Intellectual Property Law

Bogus IP Claims Quash Debate Over Future of NYC Landmark

Posted on November 18, 2008
New York - A New York City community organizer is fighting back in court after her parody website challenging redevelopment efforts in New York City's historic Union Square was shut down with bogus claims of copyright infringement and cybersquatting. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing Savitri Durkee, an activist concerned with preserving the character of Union Square and Union Square Park...

RIAA Wins, Campuses Lose as Tennessee Governor Signs Campus Network Filtering Law

Posted on November 17, 2008
Last week, the RIAA celebrated the signing of a ridiculous new law in Tennessee that says: Each public and private institution of higher education in the state that has student residential computer networks shall: [...] [R]easonably attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the institution's computer and network resources, if such institution receives fifty (50) or more legally valid notices of infringement as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 within the preceding year...

Judge Allows Bogus Jones Day Trademark Claims to Go Forward

Posted on November 17, 2008
In a decision that could have significant negative consequences for online speech and commerce, Judge John Darrah of the Northern District of Illinois has refused to dismiss some of the most preposterous trademark claims we've ever seen (and that's saying something)...

Court Must Vacate Kentucky Court's Baseless Domain Name Seizure

Posted on November 13, 2008
Frankfort, KY - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged a Kentucky Court of Appeals Wednesday to vacate a lower court's order authorizing the seizure of more than 100 Internet domain names associated with websites operating around the globe...

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FCC Unanimously Approves Use of Television "White Spaces"

Posted on November 13, 2008
Advocates for the opening of the "white spaces" were rewarded with a resounding victory earlier this month when the FCC unanimously voted in favor of allowing unlicensed use of the unused spectrum between TV channels. (For a more complete explanation of white spaces, check out our earlier blog post...

A Transparency Agenda for the New Administration

Posted on November 12, 2008
This is the final post in a three-part series outlining how the new leadership in Congress and the White House can restore some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post focuses on government transparency. Previously, we've written about surveillance and intellectual property...

An Innovation Agenda for the New Administration

Posted on November 11, 2008
This is the second post in a three-part series outlining how the new leadership in Congress and the White House can restore some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post focuses on innovation, fair use and intellectual property...

The WIPO Broadcasting Treaty: Back from the Dead?

Posted on November 07, 2008
Last year, we reported that WIPO Member States had decided to postpone holding an intergovernmental diplomatic conference to adopt the controversial Broadcasting Treaty. For us, and the many others who had expressed concern about the proposed treaty, this was welcome news...

A Privacy Agenda For The New Administration

Posted on November 07, 2008
This is the first post in a three part series directed at restoring some of the civil liberties we've lost over the past eight years. Today's post is about our privacy rights. We'll follow this up early next week with our thoughts on intellectual property rights and government transparency...

global minilinks for 2008-11-06

Posted on November 06, 2008
French Senate Votes for Three StrikesThe bill still has to pass the National Assembly, however — and faces a clash with developing European law. No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in AustraliaThe battle against the Australian goverment's plans to install compulsory filters on all Internet traffic grows in strength...

EFF's OurVoteLive.org Helps Over 86,000 Voters

Posted on November 05, 2008
Yesterday, a year-long collaboration between EFF and the Election Protection Coalition came to fruition. OurVoteLive.org, powered by EFF's Total Election Awareness project, helped EP's thousands of hotline operators and legal response teams document and respond to over 86,000 calls to the 866-OUR-VOTE voter-assistance hotline on November 4th and during early voting...

Google Book Search Settlement: A Reader's Guide

Posted on October 31, 2008
As we reported earlier this week, Google has settled the lawsuit brought in 2005 by authors and book publishers regarding its massive book scanning and indexing project. Although the settlement must still be approved by the court and is unlikely to go into effect until sometime late in 2009, commentary has already been flooding the blogosphere...

Federal Circuit Reins In Business Method Patents

Posted on October 31, 2008
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday issued a decision that imposes firm limits on business method patents. The ruling effectively overturns a key part of the court?s decision in State Street Bank and Trust v. Signature Financial Group, which opened the door to an explosion of patents on "methods" of doing business so long as the methods involved use of a computer and produced a "useful, concrete, and tangible result...

Human Rights and Internet Companies: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Agree to Principles

Posted on October 29, 2008
For almost two years, EFF has been a participant in negotiations between human rights groups, investors, academics and Internet companies -- including Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft -- aimed at improving how those businesses deal with free expression and privacy issues around the world...

The Two Best Books About the DMCA

Posted on October 29, 2008
The blogosphere is doing a great job examining the legacy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was enacted into law ten years ago this week. But people frequently ask me where they can turn for a more in-depth analysis of the DMCA, DRM, and their impact on digital culture...

