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Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google over
copyright infringement on YouTube is coming to a head, with a court battle likely to ensue
sometime this year. For now, the accusations made by both sides have been released. And they pull
no punches whatsoever.
A Brief History Lesson
Viacom Vs Google can be traced right back to May 2005 before YouTube was under the protective wing
of Google. A clip from
Paramount Pictures’ Twin Towers was uploaded to the site, and Viacom demanded to
know who the uploader was.
In October 2006 YouTube made a deal with Viacom to syndicate content. Then Google bought YouTube
for
$1.65 billion. February 2007 saw Viacom retract the previous deal and pull everything off the
site.
March 2007 saw Viacom sue Google for 63,000 counts of copyright infringement, for which it was
seeking $1 billion in damages. Google argues that YouTube is protected under the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act.
BetaNews
has the full timeline with many more twists and turns. But it all builds to this point when
Google and Viacom’s documents pertaining to the court case have been released. And they
make for interesting reading, to say the least.
Google’s Claims
Google claims that
Viacom wanted it both ways, continuously uploading its content to YouTube while publicly
rallying against it. Google claims Viacom uploaded roughed up versions of videos so they looked
stolen, hiring marketing agencies to do the dirty work.
Google claims that Viacom even uploaded many of the clips which it is now suing over. And
maintains that it is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as it removes videos
suspected of infringing copyrights.
Google also makes the claim
that Viacom was interested in acquiring YouTube at one point.
Viacom’s Claims
Viacom dismisses the DMCA defense as it insists YouTube is more than just a passive content host
and is therefore responsible for what videos were being uploaded to the site.
What’s more, Viacom also accuses YouTube’s founders of at the very least turning a
blind eye to copyright infringing clips, suggesting that traffic was sought by any means
necessary in order to ensure a quick sale. Viacom also claims Jawed Karim (YouTube co-founder)
himself uploaded infringing videos, using email correspondence between the founders as evidence.
In essence, Viacom argues that YouTube was “intentionally built
on infringement,” and deserves no leniency in court despite the measures put in place to
clean up the site since the lawsuit was issued.
Conclusions
The documents feel very much like each side is attempting to score points from the other. And
it’s almost inevitable that the case will now end up in court.
The sides have until April 30 to file opposing arguments to each other’s motions, with a
trial then set to take place later this year. And it’ll be a trial whose verdict could set
a landmark in terms of copyright owners vs. online video sites.
Apple doesn’t like HTC, not one bit. In fact, Apple recently filed a lawsuit against
the Taiwan-based company, alleging that it has infringed 20 iPhone-related patents. This has
already been discussed to death, but it gives us an opportunity to look at some of Apple’s
other forays into the world of lawsuits. It’s terribly exciting.
So yeah, CNET did the hard
work, and I’m merely highling the items that caught my eye.
•
Psystar. This is probably the most famous lawsuit in the past few years. Pretty much a
flawless victory for Apple.
• Nokia.
Oh, Apple on the other end of a lawsuit? Hmm. Nokia says Apple infringed a number of its patents
with the iPhone. Nokia sues Apple which then sues HTC. Mind = blown.
• Microsoft and HP. Oh
dear, it’s a battle royale over user graphical user interfaces. Apple basically got its
teeth kicked in on this one.
There have been plenty of efforts to try to curb "cyberbullying," often through laws that try to
make it illegal to be a
jerk. Unfortunately, the concept of cyberbullying is so vague that this creates
tremendous problems and unintended consequences. And, on the whole, it seemed unlikely that any
such law could withstand First Amendment scrutiny. However, it appears that the First Amendment
isn't always the First Amendment we thought it was.
A California appeals court has ruled that cyberbullying threats are not protected free speech. Now, you can
understand why people might like this conceptually. No one likes a bully. But making it against the
law to bully is incredibly risky, and almost certainly leads to a very different kind of
bullying.
In this particular case, a kid set up a website about himself, and his fellow students posted
comments mocking him. It was cruel, though you would think that the simple response would be to
take down those comments. Instead, the family went to the police -- who said that the comments "did
not meet the criteria for criminal prosecution and were protected speech." The family followed by
suing six students and their parents for hate crimes, defamation and intentional
infliction of emotional distress.
