After two years of preparations, the [Chinese] authorities will soon implement the national strategy on intellectual property rights (IPR), Tian Lipu, commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), said yesterday.
Tags: Reuters, Telecommunications, Lawsuit, Vonage Holdings Corp., AT&T Corp., Internet, Business Services
AT&T has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Vonage Holdings, according to a Vonage regulatory filing on Friday, the latest legal trouble for the Internet phone service provider.
(Sacramento) November 14, 2006 – PatentCafe announced today that it has won an award from Acacia Research Corporation for its web-based patent research solutions and secure, on-location IP Appliance Server.
The Acacia Research Corporation, which develops, acquires, and licenses patented technologies, controls 53 patent portfolios covering technologies used in a wide variety of industries such as Wireless Traffic Information, Data Encryption, Information Monitoring, Medical Image Stabilization, and others.
The word about Tesco stocking Linux PCs reached people’s attention just a few days ago. Here is one of the latest short articles about it.
Tesco is the world’s third largest grocery retailer, and also sells everything from clothes to electrical equipment.
They use a long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Linux. As more details emerge (this is very new to the public), it turns out that eSys is behind this. And at eSys, you see, SUSE was used for quite a while. Has Ubuntu replaced SUSE? Ubuntu’s latest newsletter seems to confirm the choice of Ubuntu.
eSys Intel Celeron PC Base Unit
Priced at 139.93 pounds, yet another PC manufacturer is offering pre-installed Ubuntu Linux computers to the public. This machine is loaded with Ubuntu version 6.06 but with the release of Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 and the growing numbers of pre-intalled Ubuntu systems hitting the market on what seems like a monthly basis, Ubuntu stands poised to make steady progress in the desktop market share.
eSys used to sell their boxes with Mandrake 9.2, then SUSE OS (that’s what they called SuSE 9.3). How do I know? Because I received 2 eSys boxes. The first came with Mandrake and the second came with SUSE, which I loved at the time, even just because I had already used is elsewhere (at work). Mind the fact that all happened was before the Microsoft deal. It was also a time when I actually advocated Novell and SUSE (see proof).
The following new article was written to say that Ubuntu is a threat to Novell, which it is. It’s actually a threat to a number of other Linux distributors as well, including Mandriva.
Evidently Novell should be afraid – very afraid – because Canonical with its Ubuntu distribution, Dell’s little playmate, the Linux Dell’s pre-loading on a few of its PCs, clearly has designs on Novell’s place in line behind Red Hat, the Linux leader.
Whatever enables Linux to gain critical mass without any patent nonesense will be great. If Ubuntu is the hot distribution at the moment, then so be it. There’s no reason to fear Linux monopoly because the rules of the game make this unlikely. Just as Ubuntu forked Debian and stole some of its thunder, another motivated party could pull the rug from under Canonical’s feet by forking.
On the one hand, one finds that, as in the case of the Linux kernel, it required a hefty investment to fork. With exclusionary patent deals, on the other hand, that investment barrier rises significantly. If there was ever danger of a damaging Linux monopoly, it was Novell.
“It turns out that BayStar was one of the investors in Acacia Research”Remember BayStar? That company is the probably most major link between Microsoft and SCO. As you are aware, SCO’s lawsuits against Linux (vendors/users) began in 2003 and an E-mail that we have just receives reveals the following nugget of information.
It turns out that BayStar was one of the investors in Acacia Research, which is also believed to be associated with Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. We truly dislike proprietary Microsoft formats, but the following is embedded in a PowerPoint presentation[PPT].
Among BayStar portfolio companies, you’ll find:
Acacia Research (CombiMatrix) CBMX 20-May-03 50% warrant coverage at $2.75 strike price Biopharm
We’ve been told that it might be worth waiting until we discover a little more. This is a good start nonetheless, and it is a very intriguing financial connection.
Update: a few hours later, Groklaw published some more details about this connection (we shared the same anonymous source, but this site reported the findings first). PJ found a PDF version, so the PowerPoint version is obsolete now.
One of the major issues that people have with OOXML is its reliance on patents. Its another one of Microsoft’s suppressed truths. Standards which rely on patents raise many question and the Free Software Foundation has apparently begun addressing the issue.
The Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project oppose publication of draft-housley-tls-authz-extns as an experimental standard.
The patent application disclosed by RedPhone Security has put any free software attempting to implement these extensions in a very difficult position.
Much of the communication on the Internet happens between computers according to standards that define common languages. If we are going to live in a free world using free software, our software must be allowed to speak these languages.
“Financial incompatibility — that’s precisely the effect of software patents.”What kind of an twisted ecosystem would put interoperability/communication, which is intended to be open and free standards-based, in the hands of a company with ‘interoperability tax’? Financial incompatibility — that’s precisely the effect of software patents. It wasn’t long ago that The Register had an exclusive report involving a similar story. A recently-proposed IEEE wireless standard — a decent one by all means — had everyone scared of implementing it. Why? Because of patents. At the end of the say, patents prevent good products and good standards from being implemented. Nobody benefits.
Then there’s the Lone Cypress, a tree along California’s famous 17-Mile Drive. It’s probably the most infamous example of someone trying to exert ridiculous intellectual property rights. They must’ve made it sound like a good idea, though, because it seems that the idea of copyrighting trees is catching on
Intellectual property is not to be confused or mixed with software patents (let alone just patents). Software patents are a scary monster. For that reason, we have just set up a static page that gives a summary of videos and items that talk about patents, software patents, and intellectual property.
This week Mark Webbink, former Red Hat General Counsel discusses software patents, their absurdity and the business climate and “judicial activism” that helped create them.
OpenDocument took another step away from obscurity Tuesday, as Apple confirmed that Mac OS X version 10.5 — known as “Leopard” — will natively support ODF files, alongside Microsoft’s Word 2007 formats. Apple had previously added support for the format in its Pages word processing application.
Information about our transition to CDF and our work on Universal Interoperability is referenced in documents located at “The Universal Interoperability Resource Center”.
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