eBay sued over payment system patents

Perhaps we can get a patent for patent trolling and sue the patent trolls

Online auction giant eBay has been sued for $3.8 billion USD by XPRT Ventures in a patent infringement suit over its use of PayPal as its preferred payment system. Do not adjust your monitors ladies and gentlemen, you read correctly, that is [...]

Does Creative Commons need more court cases?

Last week the excellent Internet Cases blog reported on an new court case involving Creative Commons licences: GateHouse Media, Inc. v. That’s Great News. I haven’t been able to find the complaint online yet (if anyone has seen it, please drop me a link). Going by Evan Brown’s description, this seems like a straightforward situation initiated [...]

Microsoft sues cloud computing provider for patent infringement

This one is a bit puzzling. Microsoft holds several software patents, just like any other large tech company. However, they are not known to litigate, and mostly engage in cross-licensing agreements with their portfolio (remember Novell?). But now Microsoft has sued cloud computing and consumer relationship management provider Salesforce for patent infringement. Microsoft representatives made the [...]

Copyright in money?

An interesting case of art ownership and moral rights is taking place in Costa Rica at the moment. The new 2,000 colones bill will enter into circulation soon. However, there has been a dispute because the author of the portrait of educator Mauro Fernández (pictured) has claimed that he was never asked for permission to use [...]

Copyright in landmarks

The Hollywood Reporter’s legal blog is carrying a story about yet another lawsuit involving landmarks and/or statues. The Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro is suing Columbia Pictures for copyright infringement over the exclusive rights it holds on the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most iconic landmarks in the world [...]

Defamation online revisited

It's the 90s all over again!

I have been reading an article in the Chicago Tribune about online anonymity. Most of the story is centred around the defamation dispute between Lisa Stone and an anonymous individual going by the handle Hipcheck16 (see legal documents here). Lisa Stone was running for local office in an Illinois suburb [...]

ISP liability to get ECJ hearing

Just on the coattails of Roadshow Films v iiNet, we are about to get another landmark ruling on ISP liability. If there was any doubt that we are witnessing a legal struggle between intermediaries and content owners, we can lay those doubts to rest.

Sabam v Tiscali has been a long-running case in Belgian courts with regards [...]

Should online intermediaries be liable for sexual assaults?

Bizarre piece of news. Myspace is being sued by five families who claim that their children were sexually assaulted by men they met in the web space. Details are sketchy, but apparently five teenage girls have joined forces in order to hold Myspace liable for the real-life assaults they were subjected to after meeting people online.

The [...]

Google Book Settlement on standby

For quite a while the knives have been out for the Google Book Settlement (a brief introduction to the agreement by yours truly can be found here). The European Union for example has been particularly interested in the implications of the settlement this side of the Atlantic, and has hinted that it does not meet regulatory [...]

National Portrait Gallery copyright row

Jeremy Bentham's NPG portrait

Several news sites have reported an interesting copyright case involving the Wikimedia Foundation and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Britain. The NPG undertook a £1 million GBP digitisation exercise, and placed high-definition versions of their pictures in a database locked with technological protection measures. Derrick Coetzee, a volunteer for the Wikimedia [...]