http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/2421.html
"Longhorn troubles, Alacritech sue Microsoft for copyright infringement
Posted on : Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 GMT | Author : Emma Price
News Category : Technology


After last month's Burst fiasco, Microsoft finds itself on the wrong side of a law suit once again.

This time it is a data-networking firm called Alacritech, which claims that Microsoft has infringed on the copyrights of the session-layer interface control (SLIC) technology to speed up data flow across computer networks.

Alacritech claims that this technology has been coded into the Microsoft Chimney and Longhorn products

"A US District Court in San Francisco has admitted a preliminary injunction against Microsoft that will prevent it from, "making, using, offering for sale, selling, importing or inducing others to use Microsoft's Chimney or Longhorn software." This ruling puts a question mark on whether Longhorn, designated as the next generation operating system, will have to be shelved.

Commenting on the injunction, Larry Boucher, president of Alacritech, said, "After Alacritech discovered that Microsoft Chimney is based on intellectual property that we developed, patented and own, we offered Microsoft a license.

Microsoft rejected licensing terms that would be acceptable to us. We were forced to sue Microsoft to stop it from continuing to infringe, and inducing others to infringe, our intellectual property rights." Boucher claims that Alacritech invented the software in 1997 and approached Microsoft in 1998 to see if an agreement could be reached whereby both companies would collaborate on developing it further. He alleges that Microsoft never got back to Alacritech on the issue and hence the lawsuit.

Microsoft can appeal in 21 days. "
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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/144409/1/.html
"SINGAPORE : CD-ROM manufacturer Eastgate Technology has said it is being investigated by the police for a possible infringement of copyright.

The breach was in relation to several orders placed by one of its Singapore customers.

Police officers raided the company's premises last Friday.

Eastgate said it was cooperating fully with the police and was also carrying out its own internal investigations into the matter.

Eastgate did not give any names, but said the customer had placed several orders two years ago for the production of audio compact discs with a total sales value of S$1.53 million. "
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http://ad-rag.com/120370.php
" Sonarstate has threatened legal action against Heineken and global ad agency McCann Erickson for alleged copyright infringement in their ‘Where's your head at?’ campaign. (Not related to the Australian Where's your head at anti drug campaign.)
Sonarstate claims the Speakerboy character they use has been nicked by Heineken and turned into a Speakerhead character, Sonarstate claims it's plagiarised.
Sonarstates own speakerboy - not connected to the loud speaker builders located at speakerboy.org - can be seen in small speakerboy films here.


A quote from the Sunday Business Post Online reveals more
However, a posting on an Irish creative design website last week, attributed to one of the design team behind the Heineken campaign, said that it was unaware of the existence of the Speakerboy character, while developing the character. The person also said that there had been no deliberate attempts to copy the concept.

The web posting said that similarities between the two characters had been an “unfortunate coincidence'‘."
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http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/05/06/news/12860.shtml
"MPAA warns University of file-sharing
Notification comes just weeks after RIAA suits

Tom Senn
Princetonian Staff Writer

Three weeks after the recording industry filed lawsuits against 25 University students, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched its own salvo against illegal file-sharing on the Princeton campus.

In a recent letter to President Tilghman, MPAA President Dan Glickman expressed concern about illegal movie downloading on the University network and attached a list of 66 IP addresses associated with alleged acts of infringement, according to University spokesman Eric Quinones.

The letter did not indicate whether the MPAA intends to sue any of the 66 individuals, Quinones said.

"Our OIT office has contacted all of the students associated with those machines where the alleged infringement occurred," Quinones said. "They were notified that we did receive this notice and instructed that if any infringement was going on, it should cease immediately." The MPAA announced in April that it was filing lawsuits against students at 12 universities. Princeton was not one of the universities listed.

At a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Monday, OIT policy adviser Rita Saltz said that the movie industry has sent similar infringement warnings — commonly referred to as "takedown notices" — to University administrators for several years.

Saltz said she was concerned, though, that "issues pertaining to the recording industry are in their infancy stage with the motion picture industry."

Recalling her reaction to the news that the MPAA might follow the RIAA in suing students, Saltz said, "My heart and viscera just shrank and chilled."

The 66 IP addresses bring the current academic year's total number of notices received by the University from film and TV copyright owners to 181, according to Quinones. In the 2003-04 academic year, the University received 151 such warnings.

Standard takedown notices had previously been delivered by a copyright holder to Saltz, the University's Digital Millennium Copyright agent, Quinones said.

