intellectual property

The Recording Industry Association of America is appealing a judge's decision last month to declare a mistrial in the case of Jammie Thomas, who was ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 for allegedly sharing music online.

Thomas was charged in October with violating copyright law by making 24 songs available for others to download on the Kazaa network. In late September, though, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis threw out the verdict on the grounds that he originally misguided the jury by indicating that simply the act of making a copyrighted song available for sharing amounts to … Read more

Intel said it has acquired NetEffect, a company specializing in Ethernet products and technologies for server compute clusters.

The chipmaker purchased NetEffect's assets for $8 million, which include the company's Ethernet product portfolio, intellectual property, and technology.

NetEffect is a provider of solutions incorporating iWARP, an Ethernet alternative to InfiniBand. NetEffect's product portfolio includes 1-Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapters for servers and blade configurations as well as 10GbE Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs).

"NetEffect's role as a data communications solution provider...will enhance Intel's current Ethernet efforts," Tom Swinford, general manager, Intel … Read more

Updated at 12:45 p.m. PDT with quotes.

President Bush on Monday signed into law an intellectual-property enforcement bill that would consolidate federal efforts to combat copyright infringement under a new White House cabinet position.

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act establishes within the executive branch the position of intellectual property enforcement coordinator, who will be appointed by the president.

The law also steepens penalties for intellectual-property infringement, and increases resources for the Department of Justice to coordinate for federal and state efforts against counterfeiting and piracy. The so-called Pro-IP Act passed unanimously in the Senate … Read more

Update on October 9 at 9:00 a.m. with additional comments from Intel and AMD.

Advanced Micro Device's new manufacturing venture may come with some old baggage.

After AMD announced on Tuesday that it would spin off its manufacturing assets to a new company partially owned by the Abu Dhabi government, Intel was quick to warn AMD about patent and cross-licensing concerns.

AMD will own part of the new manufacturing entity, for the time being to be called The Foundry Company, while Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) will own the rest (55.6 percent) and have equal voting … Read more

WASHINGTON--With only five days left for President Bush to decide whether to sign into law a controversial copyright bill, business lobbyists and even the AFL-CIO are pushing for it to become law.

Most bills to expand copyright law are bipartisan--one aimed at file-swappers and prerelease movies in 2005 comes to mind--and the so-called Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act is no exception. Sens. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Republican, are the sponsors, and it enjoys the support of the Recording Industry Association of America.

But the Pro-IP Act is unusual because the Bush administration threatened a veto … Read more

Verizon Communications suffered a major blow in its patent battles on Monday, when a federal court ruled that cable company Cox Communications had not infringed on its patents.

The telecommunications giant has accused Cox of violating six of its patents related to Internet telephony. But a jury for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia decided against Verizon on all six patents.

Verizon settled a similar suit against digital-phone service provider Vonage last year, squeezing about $117.5 million from the troubled provider of voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. Against Cox, it had been seeking … Read more

The Supreme Court has refused to consider appeals from Samsung Electronics in a case against Rambus, a memory design and patent licensing company, closing a saga that began in 2005 over alleged patent infringement.

The court's decision to stay out of the case leaves in place an April appeals court ruling (PDF) that a district court had no jurisdiction to grant an order that--while technically in favor of Rambus--included negative opinions about the company.

Rambus first sued Samsung in 2005 for allegedly violating its patents of various dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, devices. Samsung immediately countersued in the … Read more

The Supreme Court announced Monday it is refusing to take up EchoStar Communications' appeal against a patent infringement suit filed against it by TiVo.

A jury in 2006 found that EchoStar's Dish Network digital video recorders infringed upon a patent held by TiVo and ordered it to pay TiVo $73.9 million in damages. A federal appeals court upheld the ruling in January, as did a second U.S. appeals court in April.

The Supreme Court's decision to deny EchoStar's appeal leaves the company responsible for paying full damages plus interest to TiVo--for a total of $104 … Read more

Just months after its launch, the magazine-sharing Web site Mygazines.com is largely cutting back on the free content it offers, after reaching a settlement agreement in a suit filed by a group of magazine publishers.

Launched in late July, Mygazines allows users to upload and share magazines and originally offered clear, complete digital copies of popular magazines such as People, Esquire, and Allure. A number of publishers, including Time Inc., Hearst, and Newsweek, filed suit in a New York district court on August 21, asking the site to be shut down in the U.S.

A settlement was reached … Read more