intellectual property

The European Parliament has voted to overwhelmingly reject the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, also known as ACTA, following an all-parliamentary vote today.

The controversial treaty is intended to harmonize anticounterfeit and copyright protection measures across all EU member states and other signing countries, including the United States.

The Parliament logged 478 votes against, and only 39 in favor. There were 146 abstentions.

The vote in the European Parliament means that the signing 22 European member states cannot ratify ACTA into their local sovereign law. However, non-EU countries will still be able to shape laws around the treaty's mandates, although ACTA'… Read more

The U.K. Home Office has confirmed that Home Secretary Theresa May will not block the extradition of British student Richard O'Dwyer to the U.S., despite calls for her to intervene.

The 24-year-old is to be extradited to the United States to face copyright infringement charges related to a Web site he founded.

The site, which U.S. prosecutors claim generated up to $230,000 in advertising revenue, did not at any point host copyrighted material. Instead, it linked to other sites that hosted television shows and movies -- including content uploaded to YouTube.

While the U.K. … Read more

Twitter released its first ever Transparency Report detailing statistics on international requests for user data and content removal today, the same day news came out that it would have to hand over user information in a court case in New York.

The Twitter Transparency Report breaks down the countries from where such requests come and specifies how many requests it has received, what percentage it complied with, and numbers of user accounts affected, all spanning the first six months of this year.

The company has received more government requests in the first half of this year than in all of … Read more

Last update: 11:10 a.m. PT

Facebook's new feature that helps users discover who's around them is a stolen idea, according to a company that's been offering a similar service for the past year.

The chief executive at Friendthem, a service that shows users others who are nearby based on geo-location, says that his company got there first, and even discussed the idea with a company executive earlier this year.

"I was amazed on Sunday to read that Facebook is blatantly stealing our idea with what they are calling, 'Find Friends Nearby,' Charles Sankowich, Friendthem'… Read more

Apple is trying to keep the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office busy with several patent applications made public today.

One application dubbed "Securing the Implementation of a Cryptographic Process using Key Expansion" covers a method of improving the security behind encryption keys, as documented by PatentlyApple.

Another patent application, known as "Spatio-Temporal Color Luminance Dithering Techniques" addresses a way for dithering an image, or scattering its pixels, by tweaking the overall luminance.

A third application called "Systems and Methods for Streaming Compressed Files via a Non-Volatile Memory" points to a way for non-volatile … Read more

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC says it plans to go ahead with its planned purchase of computer graphics company S3 Graphics.

HTC had announced last July that it planned to buy the California-based company for $300 million. S3 was an attractive takeover target for HTC, as its 270 patents had stood up well in disputes against Apple. But HTC got cold feet over its acquisition of S3 last fall, when the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Apple in a patent dispute between S3 and Apple.

The company said in November that it was reconsidering its options. Now … Read more

Apple is trying to ban Samsung's Galaxy S III even before it reaches U.S. shores.

Apple attorney Josh Krevitt said at a hearing yesterday that the company may file for a temporary restraining order as soon as today to stifle the Galaxy S III's U.S. debut on June 21, Reuters reported.

Citing the usual ongoing patent infringements, Apple believes Samsung's new phone and a host of other Android devices are in violation of patents related to iOS devices. Apple sued the Korean handset maker last year, saying that it copied key elements of the iPhone … Read more

HTC believes it's free and clear of infringing on a key Apple patent despite allegations to the contrary by the iPhone maker.

This week, Apple filed its third complaint against HTC in the past three years with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The company is alleging that HTC is still violating the same Apple patents that triggered a recent ban on imports of the HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE.

Following the initial complaint, HTC said that it took steps to work past Apple's U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647, also known as the data … Read more

Apple is again asking the U.S. International Trade Commission to crack down on HTC over patent violations.

Filing its third ITC complaint against HTC in the past three years, Apple says the company is still in violation of the same patents that led to a recent import ban of the HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE, says Foss Patents' Florian Mueller.

In response to the ban, HTC said that it worked around Apple's U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647. As a result, the ban was lifted, allowing the two HTC smartphones to pass through U.S. Customs.… Read more