"This letter was not a typical takedown notice, but rather an expression from the MPAA's president to President Tilghman that the film industry is concerned about copyright infringement at Princeton and on other college campuses," Quinones said.

Students illegally sharing movie files are doing so at their own peril, MPAA spokesperson Anne Caliguiri said in an email Thursday.

"Our message is simple: people who steal movies believe they are anonymous on the Internet and won't be held responsible for their actions. They are wrong," Caliguiri said.

During Monday's CPUC meeting, Saltz was also asked why the University assigns each student a unique IP address. At some other universities, IP addresses are associated with a particular location rather than an individual.

"The decision to associate a name with an IP address is based on history and would take a good deal of reworking and redesign to move away from, but we are looking into that," Saltz said.

Quinones said the current system has been in effect since the early 1990s and prevents students from having to re-register their computers each time they move to a different dorm.

"From an administrative standpoint, this system is consistent, convenient and has allowed for the most expeditious response to network emergencies, such as a virus," Quinones said."
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http://www.worldscreen.com/newscurrent.php?filename=gsn414.htm
"GSN Sues FremantleMedia over Copyright Infringement

LOS ANGELES, April 14: GSN has filed a lawsuit against FremantleMedia North America in an attempt to stop production of a program for a competing cable network.

The suit was filed March 29 in Los Angeles Superior Court, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. It charges FremantleMedia with copyright infringement and breach of contract for licensing material from its game show library for the production of a program called Greatest Game Show Moments.

The suit states that GSN parent company Sony Pictures Entertainment has had exclusive rights to the footage since 1992.

FremantleMedia is a major program supplier to GSN, which is devoted to game shows. The competing cable network was not named."

The kinds of copyright insanity which you point out (there are MILLIONS more examples) make me sometimes just want to throw out the entire concept of protecting intellectual works/endeavors with such artifice in the first place.

The Problem (capitol "P") is this concept of "ownership" of an idea. Copyright was intended to give the original creator some protection for a limited time over the monopolization of the created idea. NOTHING MORE/NOTHING LESS! It was not intended to give him/her OWNERSHIP of that idea. YOU CAN'T OWN AN IDEA!

(I wish the world would "get it".)

The phrase "Intellectual Property" should be banned as illegal/immoral.

Code, write us up a bill for Congress to that effect. If by some snowball's chance in hell we could lobby to get it passed, we will instantly have won the war!

Shmoo, I have this sinking feeling that "the world" -- if we can defer to admitting how the powers-that-be (in "the world") are globalists -- is headed for the goal of CONTROL, of which (cringe!) 'intellectual property rights' are part and parcel for the new world order they are determined to create.

It's more of a trend than a concerted effort by any one individual or corporation, but I fear it too Diogenes2.

I think all of us here are "ditto" on one level or another.

I agree completely with Diogenes2

Some globalists:

IMF
EU
UN
Bill Gates
World Bank
WIPO
Vatican
Islam
Nazis
Jesuits
Zionists
Communists
RIAA
IFPI

Leflaw is right on target...don't forget about the Illuminati though

All are headed by men.

...power hungry wealthy men who are anally retentive

Leflaw is "on target" but FORTUNATELY non of them are YET in position to "grab it all"

...but any of them leflaw listed (and a few more we can think of) are jockeying for position.

Watch out for the EU....their population, I believe, already outnumbers the USA..if not yet, vey close.

Of course they're all headed by men...women don't behave that way.

let me just say this since the music majors had that law passed what was it (DMCA) or what ever it was called the world has gone bonkers for suing everything computerized so when the world wakes up and figures it out the all of the sueing is ruining the experience it's no wonder why kids don't want to go into some kind of computer field and last but not least they don't want to work for some company who 'll out source as soon as they join .
So for all the big companys that get sued can thank the media companys for open a pandora box that lets all the suing run rampant.
So the adage applies here (what comes around Goes around).

"Of course they're all headed by men...women don't behave that way. "

Unless you forget to give them chocolate and sparkly things.

Margaret Thathcher
Indira Ghandi



You get the point...

Forget it, George--I don't care for chocolate or sparkly things.....of course, I'm never going to rule the world, either!

That only makes 2, leflaw. Youse guys are still WAY ahead!

The Countess Elizabeth Bathory
Eva Peron
Madonna
Gail Norton
Queen Elizabeth
Queen Victoria
my wife
my daughter

I've got a question that perhaps the esteemed lawyers on this board can answer.