Now, there's no doubt at all that the comments were over the line and incredibly mean. However, it
looks like there was a perfectly reasonable process outside of the courts to handle this.
Apparently, the father of one kid who made some of the worst comments made his son apologize,
grounded him and took away his internet access. It seems that wasn't enough. Those who were sued
filed an anti-SLAPP motion under California's anti-SLAPP law (one of the strongest in the country),
but the judges said that the text was not protected free speech and thus did not fall under the
anti-SLAPP provisions. One of the kids, while admitting his own conduct was over the line, said he
was just joking around, and trying to top others in responding to the website. The judges, clearly,
did not find the joking to be funny. Indeed, it was not funny, but that doesn't mean you should
lose your free speech rights.
One judge dissented and argued strongly that not only was this a mistake, but it would have serious
First Amendment consequences: I share with the majority the view that R.R.'s post, like many
that preceded and followed it, was vulgar, nasty, offensive, and disgusting. But, as Justice Harlan
wrote in Cohen v. California... although --the immediate consequence of [free speech rights] may
often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance[,] . . . [w]e cannot
lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of
individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values [of freedom of
speech] are truly implicated.
In concluding that the post was not in connection with an issue of public interest, the majority
fails to follow relevant precedent and ignores the substantial evidence that D.C. was a person in
the public eye. The majority also creates a broad and groundless exception to the protections of
the anti-SLAPP statute, holding that for purposes of the statute, jokes do not constitute
communications in connection with issues of public interest.... That is not the law. It also
notes that while the "threats" in questions did seem incredibly distasteful, in context with all
the other comments, it seems obvious that they were not real threats: Reading the sequence of
posts from beginning to end, no reasonable person would foresee that any of it would be taken as a
serious threat of violence. No reasonable person would believe that (at least) four people were
sincerely threatening to take D.C.'s life. Taken together, all of the posts amount to nothing but a
lot of adolescent sex-obsessed hyperbolic derision, sarcasm, and repulsive foolishness In
fact, the judge notes that the kid who set up the website didn't seem bothered by the comments, and
was apparently more traumatized by his father filing this lawsuit. Maybe the kid should
sue his father?
Lady Gaga’s infectious songs and on-stage antics have made her a pop sensation and twice
winner of a Grammy Award. However, her former boyfriend and producer from New Jersey has gone to
court claiming the star would be nothing without him.
Five years ago, when most BitTorrent sites had only a handful of visitors, ShareConnector was
serving eDonkey links to millions of file-sharers every month. This popularity didn’t go
unnoticed by the local authorities, who were tipped off by BREIN and started a criminal
investigation into the operator of the site, as well as the people behind the site Releases4U.
What followed was more than 5 years of legal battles in both civil and criminal court cases. In
the criminal case the operator of ShareConnector came out as the winner in 2007 and was released
from all charges.
The court ruled that the authorities failed to provide any evidence to prove ShareConnector was
involved in copyright infringement nor enough to prove that it was criminal in nature. In
addition, the judge ruled that the initial arrests were unlawful as the evidence provided by
BREIN was insufficient.
After this decision ShareConnector came back online. However, this comeback was short lived as
local anti-piracy outfit BREIN initiated a civil lawsuit, trying to prevent the operator from
keeping the site up and running. This lawsuit was won by BREIN but the ShareConnector operator
decided to appeal the ruling.
This week a court announced the verdict of the appeal and it came out negative once again.
Although the court ruled that the operator of ShareConnector wasn’t guilty of copyright
infringement, it said the site must remain closed for good. The judge ruled that sites that offer
hash links (like .torrent links) are facilitating copyright infringement, an unlawful behavior.
The outcome of the case is disappointing to aDI, the operator of the site, who further said that
it didn’t surprise him. He had hoped, however, that the ruling in the appeal would be in
line with recent cases in Spain where P2P indexing sites were deemed legal.
“The results are just what I expected, so nothing surprising here considering all the
similar recent cases with just about the same conclusion we see here. The trend has been set by
those ignorant old judges that fail to see the logic, contradicting the rulings from
Spain,” said aDi in a response to the
verdict.