DMCA: Ten Years of Unintended Consequences

Posted on October 28, 2008
Today is the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998. EFF is marking the occasion with the release of a 19-page report that focuses on the most notorious part of the law: the ban on "circumventing" digital rights management (DRM) and other "technological protection measures...

Google Reaches Settlement With Authors and Publishers Over Google Book Search

Posted on October 28, 2008
Today, Google announced a settlement with authors and publishers in the class action lawsuits over Google Book Search. The settlement still needs to be approved by a New York federal court, but under the plan, Google will: pay authors and publishers $125 million, part of which will be used to create a Book Rights Registry allowing copyright owners to register their works and receive a share of subscriptions, book sales and ad revenues; allow users to purchase full books, saved to an "electronic bookshelf;" will offer institutional subscriptions, including a free online portal for public libraries; will point users to locations to buy or borrow searched books...

Monitor Election Problems Nationwide with OurVoteLive.org

Posted on October 27, 2008
San Francisco - Reporters, bloggers, and voters across the country can monitor problems at the polls on Election Day on OurVoteLive.org, a project built and hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of Election Protection, the nation's largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition, and its toll-free voter-assistance hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE...

Hollywood Menaces DVD Rental Kiosks

Posted on October 27, 2008
Hollywood's distaste for disruptive innovation isn't limited to software products like RealDVD. Now it is targeting DVD rental kiosks, like the Redbox kiosk pictured here. The idea couldn't be simpler, or the innovation more pro-consumer: Redbox makes DVD rental kiosks that rent authentic, Hollywood DVDs...

EFF Marks 10th Anniversary of DMCA with Report on Law's Unintended Consequences

Posted on October 27, 2008
San Francisco - Ten years ago Tuesday, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law. In a report released to mark the anniversary, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) documents the ways in which this controversial law has harmed fair use, free speech, scientific research, and legitimate competition...

minilinks for 2008-10-23

Posted on October 24, 2008
Hollywood (Unintentionally) Agrees with EFFThe MPAA's response to an EFF blog post unwittingly validates our point -- that the MPAA's legal attack on RealDVD is about controlling innovation. Record Label 'Infringes' Own CopyrightA donation-based record label that distributes its music for free had its site taken down for copyright "infringement...

EFF's "Yellow Dots of Mystery" on Instructables

Posted on October 24, 2008
Since late 2004, EFF has been warning the public about "printer dots" -- tiny yellow dots that appear on documents produced by many color laser printers and copiers. These yellow dots form a coded pattern on every page the printer produces and can be used to identify specific details about a document; for example, the brand, model, and serial number of the device that printed it and when it was printed...

EFF's New NSA Spying Shirts

Posted on October 23, 2008
A few weeks back, we produced a new graphic to accompany our new case against the government, Jewel v. NSA, challenging the Bush administration's illegal spying program. The graphic is a retooling of the NSA's logo, featuring a glowering eagle using his talons to illegally plug into the nation's telecommunications system — with the help of telecom giant AT&T...

FCC Chair Supports Moving Forward on White Space Tech

Posted on October 22, 2008
Last Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin spoke in favor of opening up "white spaces" at a press conference while the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) published its much-anticipated report on white space technology trials...

TV Networks Must Stop Blocking Election Videos on YouTube

Posted on October 20, 2008
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of public interest groups called on four television networks today to stop stifling vibrant political debate on the Internet with overreaching copyright claims and proposed two measures to help YouTube protect online political speech in the final days before America's presidential election...

EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court

Posted on October 17, 2008
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Thursday challenged the constitutionality of a law aimed at granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program...

Bush Signs Intellectual Property Enforcement Bill

Posted on October 17, 2008
On Monday, President Bushed signed a controversial intellectual property enforcement bill into law. This set of proposals for heightened intellectual property enforcement first appeared at the end of 2007 in the House's original PRO IP Act. The winding history of the bill not only sheds light on the agenda of the entertainment industry, but leads to an instructive conclusion -- that the vigilance of public interest groups and involved citizens is having a positive impact on copyright policy...

Do You Need An Exemption from the DMCA?

Posted on October 16, 2008
Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office undertakes a rule-making to consider whether the DMCA's ban on circumventing technological protection measures (e.g., DRM and other "access control" restrictions) is interfering with noninfringing uses of copyrighted materials...

Colbert on NSA Spying

Posted on October 16, 2008
In his Word of the Day commentary yesterday, Stephen Colbert put forward a ringing defense of the NSA's spying program. Responding to reports that NSA employees are routinely listening in on the personal calls of US soldiers and aid workers stationed abroad, Colbert reminds viewers that "it's a lot easier to listen to Americans, they speak English...

YouTube Responds to McCain Campaign's Letter

Posted on October 15, 2008
Yesterday, we wrote about the McCain-Palin campaign's letter to YouTube, highlighting how DMCA takedown notices can make online speech disappear from the Internet, even when the claims of infringement plainly lack any merit. Today, we bring you YouTube's response...

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