Microsoft has lost a patent infringement suit in California in a case brought by Guatemalan inventor Carlos Amado, who has obtained $9 million USD (not nearly as much as the $500 million USD that he had asked for). The claim deals with U.S Patent 5,701,400, a patent that protects a Read more
This is part of the Science Commons project that encourages the adoption of open access principles in legal publishing. It seems like legal academics should be at the forefront of the open access debate by practicing those principles and negotiating harder with publishers to retain copyright and be able to Read more
(via Andrea Matwyshyn and Lilian Edwards). This is quite an ironic problem for an anti-spam site. The Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) used to have a wiki, until it had to be shut down due to continuous abuse by spammers. Yes, wikis are well-known Read more
The new minister for the creative industries, James Purnell, has announced that he plans to introduce and extension to copyright terms to match those in the United States. While the article doesn’t mention it, I am guessing that this means an extension to copyright in sound recordings, which is currently Read more
World Wind is an open source project from NASA that provides satellite images from around the world. Although the resolution is not the best in many places, it is an amazing tool, and users can add their own plug ins. This is what open source is good at, and it Read more
I go away for a few days and when I come back I find that everything has been turned on its head. IBM and SUN are the bad guys, they are exploiting open source projects and using them as cheap subcontractors of American multinationals, according to Jesus Villasante, the head Read more