“Unfortunately this is not Spain, the Dutch legal system is dysfunctional, lacking logic
and professionalism. Why does it take more than five years and so many criminal trials to prove a
simple fact? How come all the pathetic private organizations whose main interest is money and not
the artists, get away with lies and deceptions spreading their propaganda in the media?,”
he added.
What remains for the ShareConnector operator is the appeal of the criminal case that will be
heard in April. In 2007 he was released from all charges, but after two years the Department of
Justice filed the appeal. The charges in this case are membership of a criminal organization and
(assisting in) the distribution of copyrighted material. The additional charges of copyright
infringement were dropped last week.
In the upcoming trial Dr. Johan Pouwelse will appear as an expert witness on behalf of the
defendant. Since downloading copyrighted films and music is not illegal in The Netherlands, he is
expected to testify that there are various ways for eDonkey users to disable the upload feature.
Whatever the outcome of the criminal trial, ShareConnector will never return.
During 2005 to 2008, YouTube execs said a lot of dumb and nasty things to each other in emails
and instant messages.
Thanks to Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube-parent company Google -- and the court's decision to
release a "statement of undisputed facts" -- you get to read it all!
Here's one more point concerning the motions filed in the YouTube case
by Google and Viacom. We had mentioned in our analysis that Google highlights the details of
Viacom's rather large "stealth marketing" campaign to upload videos to YouTube, but Eric Goldman
points out that the practices Google uncovered certainly sound
like they cross the line of what the FTC says is legitimate: YouTube also scored points for
its descriptions of Viacom's stealth marketing practices. Although these facts only help YouTube's
legal posture a little, the lawsuit's discovery process has unveiled some non-public information
about Viacom’s practices that should be interesting to the FTC and state attorney generals.
Viacom's alleged stealth marketing practices are aggressive--close to the permissible line, if not
over it. As a result, they might be exactly the kind of consumer misdirection and inauthentic
online content that the FTC has been railing against, and we know the FTC is looking for test cases
in this area. So, a lawsuit that began as Viacom v. YouTube might morph into FTC v. Viacom. This is
one of the known risks of picking a fight--once started, you can't control where it goes.
Indeed, Google presents rather detailed evidence of the lengths Viacom went through to fool users
into thinking that clips were uploaded by people other than Viacom. Among Viacom's actions:
Hiring "an army of third-party marketing agents to upload clips on its behalf"
Having the uploads come from names that are made to look like random users
Using non-Viacom email addresses to sign up for accounts -- with the company admitting that
it wanted to use email addresses that "can't be traced" back to the company.
Leaving Viacom offices to go elsewhere to do the uploads (such as Kinkos) to avoid connecting
the uploads to Viacom.
Altering the footage of videos to make them appear unauthorized: "so users feel they have
found something unique."
While certainly helping Google make the point that it's ridiculous to expect it to know which
videos were legit and which were infringing, these also seem to certainly violate the spirit of the
FTC's recent guidelines on
questionable "stealth" marketing practices. As Goldman notes, if the FTC is looking for a high
profile test case, they may have just been handed a ton of useful evidence.
Microsoft suffered its second legal setback in as many days on Friday with
word of a second patent lawsuit from VirnetX. The accuser hopes to expand on the $105.8 million
fine against Microsoft by claiming that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 also infringe on the same
patents for VPN networking that were the subject of the prior lawsuit. VirnetX didn't specify what
it hoped for in damages but characterized the second complaint as plugging a gap that would
otherwise exempt newer versions of Windows....
Hot on the heels of one legal victory against Microsoft, VirnetX files a second lawsuit against the
company, claiming patent violations in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
This week, documents from Viacom's billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube for copyright
infringement were published, and the three-year-long-and-counting lawsuit has again been brought
to the public's attention. In case you haven't been following the case, here's a quick timeline
of the major events that led up to the lawsuit, and those that occurred since the original
complaint was filed:
May 24, 2005- Viacom subpoenas YouTube for information about a user who uploaded
clips from Paramount Pictures' "Twin Towers."
June 2005- Viacom's board of directors approves a plan to spin off assets, which
become known as the new Viacom, Inc. That new company is given control of Paramount, while the
core company reforms as CBS Corp.
January 2006- 20th Century Fox sues YouTube to have content from Fox TV shows
such as The Simpsons and 24 removed from YouTube.
