Additional details have emerged regarding the more than 800 patents Novell is selling to the Microsoft-led consortium CPTN Holdings for US$450 million, about two months after the deal was first announced.
Microsoft is asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny Apple a trademark on the name "App Store," saying the term is generic and competitors should be able to use it.
Oracle and Swiss mobile software platform vendor Myriad Group are locked in a legal battle over Java licensing issues, one with an apparent connection to Google.
Intellectual Ventures, a patent portfolio developer and broker started by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, has filed patent lawsuits against nine tech companies, including Symantec, McAfee and Hynix Semiconductor.
Three men found guilty of being accessories to crimes against copyright law for their part in running The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal, while a fourth man still awaits trial.The three, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström, were originally each sentenced to<strong> </strong>a year in prison, but the Svea Court of Appeals reduced their sentences on Friday: Neij must now serve 10 months, Sunde eight months and Lundström four. However, the court raised the damages they must collectively pay, from 30 million Swedish kronor (US$3.6 million) to 46 million kronor.The Pirate Bay is one of the most widely used torrent trackers for online sharers of music, movies and software. The defendants have stated that The Pirate Bay is a legal site containing a collection of Internet links, but the entertainment industry sees it differently. A tracker doesn't host the files for download itself, but instead carries "torrent" files that point file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent to other computers that contain parts of the file to be downloaded.The original verdict against the three was handed down in April last year, and sentenced Neij, Sunde, Lundström and a fourth defendant, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg to one year in prison.
SAP has admitted to the "massive and prolonged" infringement of Oracle's copyrights and should pay at least US$1.7 billion in damages, an Oracle attorney said Monday as the companies' corporate theft lawsuit entered its final stages.
Third parties, not Google, would be liable for any Java copyright violations in the Android mobile OS, according to a filing the vendor made Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Google is denying Oracle's allegation that it directly copied lines of Oracle's Java code for its Android mobile OS, according to a court filing made Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/41761480">Microsoft sued Motorola on Tuesday in a Washington court</a>, alleging that Motorola is refusing to license patents on a reasonable basis, as it promised during standards-setting processes.
Charging that Oracle has willfully disregarded the licensing terms for its own Java technology, the Apache Software Foundation has called upon other members of the Java Community Process (JCP) to vote against the next proposed version of the language, should Oracle continue to impose restrictions on open-source Java use.
An FBI agent has been in the courtroom each day this week watching the Oracle-SAP trial, suggesting U.S. law enforcement continues to take an interest in the case.
Microsoft may be looking to add to its existing patent infringement case related to the use of Google's Android mobile phone software by targeting phone makers in Taiwan, according to a Chinese-language news report.
Motorola has filed two patent lawsuits and a patent complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that a wide range of Apple products infringe its patents.
Google has made a sweeping request that a court throw out the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180703/Google_calls_Oracle_lawsuit_baseless_vows_to_fight_it">copyright- and patent-infringement lawsuit filed in August by Oracle</a> over Java use in Android, a popular, open-source mobile phone platform created by Google.
Microsoft filed patent infringement complaints against Motorola and its Android phones in the International Trade Commission and U.S. federal court Friday, indicating that the software giant may hope to use its strong patent position as one way to set its mobile software apart from the competition.