anti-DRM campaign.

The group has now launched a petition asking Amazon to "remove all DRM, including any ability to control or access the user's library, from the Kindle... Whatever Amazon's reasons for imposing this control may be, they are not as important as the public's freedom to use books without interference or supervision."

The Foundation took particular exception to two decisions that Amazon made. First was the company's decision to address publisher concerns about the Kindle's text-to-speech feature by giving book publishers a way to disable the automated reading of their titles. Second was Amazon's almost unimaginably bad decision to remove already purchased books from customers' devices—and not just any books, but the George Orwell titles 1984 and Animal Farm...

These issues are certainly troubling, and the FSF is right to call Amazon to account for them. But to most consumers, the bigger concern about DRM is vendor lock-in...

The shift to electronic books provides obvious advantages in convenience and portability (every Ars staffer who owns a Kindle swears by it), but those books can only be read on devices that support Kindle DRM. Just as with music, people run the risk of making a significant investment into a product that they cannot resell and which may well become obsolete or unreadable in a decade—or whenever they decide to switch e-reader brands. "

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/new-petition-demands-an-end-to-kindle-drm.ars

Op-Ed: New York Times: Swan Songs?, 7/31/09

Op-Ed: Charles M. Blow via New York Times; Swan Songs?:

"The problem is that if people can get the music they want for free, why would they ever buy it, or even steal it? They won’t. According to a March study by the NPD Group, a market research group for the entertainment industry, 13- to 17-year-olds “acquired 19 percent less music in 2008 than they did in 2007.” CD sales among these teenagers were down 26 percent and digital purchases were down 13 percent.

And a survey of British music fans, conducted by the Leading Question/Music Ally and released last month, found that the percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds who regularly share files dropped by nearly a third from December 2007 to January 2009. On the other hand, two-thirds of those teens now listen to streaming music “regularly” and nearly a third listen to it every day.

This is part of a much broader shift in media consumption by young people. They’re moving from an acquisition model to an access model.

Even if they choose to buy the music, the industry has handicapped its ability to capitalize on that purchase by allowing all songs to be bought individually, apart from their albums. This once seemed like a blessing. Now it looks more like a curse.

In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good. You may have only wanted two or three songs, but you had to buy the whole 8-track, cassette or CD to get them. So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones. The resulting revenue provided a cushion for the artists and record companies to take chances and make mistakes. Single song downloads helped to kill that.

A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.

So it was no surprise that The Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple is working with the four largest labels to seduce people into buying more digital albums. It’s too little too late."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01blow.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=charles%20blow&st=cse

Unofficial Software Incurs Apple's Wrath; The New York Times, 5/13/09

Via The New York Times; Unofficial Software Incurs Apple's Wrath:

"Jailbreaking is different from unlocking an iPhone, in which users modify the software so the phone can be used on unauthorized wireless carriers...

But according to Apple, jailbreaking is illegal and a breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act...

In a legal filing with the United States Copyright Office last year, Apple says jailbroken iPhones rely on modified versions of Apple’s operating software that infringe on its copyrights.

In addition, the company says jailbreaking encourages the piracy of approved iPhone applications and is an expensive burden...

Apple filed its brief in response to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s request that the copyright office recognize an exemption to the digital copyright act that would permit jailbreaking of iPhones and other devices. The copyright office is expected to rule on the issue by October.

Jailbreaking your own iPhone does not infringe on any copyright, and the tools that help iPhone owners modify their devices do not distribute anything that belongs to Apple, said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates more openness on the Internet. “In our view, consumers are allowed to adapt software for their own personal use,” he said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/technology/13jailbreak.html?pagewanted=1&sq=copyright&st=cse&scp=5

Want to Copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple Says, New York Times, 1/7/09

Via New York Times: Want to Copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple Says:

"The music companies are hoping that their eagerly awaited compromise with Apple will give a lift to digital downloads. They will be able to make more money on their best-selling songs and increase the appeal of older ones.

And with the copying restrictions removed, people will be able to freely shift the songs they buy on iTunes among computers, phones and other digital devices.

Technologically sophisticated fans of digital music complain that D.R.M. imposes unfair restrictions on what they can do with the tracks they have bought. For example, the protected files from iTunes do not work on portable players made by companies other than Apple.

“I think the writing was on the wall, both for Apple and the labels, that basically consumers were not going to put up with D.R.M. anymore,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, a market research company."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07apple.html?scp=1&sq=copy%20itunes%20song%20go%20ahead&st=cse

iTunes Music Store Finally Ditches DRM, Adds New Prices, Wired.com, 1/6/09

Via Wired.com: iTunes Music Store Finally Ditches DRM, Adds New Prices:

"After years of fits, starts, threats and ultimatums, Steve Jobs and three major labels have come to terms on a deal: Music will be available immediately on iTunes without DRM restrictions. Free of the limitations that currently restrict music playback to Apple products, the new plan will let consumers choose from three price levels instead of the 99-cent song model the store implemented on day one."

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/apple-promises.html

DRM-Free iTunes Seems Unlikely, Despite Report, Wired.com, 12/9/08

Via Wired.com: DRM-Free iTunes Seems Unlikely, Despite Report:

"French technology site ElectronLibre claims that Apple will remove DRM from every song in the iTunes store today. We're not so sure...

If ElectronLibre's information (translation) is accurate, the deadlock between Apple and the three largest record labels has broken, and Apple can finally start selling music from all the world's labels without its Fairplay copyright protection. That is an enormous "if," and the signs don't point to it."

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/drm-free-itunes.html

Royalty rate stays same for iTunes, other download services - ars technica.com, 10/2/08

Royalty rate stays same for iTunes, other download services:
"The Copyright Royalty Board has handed Apple and other online music store operators a big victory, as it has decided to keep the royalty rate the same for physical media and "permanent" (nonsubscription) music downloads. "
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081002-royalty-rate-stays-same-for-itunes-other-download-services.html