June 2006- YouTube and NBC partner to create NBC channel on
YouTube for Internet exclusives, clips, and trailers.
July 2006- Viacom and NBC Universal back journalist Robert Tur in his suit
against YouTube for illegally posting his videos of the 1992 L.A. riots. The legal brief said,
"YouTube incorrectly contends that the DMCA permits it to avoid any responsibility for the
content on its commercial website and completely shift the burden to content owners to discover
and notify it of infringements."
March 2007- Viacom General Counsel Michael Fricklas in a Washington Post op-ed says that YouTube was not just a passive content
host, and that it is fully aware of what it does. "If the public knows what's there, then
YouTube's management surely does. YouTube's own terms of use give it clear rights, notably the
right to take anything down."
May 2007- British Premier League files class action suit against YouTube for
copyright infringement, says Google "knowingly misappropriated and exploited this valuable
property," when it allowed users to post footage from its football games.
June 2007- YouTube introduces Content ID to help content owners identify if
their content is being used, gives them the option to remove unauthorized content, or monetize
it.
August 2007- Google asks Comedy Central personalities Jon Stewart and Stephen
Colbert to testify against Viacom in copyright hearings.
Comedy Central is a Viacom property.
March 2008- Viacom President and CEO Phillippe Dauman says "We've already
achieved a number of things with this lawsuit. It took a long time, but because of our actions,
YouTube has moved in the right direction. They're where they should have been all along."
June 2008- New York District Court rules that Google has to turn over user IDs
and IP addresses to Viacom. Angry users upload nearly 5,000 "Viacom Sucks" videos to
YouTube. Google is later allowed to make this data anonymous.
July 2008- Movie studio Lionsgate partners with YouTube for a branded channel
with ad-supported official content from the studio.
April 2009- Content owners discus "TV Anywhere" plan to tie Web-based video
content into cable subscription fees. Viacom CEO Dauman says, "People are used to paying for
video subscriptions," sees it as a good idea.
June 2009- "TV Everywhere" network scheme launches.
July 2009- Some claims from the Premier League's 2007 suit against YouTube are
dismissed, but claims for "statutory damages for works not registered in the US" are allowed.
September 2009- Google gives individual copyright holders access to the Insight
metrics of YouTube videos that contain their intellectual property according to Content ID.
October 2009- Viacom presents "smoking gun" evidence for its case: internal
e-mails from YouTube staff that show "actual knowledge" that copyright infringement was taking
place on the video sharing site.
November 2009- Google announces YouTube Direct, a
system where media outlets can directly communicate with users and arrange rebroadcasting rights
on a one-to-one basis.
March 2010- Some of Viacom's "smoking gun" documents go public, company claims
"YouTube was intentionally built on infringement."
Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent
system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus,
most lawsuits we see around patents revolve around cases involving a company manufacturing a
product that includes a patented invention. But what about a lawsuit for a company that
deliberately chose not to license or use a patented technology, because it was too
expensive?
Welcome to today's world.
A few years back, there was a lot of attention paid to videos from a company called SawStop that
made a pretty cool product that protected your fingers from a table saw. You may have seen the
videos: The company tried to license the invention to various table saw makers, but after
evaluating the technology, many were not convinced how well it worked and felt that the cost was
way too high (both for themselves, and for consumers). In fact, some appeared to fear that if they
did adopt this technology and then someone still got hurt, they were asking for a big lawsuit for
promoting this technology as a safety feature.
But what about the other way around? Could someone be so bold as to actually sue for using a table
saw that did not have this technology?
ChurchHatesTucker alerts us
to the story of a lawsuit in Boston that involved a guy whose hand was damaged in a table saw
accident while using a table saw from Ryobi. The guy's complaint was that Ryobi should have included this technology and that it should be required
to protect hands. And, amazingly, the jury sided with the guy.
Yes, you read that right. The jury effectively claimed that any table saw maker is liable for
injuries if it does not license this technology and build it into its table saws.
That, of course, conflicts with that basic "exclusivity" part of patent law -- and would
effectively mean that SawStop has now been given total defacto control over who can be allowed to
sell table saws in the US. That clearly is not what the law was intended to do. The government
should never require companies to have to purchase a patent license for a technology they don't
believe the market wants. And, in this case, the ruling has resulted in numerous other lawsuits
against other table saw makers -- and a near guarantee that the price of table saws will go way up.
