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Landmark Digital Services sends C&D
,----[ Quote ]
| I am Darren Briggs, the Chief Technical
| Officer of Landmark Digital Services, LLC.
| Landmark Digital Services owns the patents
| that cover the algorithm used as the basis
| for your recently posted âCreating Shazam
| In Javaâ. While it is not Landmarkâs
| intention to alienate those in the Open
| Source and Music Information Retrieval
| community, Landmark must request that you
| do not ship, deploy or post the code
| presented in your post. Landmark also
| requests that in the future you do not
| ship, deploy or post any portions or
| versions of this code in its current state
| or in any modified state.
`----
http://sites.google.com/site/redcodenl/patent-infringement
Amateur programmer meets software patents
,----[ Quote ]
| Roy van Rijn writes "A couple of weeks
| ago, in a spare weekend, I wrote software
| that could recognise music through
| listening to the microphone, much like
| SoundHound and Shazam. After populair
| demand I was just about to release the
| code into the open source community when I
| got an email from Landmark Digital
| Services LLC. They claim my hobby project
| is infringing their patents. This took me
| on a journey to find out more about
| software patents and the validity of the
| requests I got from the company."
`----
http://slashdot.org/submission/1277406/Amateur-programmer-meets-software-patents
Free Software Coder Bullied over *Algorithm*
,----[ Quote ]
| As long-suffering readers of this blog
| will know, one of the many reasons I am
| against software patents is that software
| consists of algorithms, and algorithms are
| just maths, so a software patent is a
| patent on knowledge - the purest knowledge
| there is (a mathematician writes).
|
| Sometimes defenders of software patents
| deny that software is just algorithms
| (don't ask me how, but some do). So I was
| particularly interested to read about this
| poor hacker being sued over - you guessed
| it - algorithms, pure and simple:
|
| Landmark Digital Services owns the
| patents that cover the algorithm used
| as the basis for your recently posted
| âCreating Shazam In Javaâ. While it is
| not Landmarkâs intention to alienate
| those in the Open Source and Music
| Information Retrieval community,
| Landmark must request that you do not
| ship, deploy or post the code
| presented in your post. Landmark also
| requests that in the future you do not
| ship, deploy or post any portions or
| versions of this code in its current
| state or in any modified state.
|
|
| As you can see, there is no way of
| disguising the fact that this claims to be
| a patent on an *algorithm* - that is, on
| maths, which is knowledge and therefore
| unpatentable.
|
| [...]
|
| At every level, then, this is an obvious,
| algorithmic, mathematical approach. And
| yet someone in Holland - a country that
| doesn't recognise software patents at all
| - finds himself threatened in this manner
| for some code he wrote independently
| implementing that general, algorithmic
| mathematical idea.
|
| Now explain to me how patents promote
| innovation, please...
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/07/patent-bullying-over-algorithms.html
Patent holder's demand: stop discussing my patent
,----[ Quote ]
| Roy van Rijn is a Dutch open source/free
| software developer who wrote a blog-post
| explaining some audio-fingerprinting
| algorithms he was experimenting with,
| along with a few code-fragments, and a
| promise to release all the source code.
| Unwisely, he called his post Creating
| Shazam in Java (Shazam is a commercial
| audio fingerprinting tool), and this
| attracted a notice from Darren Briggs, the
| Chief Technical Officer of Landmark
| Digital Services, LLC, which holds the
| patents used in Shazam.
|
| Briggs said that van Rijn's post violated
| Landmark's patents (though Briggs had only
| seen the code fragments) He requested that
| van Rijn not "ship, deploy or post the
| code presented in your post. Landmark also
| requests that in the future you do not
| ship, deploy or post any portions or
| versions of this code in its current state
| or in any modified state."
