EFF Files Amicus Brief Asking To Invalidate DietGoal's "Picture Menu" Patent.

EFF filed an amicus brief yesterday asking Federal Circuit to invalidate U.S. Patent No. 6,585,516 because it improperly claims ineligible abstract ideas. EFF Brief, argues that the patent on using picture menus stored in a database to create meals should never have been granted in the first place. But more importantly, EFF argues that the Federal Circuit should confirm that quick, early decisions as to patent eligibility are vital to clearing our system of bad patents.

Typical troll fashion, DietGoal sued over 70 different companies since 2011, including restaurant chains such as Pita Pit, Taco John’s, and Panda Express. Usually trolls go after people who are too small, or have no much knowledge in the patent laws, to fight back.
But they met their match when they sued Bravo Media, for offering the public recipes (and presumably pictures) from its “Top Chef” show. Unlike other defendants faced with the troll's lawsuit and settling, Bravo filed, and won, a motion for “summary judgment” (a court procedure that can end the case before it goes to a jury). The court found the patent invalid because it claimed matter that is ineligible for patent protection.
DietGoal appealed that decision, wasting valuable time of the courts and people to keep their scheme afloat.
The brief was filed on behalf of a diverse group of non-profits and industry associations: Application Developers Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, EFF, Engine Advocacy, the National Restaurant Association, and Public Knowledge.
Read more at  EFF, "EFF to Court: Don’t Waste Time, A “Picture Menu” is Not Patentable"

LetsEncrypt Will Offer Free Encryption Server Certificates, With EFF Support.

I pay a lot for my server certificates else where, but that is because it is enforced to do so. If we had free certificates like Letsencrypt, 5 years ago, world wide web would be a much better place. But it is never too late.

EFF, LetsEncrypt To Offer Free Encryption Server Certificates. 

Big Victory for Consumers' First Sale Rights, EFF Wins Against Universal Music Group (UMG)

San Francisco - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has shot down bogus copyright infringement allegations from Universal Music Group (UMG), affirming an eBay seller's right to resell promotional CDs that he buys from secondhand stores and rejecting UMG's attempt to claim that a sticker on a CD created a license agreement forbidding resale.
Troy Augusto, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the law firm Durie Tangri LLP, was sued by UMG for offering promo CDs for auction on eBay. At issue was whether the labels on the CDs, some of which stated that they were "promotional use only, not for sale," trumped Augusto's right to resell the CDs that he bought. Copyright's "first sale" doctrine prevents a copyright owner from restricting further sales or uses of a work once title has passed.
In an opinion issued today, the appeals court held: "UMG transferred title to the particular copies of its promotional CDs and cannot maintain an infringement action against Augusto for his subsequent sale of those copies." The court noted that UMG did not maintain control of the CDs once it mailed them out, did not require the recipients to agree to the "conditions" it sought to impose with the not-for-sale label, and did not require return of the CDs if the recipient did not consent.
"This ruling frees promotional CDs from the shadow of copyright infringement claims, which is good news for music lovers," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "But it also has broader ramifications. The court flatly rejected the argument that merely slapping a notice on a copyrighted work prevents the work from ever being sold. It eliminates the risk of copyright infringement claims against later recipients -- regardless of whether they paid for the work."
"The Ninth Circuit recognized an important principle: that you can't eliminate consumers' rights just by claiming there's a 'license agreement,'" said Joe Gratz of Durie Tangri, lead counsel for Mr. Augusto. "Once a copyrighted work is freely given, the copyright holder isn't in charge anymore. The copyright owner can't stop you from selling it or lending it to a friend."
For the full opinion in UMG v. Augusto:
https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/umg_v_augusto/UMGvAugusto9thCircuitOp...
Contact:
Corynne McSherry
Intellectual Property Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
corynne@eff.org

EFF Sues DOJ Over Horvath and Google

Newsblog is covering information about lawsuit between EFF, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the DOJ,Department of Justice.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice seeking information about communications between a former top privacy official,Jane Horvath and Google, which eventually hired the official.


tag: EFF, google, DOJ

A CyberJoke Called CyberLaw®

I have to point you to this article about a lawyer who copyrighted cyberlaw! EFF begins its article with;
"Eric Menhart may call himself a cyberlawyer, but we think he has a lot of learn about cyberlaw -- and common sense. Menhart is the author of a blog about cyberlaw issues called, logically if not innovatively, "Cyberlawg.""
Please read and educate yourself at EFF.
Slashdot discussion is here. (Pretty interesting!)
I also read his response of his blog, to which a link is provided at EFF.
tag: cyberlaw, EFF,

Your Right to Sell Used Goods (Patented) on the Bench

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to protect consumers' traditional right to use, repair, and resell the products they own, even if those products are patented. At stake is the enforceability of "single use" and "not for resale" labels on patented products.