Old saws can't be retrofitted, and table saw makers need to totally change their manufacturing
process and greatly increase costs to offer this technology.
This seems blatantly wrong. If the government is going to require companies to use a patented
technology, it seems that the only reasonable solution is to remove the patent on it and allow
competition in the market place.
Microsoft suffered its second legal setback in as many days on Friday with
word of a second patent lawsuit from VirnetX. The accuser hopes to expand on the $105.8 million
fine against Microsoft by claiming that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 also infringe on the same
patents for VPN networking that were the subject of the prior lawsuit. VirnetX didn't specify what
it hoped for in damages but characterized the second complaint as plugging a gap that would
otherwise exempt newer versions of Windows....
We've already written up an analysis of the motions for
summary judgment in the Viacom/Google YouTube lawsuit, suggesting that Google's arguments seem
stronger. It still seems unlikely that either motion will persuade the judge to skip a trial
altogether, but the motions are certainly a bit of a preview of what to expect at any trial. Most
of the analysis out there sort of reiterates the talking points in the two motions, but Eric
Goldman highlighted an important point that got me thinking in that time is working
against Viacom here, as YouTube becomes more and more entrenched as a useful platform by the
day: Perhaps more importantly, the intervening time has been good to YouTube as a business
and as a brand. In this sense, compare Grokster to YouTube. At the time of the Grokster cases, it
was still very much an open question whether Grokster would ever evolve into a tool where
legitimate activity dominated. While we might still have had that same question about YouTube in
2006, by 2010 YouTube has answered that question resoundingly. YouTube's business practices have
matured, everyone has had positive legitimate experiences with YouTube (even behind-the-curve
judges), and it's clear that major legitimate players have adopted YouTube as a platform for their
legitimate activities. For example, YouTube's brief makes the point that all of the 2008
presidential candidates published YouTube videos as part of their campaign. I'm guessing no 2004
presidential candidates used Grokster for campaign purposes.
So as time goes on, YouTube solidifies a brand as a legitimate part of our information
infrastructure. As we learn that the YouTube story has a happy ending, I suspect judges become less
interested in punishing YouTube for past practices. For this reason (and others), I thought a lot
of Viacom's inducement arguments ran hollow because they ran counter to my brand impressions of
YouTube. I would also note that Viacom appears to be giving up its litigation over activity after
May 2008, so even Viacom seems to be happy with YouTube in its current form. Goldman goes on
to point out that this may bring up some challenges heretofore unfaced in determining how the
"inducement" standard works -- but, to me, it brings up an even more important issue: similar
lawsuits against Napster and Grokster moved faster. Lots of people have commented on the fact that
this particular lawsuit has taken three years from filing just to get to the summary judgment
motions to be filed -- and during that time, Goldman is correct, YouTube has had a chance to
mature, refine its business model, and do many things that we now find to be quite beneficial to
society.
The same thing likely would have happened to both Napster and Grokster, if they had been
given a chance to live. Executives behind each company repeatedly laid out strategies to mature
their business models and to work as partners with the industry. It's just that they never got a
chance to put those into practice because these sorts of lawsuits and rulings from judges forced
them (effectively) out of business. In YouTube's case, the slow pace of this particular lawsuit has
allowed it to firmly establish tons of viable, useful, valuable non-infringing uses -- to the point
that it's a platform used by tons of companies, politicians, individuals and more. If Napster and
Grokster had been given half a chance, they likely would have been able to evolve similarly.
And this is what is so painful about watching all these attempts by the entertainment industry to
kill off any new technology that disrupts an old business model. These lawsuits kill off those
technologies before the natural progression and maturation is allowed -- and because of that, we
all suffer.
Now, some will scoff and claims that Grokster was never going to turn into what YouTube is today,
but you're saying that with the gift of hindsight. A large part of Viacom's motion tries to suggest
that the two companies actually were quite similar -- but even Viacom is now admitting that
YouTube's business model was able to mature and adapt. Considering that we still don't have music
discovery, promotion and distribution tools as convenient as Napster was back in the day, this can
be seen as a real shame. These lawsuits killed off a useful path of exploration for legitimate
business models, and that's not only shameful but a waste of innovative effort. It's only through
the random quirk of a slow court that YouTube may avoid suffering the same fate.
