Recently in Intellectual Property Category

Skype and eBay have been in a hot mess about Skype's peer-to-peer (P2P) online telephone technology for months now.  Well, they might be close to settlement according to the New York Times and other independent sources.

EBay owns Skype.  But Skype, which founded the unique technology that allows people to carry on phone conversations over the internet, claims that it retained ownership of the software code used for the technology.   

The tale of a sale.

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

No question, Google is the search engine beast of the Internet. And when you are the beast, you are subject to attacks.

Earlier this year, for example, John Beck Amazing Profits, LLC (Beck) took aim at Google by filing suit in federal court in Texas, arguing that Google's AdWords program has caused trademark infringement and has created liability under other legal theories.

While Beck's complaint apparently has not yet been served, Google is not sitting still and has filed its own lawsuit back against Beck in Google's backyard, federal court in San Francisco. Google seeks a declaration from the court that its business model does not run afoul of trademark and other laws.

In its complaint, Google in essence concedes its status as the beast of the Internet, by touting its "mission of organizing the world's information and making it accessible and useful."

No, you read it right.  A court in Texas issued Microsoft a permanent injunction, banning it from selling or importing any Microsoft Word products to the U.S. that have capability of opening .XML, .DOX, or DOCM files (XML).  And Microsoft was ordered to pay up $290 million to boot.

The order stems from a patent infringement action brought by Canadian company i4i.  The Toronto-based company claimed that Microsoft's word processing software infringed on its patent by using a built-in XML editor to display information.

Some momentous events occurred yesterday in the world of digital music that may help to keep your favorite internet and satellite stations pumping out the tunes. 

First, the DC Circuit decided a case between SoundExchange, the organization that collects and distributes royalties to copyright owners, and Sirius XM Radio, who intervened in the case, over the royalty rate that satellite radio must pay to play music for the years 2007-2012.

Owners of copyrights in sound recordings have an exclusive right to "perform the copyrighted word publicly by means of a digital audio transmission," 17 USC § (106)(6).  Thus, in order to broadcast satellite radio, the broadcasters must pay a royalty to the copyright owner.  If they can't agree on a royalty, then the Copyright Royalty Judges step in and set one for them.

Wired's Threat Level blog is reporting that the Recording Industry Association of America has filed a motion to compel Charles Nesson to cease recording and posting depositions and other discovery materials to his blog or to the website for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.  The motion also requests monetary sanctions for Nesson.

The motion comes after Nesson recorded multiple depositions and at least one phone conversation between the judge in the case and RIAA lawyers.  The RIAA lawyers argue that Nesson posted the recordings to the internet, even after the judge instructed him not to.  The judge has already admonished Nesson that taping conversations in Massachusetts is illegal without the consent of all the parties to the conversation. 

Let this be a lesson to future defendants in copyright infringement actions: if you plan on using a DMCA safe harbor defense, don't destroy or conceal evidence related to your argument.  Judges don't like that sort of thing.

That point was emphatically made yesterday by Judge Harold Baer of the Southern District of New York.  The judge was ruling in the case of Arista Records v. Usenet.com.  Arista accused Usenet of basically every form of copyright infringement there is: direct, contributory, vicarious, you name it. 

The United States Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Hollywood and network television channels in the Cablevision remote storage DVR case, which ends the litigation and clears the air regarding Cablevision's service.  For now, at least.

The product that Cablevision offers to its customers allows them to perform normal DVR functions, like recording shows and pausing live TV, without pruchasing or renting an actual hardware device.

Instead, the content is recorded on Cablevision's servers while the user controls the actions of the DVR across the network.  The user makes all the decisions about what and when to record, but the actual recording occurs on Cablevision's hard drive instead of a hard drive inside a device in the subscriber's home.

An obscure company known as Tune Hunter has sued some big names in technology, including Apple and AT&T, for patent infringement, claiming that their promotion of the Shazam application violates Tune Hunter's patent for a music identification system. 

Tune Hunter also sued the company that makes Shazam, as well as Samsung, Amazon.com, Napster, Motorola, Verizon and others. 

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section about legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

Fasten your seatbelts - if you love music, you absolutely must get hip to the Music Genome Project brought to you at Pandora.com.  This is the next big thing in music.

As pointed out on the web site, Pandora means "all gifted."  According to ancient Greek mythology, Pandora received a variety of gifts from the Gods, including the gift of music from Apollo.  The twist now is that Pandora.com is here to bring the gift of music to you.

French lawmakers have once again taken up a bill that would strip internet users of their internet connections if they are caught illegally downloading music or movies three times.

The previous incarnation of the bill was defeated in the lower house of parliament in early April, after a stealth move by a group of Socialist lawmakers opposed to the law. 

Support for the law was so high among legislators that most didn't bother to show up for the actual vote, which allowed the Socialists to rush in and vote the bill down at the last minute.