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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
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 Read more
Why do I get the impression that someone somewhere has declared open season on Google? The Google Book Search deal is under scrutiny from anti-trust regulators in the US; Jeff Bezos thinks that the settlement is a bad idea; it has even been criticised for bad design decisions. Although I Read more