Senator Chuck Schumer signals
commitment to inclusion of LGBT provisions in comprehensive immigration reform: "I
support [UAFA] and I am working on introducing a comprehensive package that would address this
issue along with a host of immigration issues . . . At this time, I believe that the only way to
pass meaningful and effective immigration reform is through a comprehensive bill, not through
piecemeal legislation."
Janet Jackson announces release date of new single, called
"Nothing".
Nice
knowing you, Bluefin tuna:
"Global talks on the conservation of endangered species have rejected calls to ban international
trade in bluefin tuna, raising new fears for the future of dwindling stocks. Countries at the
meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar voted
down a proposal from Monaco to grant the fish stronger protection. The plan drew little support,
with developing countries joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would hit fishing
economies."
Chicago Mayor Daley appoints
new chair to gay advisory council: "Elizabeth Kelly will serve a three-year term as
chairperson of the Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. Kelly is a
professor of women's and gender studies at DePaul University. She was a founding member of
DePaul's interdisciplinary program in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies."
Gay
Facebook founder Chris Hughes starts
Jumo.com, a social platform for global volunteerism: "Think of the site as philanthropy,
volunteerism and social networking all rolled into one. It's a platform that will connect people
and organizations around the world, and Hughes is arguably the most well-known tech entrepreneur
to enter the still evolving global space." Site.
Vman modeling search winners
announced (site possibly nsfw).
Siem
Reap, Cambodia's gay
haven: "Homosexual acts are not outlawed in Cambodia, as they are in a few Southeast Asian
countries, but outward displays of affection and untraditional lifestyles are rare. Yet in Siem
Reap, a small town that gets about a million tourists a year, gay visitors and locals are carving
out a little haven. In the last few years, a small flurry of gay-friendly bars, restaurants and
hotels has opened up in the city’s center and beyond, with wink-wink names like the Golden
Banana and Cockatoo."
Atlanta Eagle lawsuit grows: "Thirty-one Atlanta
police officers have been added to a federal lawsuit that complains patrons of a gay nightclub
were ordered to lie on the Atlanta Eagle Bar floor, on spilled beer and broken glass, while
enduring insults about their homosexuality. The suit, originally filed in November, was expanded
Wednesday to include six more bar employees and contractors, bringing the total to 28 people who
say they were victimized during the highly publicized raid on Sept. 10."
A court has ruled in favour of Sony Computer Entertainment America and David Jaffe in a
lawsuit brought by screenwriters who claimed that God of War was based on their original
work.
“There are transsexual women and transgender women and suddenly it becomes poisonous and
something else because there are some people in this world that believe being gay is a choice.
It’s not a choice, we’re born this way."
"I got cast because I work as a personal trainer. I run my own independent contracting business,
and I run it out of a gay gym in Silver Lake. There's a woman at my gym named Dallas, and she's
also kind of an aspiring actress of sorts, and she had been called in to play one of the guards.
She called me up from the casting and said they were desperate for bodybuilders, and she told
them, 'There's this person at my gym who's not a pro bodybuilder, but she has a really cut
physique,' and she suggested I'd be perfect for it. So I went down and auditioned -- but I'm not
hormones or anything like that -- so they ended up casting me as an inmate in the prison scene.
They were blocking the scene, and the woman who was blocking for Gaga disappeared, and Gaga came
out, and she just kind of instantly called me over, and it just happened like that. She called me
over and asked me to portray her girlfriend and said, 'OK, you're going to be my prison
girlfriend, and you're going to come to me, and I'd like you to touch me inappropriately.'
[Laughs] We just kind of went from there."
"Songwriter and producer Rob Fusari says in a $30 million lawsuit that he helped develop
'guidette' Stefani Germanotta into the superstar she is today -- and even came up with her
world-famous stage name -- but she is now reneging on a business deal that made him 20 percent
owner of her company. Fusari's lawyer, Robert Meloni, who filed suit yesterday in Manhattan
Supreme Court, said: 'He discovered her. It was his songs and productions and connections that
got her her first deal.' ... Fusari said he played the Queen song 'Radio Ga Ga' whenever she
arrived at his studio, and 'one day when Fusari addressed a cellphone text to Germanotta under
the moniker 'Radio Ga Ga' his cellphone's spell check converted 'Radio' to 'Lady.' Germanotta
loved it and 'Lady Gaga' was born.'"