The amicus brief -- submitted on behalf of EFF, Consumers Union, and Public Knowledge -- was filed in Quanta v. LG Electronics, currently pending before the Supreme Court. The case will test the vitality of the "patent exhaustion" doctrine, which entitles a consumer to use, repair, or resell patented products that they have purchased.

EFF amicus brief and Press Release.

Tags: Patents, EFF, Quanta v. LG Electronics, EFF, Consumers Union, Public Knowledge

EFF Wins Against Bogus Patent On Internet Subdomains In It's Patent Busting Project

San Francisco - San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won reexamination from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) of a bogus patent on Internet subdomains -- the fourth successful reexamination request from EFF's Patent Busting Project.

The patent, now held by Hoshiko, LLC, claims to cover the method of automatically assigning Internet subdomains, like "action.eff.org" for the parent domain "eff.org." Previous patent owner Ideaflood used this illegitimate patent to demand payment from website hosting companies that offer such personalized domains, including Freehomepage.com, T35 Hosting, and LiveJournal, a social networking site where each of its three million users have their own subdomain.

In the reexamination request, EFF and Rick Mc Leod of Klarquist Sparkman, LLP, showed that the method Ideaflood claimed to have invented was well known before the patent was issued. In fact, website developers were having public discussions about how to create these virtual subdomains on an Apache developer mailing list for more than a year before Ideaflood made its patent claim. The open source developers established a public record of the technology development, providing the linchpin to EFF's patent challenge.
EFF Post on the Subject

Tags: EFF, Patent Busting Project, Patent and Trademark Office, PTO, Hoshiko, Freehomepage.com, T35 Hosting, LiveJournal, Ideaflood

EFF Will File a Amicus Brief in Jamie Thomas Trial Appeal

Although a little late in reporting, Jamie Thomas' appeal case will get assistance from EFF. According to a post on EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation;
"the outcome will likely turn on Jury Instruction #15, which equates "making available" with "distributing" a copyrighted work. If the appeals court rejects that jury instruction, the verdict against Ms. Thomas would have to be thrown out and the case re-tried."

According to the same post they will argue on "Distribution", how it is defined in the Copyright Act (might not extend to Internet!) and or actual proof of that the distribution of copy righted material took place. As INAL, please read the EFF article that describe everything in detail.

Tags: Jamie Thomas, RIAA, EFF, copy right

Apple music files embedded personal information

It has come to light that Apple has embedded personal details into music files bought from its iTunes music store.
Ars Technica, one of the first websites to unveil the hidden information, said: “Everyone should be aware that while DRM-free files may lift a lot of restrictions on our personal usage habits, it doesn’t mean we can just start sharing the love, so to speak. Sharer beware.”
Personal data, including the names and e-mail addresses of purchasers, are inserted into the AAC files that Apple uses to distribute music tracks.The information is also included in tracks sold under Apple’s iTunes Plus system, launched this week, where users pay a premium for music that is free from the controversial digital rights management (DRM) intended to protect against piracy.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation, said it was possible that the data could be used to “watermark” tracks so that the original purchaser could be tracked down if a track appeared on a file-sharing network, although experts said that it would be relatively easy to “spoof” such data.

"

A couple of recent posts on Ars Technica and TUAW pointed out that Apple is embedding personal information, such as the name and email address of the purchaser, in all of their AAC files (including the DRM-free ones). We got curious, and wondered whether Apple might also be watermarking the underlying audio data in these tracks.

We've found that there isn't a watermark in the compressed audio signal itself, but there are surprisingly huge differences in the encoded files. Much bigger differences than just different tags, or even different signed/encrypted tags.

We compared two DRM-free copies of the track Daftendirekt by Daft Punk. When decoded to PCM/WAV data, both copies produced an identical audio signal (the MD5sum is e40b006497f9b417760ca5015c3fa937). So there is no audio watermark. But one of the .m4a files is almost 360K larger than the other!

We haven't finished examining these differences yet, and we don't have in-house expertise on MPEG codecs, but some of them have an intriguing amount of structure. There's a region (see around offset 0x11470 in the Daft Punk track for example) where the files contain what look like tables with sequential indices but different data in the table.

We'll post again if we learn more about what's going on here. In the mean time, some pure speculation: it may be that large amounts of iTunes library data are present in each file. It's also possible that Apple has found a way to watermark the AAC encoding itself, such that users would need to either crack the watermark or transcode the audio signal in order to produce a file that does not identify them as the source."

Apple's DRM-free AAC..

Tags: Apple, DRM, AAC, EFF, iTunes