By Paul
Novell recently won a 7 year battle against the SCO Group over the copyright to UNIX source code. A jury in Utah found that Novell was the owner of the copyrights in question. Its a victory for open source software generally, because it was probably the most serious legal threat to development of Linux, an open source UNIX-like operating system. SCO had alleged that Linux infringed copyrights it held in UNIX. Though Novell’s offerings have changed over the years, currently it offers SUSE Linux and related software and services.
The blog Groklaw has been following this case in great detail over the years. There is an unbelievable amount of information there which illustrates how much work can go into litigating a case of this scale.
By Paul
The FCC has created a tool that allows people to quickly see how spectrum is allocated. You can use a map to find all the licensees in a particular county or state. All this is particularly interesting now as there is currently some interest in reallocating spectrum that was used for television broadcast and allowing more wireless broadband services.
FCC Spectrum Dashboard
HT to the CommLawBlog.
By Paul
Apple Loeses Battle for Control of the Letter I
The offending trademark was DOPi which is iPod spelled backwards, but otherwise doesn’t really sound like or look like Apple’s IPOD trademark. Interesting to note that Apple wasn’t the first or only user of the names “iPhone” or “iPad” either. As I type this on my MacBook, I wonder what was wrong with the iBook name?
By Paul
Pink Floyd recently won a case in the UK against its record company EMI over the rights to sell copies of Pink Floyd songs as individual digital downloads. The contract which was signed in 1999 limited EMI’s ability to sell singles of the songs and Pink Floyd successfully argued that that should apply to digital downloads as well. This case raises a potential moral rights issue in the age of the digital downloads.
While albums were still the norm ten years ago, increasingly people are looking for their music by the track. Apple’s iTunes store prices by the album, but you are still left with individual files that are downloaded to your computer. Should artists like Pink Floyd be able to sell their music only in the form of an album? US Copyright law is distinctly economic in nature and the idea of “moral rights” or droit d’auteur play a very small role here. While artists in many countries can control how their works appear well after the works are sold; here in the US, artists are limited to rights granted under copyright law such as reproduction, public performance, etc.
Perhaps we will see more one track albums in the future. Or perhaps its time to move past the album, a format that exists largely due to the technical specifications of LPs (60 minute capacity) and to some extent Compact Disc (80 minute capacity). Not all music needs to be one hour divided into 10 songs. Digital downloads can be just about any size. The only effective limitations are what a person might want to listen to and what an artist feels is appropriate*. Perhaps now is a good time to rethink the album.
*There is at least one song that could cause problems for digital downloads. As Slow As Possible by John Cage has been performed since 2001 in Halberstadt, Germany and the performance is expected to continue for another 639 years.
By Paul
Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) are .com, .edu, .org and so forth. There have been proposals before ICANN for a few years now to allow new gTLDs to be just about anything people want, such as .godfread. There are of course trademark and other intellectual property concerns and its not entirely clear how ICANN will address resolving the disputes that might arise when two parties both claim rights in a new gTLD. Nevertheless, it seems as though sometime in the not to distant future, we may see a whole new universe of domain names.
http://www.comlaude.com/new-gtlds-for-2010.html
ICANN New gTLD Information Page
HT to Martin Schwimmer at the Trademark Blog