If person X patents an idea on a process & I as an inventor (or programmer) independently comes up with the same idea (i.e. I don't have a clue about the patent) & a real world implementation of said idea, I can be sued for copyright infringement simply because we're sharing the same idea on how to do something?

Copyright and patents are seperate things.

JohnCarlton, that situation has happened many times - depending on the country, the patent goes to either whoever filed first or whoever can prove they invented the device first. The loser has to either stop production or pay the patentholder as much as they demand. Or both.

Sometimes two inventers produce a device simutainously. In first-to-patent systems, this is easily sorted. In first-to-invent, it usually results in many years of complicated trials as the court decides at which point the rough diagrams in notebooks became a patentable invention. This is one of the main flaws in invented-first patent law.

The flaw in first-to-file is that inventors - both individual and corporate - are so desperate to file they will often patent a half-complete or very vague idea. Thus you have submarine-patents and the biotech industries habit of patenting newly-discovered genes before even discovering what they do, in case a competitor sequences the gene the next week.

Gates & Co. was notorious for releasing unfinished (beta versions) of software on the public in order to gain market advantage and thwart competition.
That's why there have been so many security holes and other flaws in their operating system software -- financial advantage outweighed the best interests of consumers.
I offer no apologies in referring to their software as Microcrap.
Isn't it amazing (and pathetic) how such rotten methods made Bill a billionaire?

Diogenes2,

I think the main reason Bill G. became a billionaire was that he and his staff recognized that the vast majoritiy of PC users wanted an entire suite of software built around an easy to use Operating System. Before Microsoft, everyone was using different programs (for example, Wordstar, PFS Write, Word Perfect, etc.). Billy Boy came out with an entire suite of software, built around his operating system, and told businesses that if they bought his suite, then everyone would use the same software and thus you didn't have to keep retraining everyone. So corporations bought it.

How to compete against this? Not one program at a time, but with a better OS and suite of programs. You don't compete against Ford by selling a bunch of car parts; you compete by building & selling entire cars. That's what the customer wants.

"Billy Boy came out with an entire suite of software, built around his operating system..."

In the beginning, he pretended he had an operating system that he didn't have. Then, he went to work stealing from an operating system he didn't have the right to tamper with.
And after he reverse-engineered & decompiled Apple's operating system, he changed enough of it (often not for the better) in an attempt to avoid infringement.

"How to compete against this? Not one program at a time, but with a better OS and suite of programs."

Mac is better; so is Linux.
But Windows has been so entrenched in the business sector, and Microsoft's anti-competitive policies has created an uneven playing field for years... it might be easier fighting the mafia.

Ask any honest IT technician, and he will admit Microcrap sucks.
(Caution - cynical disclaimer is being invoked:
Of course, finding ANY honest person may be a challenge.
I've only known a few in my lifetime.)

"Users wanted an entire suite of software built around an easy-to-use Operating System."

Easy-to-use operating sytem (with few headaches?)
Did Windows deliver that?

I rest my case.

"Easy-to-use operating sytem (with few headaches?)
Did Windows deliver that?"

...agreed, but they delivered and MARKETED "a" system broadly early on, THEN used monopolistic strategy in that market place.

nitedreamerxp says:
...it's no wonder why kids don't want to go into some kind of computer field and last but not least they don't want to work for some company who 'll out source as soon as they join...

i say this: kids have quit working in that field because it is super saturated. unless you're a genius in the field. top pay might be like 50$/year. any raises in money or position after that isn't cause you are a computer geek but because you have a mba in business. the money isn't in the field. largely because of outsourcing. the us economy is going downhill fast. many of these lawsuits are either the dying throws of a company or because that's all they do (sue). i say: expect the "made in the usa" computer industry to fail rapidly in the coming years.

"Easy-to-use operating sytem" (with few headaches)?
Did Windows deliver that?

"...agreed, but they delivered and MARKETED 'a' system broadly early on, THEN used monopolistic strategy in that market place."

True.
But if billionaire Bill or anyone else were to say he satisfied business/consumer demand for an easy-to-use system that didn't lead to headaches, most everyone knows that would far from the truth. He offered a standard -- a universal OS with cordinated programs -- but in his own heart he knew it was full of holes and would lead to grief.

He was an opportunistic infringer who, (as you stated, used monopolistic strategy in the marketplace to suppress competition) ...and I could add, while continuing to release band-aid patches to prop up his inferior software.
And why am I using past tense about this -- he still is!

cordinated = coordinated

(Where is that edit button?)