Fusari also says he hooked her up with Interscope records. The two co-wrote her tracks
"Paparazzi" and Beautiful, Dirty Rich".
VirnetX is hoping to scoop up a brace of lawsuit wins against Microsoft, after it filed a second
patent infringement claim against the company yesterday....
"'The New Jersey Supreme Court ordered equality for same-sex couples when it decided our
marriage lawsuit in 2006, and the legislature has failed to meet that crystal-clear obligation,'
said Lambda Legal Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg. 'Civil unions are a failed legislative
experiment in providing equality—marriage equality is the only solution.'"
The plaintiffs are those in the original Lewis v. Harris lawsuit:
"Lambda Legal filed Lewis v. Harris in June 2002 on behalf of seven same-sex couples
seeking the right to marry. The New Jersey Supreme Court issued its ruling on October 25, 2006,
unanimously agreeing that it is unconstitutional to give same-sex couples lesser rights than
different-sex couples, but leaving the remedy to reach equality up to the legislature. In January
2007 the New Jersey Legislature hastily enacted a civil union law. In December 2008 the Civil
Union Review Commission, appointed by the legislature, issued its report documenting how civil
unions fall short of the court-mandated equality for same-sex couples...In January 2010,
following a hard-fought campaign led by Garden State Equality, the New Jersey Senate voted on and
failed to pass a marriage equality law."
Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has filed a patent lawsuit against Taiwan-based
connector maker Lotes, accusing it of violating their licensing contract, according to Foxconn
spokesperson Edmund Ding.
Whatever happened to actually competing in the market place? Copycense points us to a
recent legal battle between Dixie and Huhtamaki over the design of their disposable coffee cups. Seriously. Dixie claimed that
Huhtamaki violated its trade dress because its cups, like Dixie's, included a white band at the
bottom of the cup. After two years in court, the judge, thankfully, didn't see what the big deal
was over both cups having a white strip at the bottom and ruled against Dixie. In part, the judge
noted, Dixie never proved that the white strip was non-functional, which is important, since trade
dress is supposed to be for non-functional design elements: Dixie even provided alternative
designs for Huhtamaki to adopt to differentiate its cup from Dixie's, according to the judge's
order.
"Because Huhtamaki would either incur additional costs or sacrifice design quality if it were
forced to adopt one of Dixie's alternative designs, the court finds that the product feature in
question is functional under the traditional test." Still, just the fact that lawsuits like
this even exist in the first place shows how far gone these things have gone. It's as if every
company feels entitled to having no competition whatsoever, and will sue anyone who offers anything
remotely similar. What a sad state of affairs.
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly
complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to
upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them
look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent
employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to
Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely
left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high
up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very
strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert
Report should remain on YouTube.
Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its
own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a
result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to
YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the
very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
Taiwan-based solar cell maker DelSolar has filed a lawsuit accusing Switzerland-based Swiss Wafers
of violating a five-year solar wafer supply contract the two companies signed in 2007.
Ah, the patent wars. As you're probably aware, TiVo spent years fighting a big legal battle with
EchoStar/Dish Networks over some patents on DVR technology. TiVo won big, and then immediately
turned its patent lawyers on some other companies including
Verizon. In Verizon's response to TiVo's lawsuit, it went nuclear back, accusing TiVo of violating Verizon's patents on DVR
technology -- including a patent that the world's biggest patent hoarding firm, Intellectual
Ventures, gave Verizon for the purpose of being used against TiVo.
So is it any surprise to hear via Broadband Reports that Verizon is now suing Cablevision, claiming patent infringement on its set top box/DVR
offerings as well? Cablevision and Verizon have had a really nasty battle going for
years on Long Island, with all sorts of dirty tricks being played by both sides. But
patent infringement? Given the odd timing of this lawsuit coming so quickly on the heels of the
counterclaims against TiVo, you have to wonder if Verizon "woke up" to the fact that it could use
these patents against Cablevision, only after provoked by TiVo.