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/08/patent-holders-legal.html
Recent:
Preventing monopolies requires regulations, expert says
,----[ Quote ]
| Speaking last week to the HÃrriyet Daily
| News & Economic Review, Sebastiano
| Toffaletti, secretary-general of the
| European Association of ICT Small and Medium
| Sized Enterprises, or PIN-SME, said there
| was an ongoing debate about standards and
| how they should be used in the
| standardization of the European ICT sector.
|
| [...]
|
| Toffaletti also highlighted intellectual
| property rights and the internal debate
| between software patents and non-software
| patents.
|
| "This is a very controversial topic, but we
| think that software should not be patentable
| even if we agree that there should be better
| control of intellectual property rights,"
| Toffaletti said. "Patents just are not the
| right solution to protect inventions in this
| sector, as they will just make life too
| difficult for software developers and the
| market overall."
`----
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=preventing-monopolies-requires-regulations-2010-06-30
EU seeks to break patent translation deadlock
,----[ Quote ]
| Innovative companies could see a dramatic
| reduction in the cost of patenting new
| inventions, if a controversial European
| Commission plan is adopted by EU
| governments. The new rules could pave the
| way for a single European patent to be
| issued in one of just three languages â
| English, French or German.
`----
http://www.euractiv.com/en/innovation/eu-seeks-break-patent-translation-deadlock-news-495842
EU patents will be pulled in line with the US
,----[ Quote ]
| THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION (EC) has issued a
| single patent proposal to keep the EU
| competitive and in line with the US.
|
| The EC said that current patent legislation
| is ten times more expensive in the EU than
| the US. EU members have to validate patents
| at a national level first, which creates
| yards of red tape to process. The EC said
| this stifles research, development and
| competition for EU members, drastically
| increasing costs and time.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1720228/eu-patents-pulled-line-us
EU Community Patent And UPLS: Will There Be A Political Breakthrough Soon?
,----[ Quote ]
| The Intellectual Property Expert Group
| (ipeg) are feeding hopes in their Blog that
| the Swedish EU Presidency might be lucky
| enough to successfully forge some sort of
| political compromise on the EU Community
| Patent as well as on the Unified Patent
| Litigation System (UPLS) later this year.
`----
http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/index.php?/archives/133-EU-Community-Patent-And-UPLS-Will-There-Be-A-Political-Breakthrough-Soon.html
The Copyright Ratchet Racket Explained
,----[ Quote ]
| I and many others have noted how changes in
| copyright law only ever work in one
| direction: to *increase* copyright's term
| and to give greater powers to copyright
| holders. In effect, it's a ratchet. But
| until now, I've not seen a good explanation
| of what's driving all this (although I had a
| pretty good idea). The motor behind the
| ratchet (assuming such mixed metaphors are
| permitted) is harmonisation:
|
| Simply put, âharmonizationâ is a concept
| whereby the intellectual property laws
| of different countries are made
| consistent, mostly to facilitate
| international trade and business. The
| concept of harmonization is not unusual;
| almost all the states and territories in
| this country are signatories to the
| Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a model
| law in the U.S. that makes consistent
| (or âharmonizesâ) the law of contracts,
| sales, banking, and secured
| transactions. This allows firms in one
| state to reasonably, predictably, and
| consistently do business with firms in
| another state.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/11/copyright-ratchet-racket-explained.html
Reform of Europe's patent system moves a step closer
,----[ Quote ]
| Changes to Europe's costly and fragmented patent system have edged a step
| closer after EU industry ministers agreed formally to ask the European Court
| of Justice for its opinion on a potential overhaul.
|
| Ministers, meeting in Brussels yesterday, said they would consult Europe's
| top court on the legality under EU law of introducing specialist courts to
| handle patent disputes along with a so-called "community patent".
|
| The latter - which would be a single intellectual property right that would
| apply across Europe - has been an elusive goal for decades.
`----
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc4715a4-4be8-11de-b827-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
EU states consult top court on patent litigation
,----[ Quote ]
| European Union states agreed on Thursday to ask the bloc's top court whether
| draft plans to cut the cost of defending patents in a new system of courts
| would be compatible with EU law.
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8530149
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