by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From CPIP: The Myth of the “Patent Troll” Litigation Explosion “[Cross posted at Truth on the Market] In a prior blog posting, I reported how reports of a so-called “patent litigation explosion” today are just wrong. As I detailed in another blog posting, the percentage of patent lawsuits today are … Continue reading...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From Regulation Watch Feed: No European net neutrality legislation after all Net or not neutrality? Just when activists and avant-garde regulators hoped for a European happy end on net neutrality, Digital Agenda Commissioner defended the right of content providers to negotiate with operators “flexible quality of service including lower levels of priority for traffic which is not time-sensitive.” The July 9 announcement puts at risk the very definition of “not neutrality,” as Europe Digital Rights (EDRI) warned. In July, the civil rights organisation EDRI had leaked Kroes’ draft regulation [PDF] “laying down measures to complete the European single market for electronic communications and to achieve a Connected Continent“. The draft proposal includes some provisions meant to help consumers, including broad transparency requirements. Under the proposal, users are granted rights to fully understand the nature of the service and its limitations with regards to bandwidth or data travel speed (see article 20 of the draft text). Throttling or blocking traffic – something Kroes said in a speech was not an annoyance, but a “death sentence for innovators“ – should be limited to the following situations: implementation of a court order or legislative provision (which might mean a Hadopi-like rule), securing the network, stopping spam (where users have agreed to it) and minimising the effects of exceptional congestion (“provided that equivalent types of traffic are treated equally.”) Obligations for network operators to allow switching include consumer friendly provisions like a 12 month period during which email is sent on to the lost customer’s new email address while the sender receives a notification about the move – all for free. Yet, net...
by Kevin Coates | Aug 22, 2013 | News from around the Web
From The IPKat: Apple Sales Preserved: White House Vetoes ITC’s Ban The United States Trade Representative (“USTR”) Michael Froman, on behalf of the White House, has intervened in the patent dispute between Samsung and Apple. Back in June, the United States International Trade Commission (“ITC”) determined that some of Apple’s older generation of products, including iPad 2 and iPhone 4 models that operate on the networks of AT&T and T-Mobile, were in violation of Samsung patents that cover methods of transmitting data. As a result, the ITC issued an exclusion order that would have banned the importation and sale of the infringing products. Taking into consideration that the Samsung patents are “standards-essential patents”, which the patent owner must offer under license to competitors on “terms that are fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (‘FRAND’)”, the USTR vetoed the ITC ban, explaining: “After extensive consultations with the agencies of the Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review Group, as well as other interested agencies and persons, I have decided to disapprove the [ITC’s] determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order in this investigation. This decision is based on my review of the various policy considerations … as they relate to the effect on competitive conditions in the U.S. economy and the effect on U.S. customers.” …...