6,367,078: Electronic program-guide system with sideways-surfing
capability
7,561,214: Two-dimensional navigation of multiplexed channels in a digital video
distribution system
6,055,077: Multimedia distribution system using fiber optic lines
5,864,415: Fiber optic network with wavelength-division-multiplexed transmission
to customer premises
6,381,748: Apparatus and methods for network access using a set-top box and
television
The three in bold are found in both lawsuits. Now, to be fair, before looking at the details,
I was guessing that Verizon would also be using the patent it got from IV, but that patent
(5,410,344) appears to be the one patent that Verizon is asserting against TiVo, but
not against Cablevision. I have no idea if this is because nothing Cablevision
does is covered by that patent, or if Verizon has limitations on what it can do with the IV patent.
Still, given the overlap here, the timing, and the fact that many of these patents are pretty old,
you really have to wonder if the lawsuit from TiVo and the scouring of patents for a countersuit
also gave Verizon the idea to sue its arch-nemesis in the Long Island market over the same
issues.
Finally - after a few weeks, HTC has actually officially issued a statement regarding the patent
infringement lawsuit Apple has thrown towards the Taiwanese phone maker. As you probably already
anticipated, HTC states it will fully defend itself against Apple. It's on, it's on.
As you may recall, in a move that was blatantly designed to protect local gambling interests (no
one denies this particular point), Kentucky passed a law allowing the governor to declare any
gambling related website (even parked domains) "illegal gambling devices" and then to seize those domains. The governor
moved to do so on over 100 domains -- none of which had anything to do with Kentucky whatsoever.
Amazingly, a judge agreed
that the governor had every right to seize these domain names, despite the lack of a Kentucky
connection. It's not hard to see how problematic a ruling this is from a jurisdictional standpoint.
Thankfully, the state's appeals court overturned the lower court ruling.
Separately, a UK court ruled that Kentucky had no right to seize UK-based
domains.
The state appealed the ruling in the appeals court, and many assumed that the Kentucky Supreme
Court would agree with the basic logic of the appeals court. Instead Ragaboo alerts us to the news that the Kentucky
Supreme Court has overturned the appeals court ruling, effectively allowing the state to seize
the domain names again. The ruling focused on a technicality, rather than on the merits -- arguing
that the Interactive Media and Gaming Association (iMEGA) and the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC),
two gaming associations who brought the lawsuit in the first place, had no standing in the case and
could not bring the case in question. "Instead of owners, operators, or registrants of the
website domain names, the lawyers opposing the Commonwealth claimed to represent two types of
entities: (1) the domain names themselves and (2) gaming trade association who profess to include
as members registrants of the seized domains, though they have yet to reveal any of their
identities."
The court even acknowledged that the lawyers on behalf of the associations made "numerous,
compelling arguments endorsing the grant of the writ of prohibition," but that "(a)lthough all such
arguments may have merit, none can even be considered unless presented by a party with
standing." Of course, it seems rather ironic that the issue here is standing, when you could
just as easily ask what sort of standing the state of Kentucky has to seize a domain name based
elsewhere? In the meantime, if any of the actual domain owners is willing to step forward, the case
may be reheard -- and hopefully the Kentucky Supreme Court will rule against the state on the
merits and the simple fact that seizing domain names that have nothing to do with Kentucky sets an
incredibly dangerous precedent.
Finally - after a few weeks, HTC has actually officially issued a statement regarding the patent
infringement lawsuit Apple has thrown towards the Taiwanese phone maker. As you probably already
anticipated, HTC states it will fully defend itself against Apple. It's on, it's on.
As Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google's YouTube marches on, YouTube's chief of counsel
accuses Viacom of covertly uploading infringing content to YouTube for its own benefit.
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Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google over
copyright infringement on YouTube is coming to a head, with a court battle likely to ensue
sometime this year. For now, the accusations made by both sides have been released. And they pull
no punches whatsoever.
Microsoft suffered its second legal setback in as many days on Friday with
word of a second patent lawsuit from VirnetX. The accuser hopes to expand on the $105.8 million
fine against Microsoft by claiming that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 also infringe on the same
patents for VPN networking that were the subject of the prior lawsuit. VirnetX didn't specify what
it hoped for in damages but characterized the second complaint as plugging a gap that would
otherwise exempt newer versions of Windows....
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