Supreme Court Says Telling People You Have Child Porn Is Illegal... Even If You Don't Have It

from the something-doesn't-seem-right-there dept

I certainly have absolutely no problem with the government going after folks involved in child pornography. However, they shouldn't stretch the laws so far as to make it ridiculous. Unfortunately, however, it looks like the Supreme Court is allowing them to do so. In a recent decision, the Supreme Court okayed a law that makes it illegal to simply try to convince someone else that child pornography is available -- even if it is not. That is, merely telling someone that there is child pornography at a certain link could be considered illegal. Two justices dissented, but seven said the law was fine. The lower court seemed to have it right, noting how problematic it was that this law would apply to "any promoter -- be they a braggart, exaggerator, or outright liar -- who claims to have illegal pornography." However, the justices, led by Justice Scalia, seem to say that the law would only be used in cases where it made sense. Of course, given how often we see laws twisted beyond their original purpose, this seems difficult to believe.

Filed Under: child porn, supreme court

Microsoft Asks Supreme Court To Look Into Patent Validity

from the watch-for-fireworks-on-this-one dept

Looks like the Supreme Court will have yet another chance to weigh in on patent issues, as it's taken an active interest in the space for a few years now. Microsoft has appealed an appeals court ruling in a patent lawsuit to the Supreme Court. At issue is the standard courts need to use in assessing the validity of a patent. Patent system fans love to insist that the "assumption of validity" is a key component of patents, and any weakening of that assumption (even if it's to get rid of bad patents) is a problem. In this case, Microsoft presented new prior art that it says shows an original patent (which it was being sued over) was invalid. The Patent Office hadn't considered that prior art in originally awarding the patent, so Microsoft believes (reasonably so) that courts should take that into account and review whether or not the patent itself is valid. The courts, however (led by CAFC), have put in place a policy of saying that defendants need to show "clear and convincing evidence" in order to get them to reconsider the validity of the patent -- which is a much higher barrier.

Microsoft, in its argument, cites the recent KSR v. Teleflex decision on patent obviousness, where the Supreme Court had noted that the entire presumption of validity is based on the idea that the USPTO has, "in its expertise" reviewed and approved the claims in the patent. From Microsoft's perspective this would mean that if you present evidence that the USPTO did not consider it should call the presumption of validity into question, because it knocks out the very rationale for that presumption in the first place. You would think that, with the recent reports noting how often the Patent Office eventually rejects claims on review, the so-called "expertise" of the patent examiners should already be in question.

Filed Under: cafc, patent validity, patents, prior art, supreme court
Companies: microsoft

Supreme Court Agrees To Review FCC's Indecency Fines

from the fleeting-expletive-indeed dept

Since Kevin Martin took over the FCC, one area where he's been especially active is in trying to get "indecent" material off television. However, so far, things haven't gone all that well. A recent fine only got the content in question much more attention, and there are serious questions about just how offended people really are by what the FCC calls indecent. Most of the complaints to the FCC seem to be generated by form letter campaigns, pushed by people who never actually saw the content in question (or only saw it afterwards on the web). Last summer, an appeals court smacked down some FCC fines after it pointed out that the FCC seemed rather "arbitrary and capricious" in doling out fines for "fleeting expletives." Since there seemed to be no actual rules on what the FCC considered indecent, the court found it difficult to see how the fines were constitutional. Not surprisingly, the ruling was appealed and the Supreme Court will now take up the issue in a case that could have a major impact on the FCC's ability to fine networks for broadcasting "fleeting expletives."

Filed Under: fcc, indecency, supreme court

Supreme Court Won't Review Case Saying ACLU Has No Right To Sue Over Wiretaps

from the we-could-tell-you-has-standing,-but-we'd-have-to-kill-you dept

In a rather unfortunate ruling, the Supreme Court has decided to let an appeals court ruling stand, saying that the ACLU has no standing to bring a lawsuit over domestic wiretapping activities of the federal government. There's a bit of a catch-22 here. Neither the appeals court nor the Supremes are saying that the wiretapping is illegal. They're just saying that only those actually impacted by the wiretapping can bring suit -- which is tricky since the whole point is that there's no way for those being tapped to actually know they're being tapped. This would appear to be a rather ominous omission in the "checks and balances" our government is supposed to have.

Filed Under: aclu, standing, supreme court, wiretaps

Hiding Cell Phone Taxes Doesn't Make Them Go Away

from the hidden-taxes dept

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case regarding whether cell phone companies should be allowed to list taxes as separate line items on customer bills. Apparently, certain state governments have begun passing laws prohibiting companies from listing taxes as separate line-items on customer bills, requiring them instead to build those costs into the base prices they charge consumers. Cell phone companies argue that this makes it impossible for them to establish uniform nationwide pricing because they have to adjust the prices in each state to reflect the varying tax burden. This seems to me to be a pretty clear-cut effort by state governments to avoid scrutiny of the taxes they impose. Voters ultimately end up paying these costs whether they're listed separately on the bill or not, so this seems like little more than an attempt by state legislators to avoid accountability. Taxpayers have every right to know what fraction of their bills are going to the government. With the Supreme Court declining to weigh in on the issue, the issue has gone back to the FCC for further consideration. I hope they'll continue to push for greater transparency. Of course, it should be noted that the companies hands aren't totally clean here. While phone companies should be allowed to list extra fees when they're actually required to hand the money over to the government, we've noted before that they shouldn't be allowed to label as "fees" money they're planning to keep for themselves.

Filed Under: fees, mobile operators, supreme court

Supreme Court Sounds Skeptical About Suing Up And Down The Supply Chain For Patent Infringement

from the fingers-crossed dept

Last fall, we mentioned that the Supreme Court had agreed to hear yet another interesting patent case, looking at whether companies could sue up and down the supply chain for patent infringement. If you're familiar with the concept of the "first sale doctrine" in copyright law, this case looks at whether or not the same concept applies to patents as well. Basically, if Company A legitimately licenses a patent from Company B and then sells a product based on that product to Company C, who turns around and resells it (perhaps as a component of a larger product), can Company B sue Company C for patent infringement? Or, did Company B "exhaust" the right to control Company A's products once it licensed the patent? That's what happened in the case. LG licensed a patent to Intel, who used the patent to make some chips. Intel turned around and sold those chips to computer makers, such as Quanta, who put them in laptops, which they then sold. LG claims that all those laptop makers also need to license the patents, even though they bought the chips from someone who had already licensed them. Basically, it's LG trying to get paid multiple times for the same patent.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court actually heard the case, and most of the mainstream press coverage suggests that the Justices were extremely skeptical of LG's position, though others note that Supreme Court Justice tea leaves aren't so easy to read. It does sound like the Justices did focus in on the key issues, though, and were concerned about the absurdity of a situation where a company is still controlling the sale of a product after it's been sold. While we wait for a decision, expect to see a few more patent hoarders try to rush through infringement lawsuits where they sue up and down the supply chain. In the meantime, we're still curious to know why Yahoo sided with LG, while most tech firms sided with Quanta on the other side.

Filed Under: patents, supply chain, supreme court
Companies: lg, quanta

Supreme Court Not Ready To Take On The First Amendment Aspects Of Copyright Just Yet

from the be-patient,-Lessig dept

This post may be a little "inside baseball-ish" when it comes to copyright issues, but it's worth noting what's happening in some important lawsuits. While the Supreme Court has been gleefully taking on more and more cases concerning patent law, it seems that it's not yet ready to revisit some important discussions around copyright law, since the Eldred case back in 2003. Late last year, we updated you on a few cases that have used the specific wording of the Eldred decision to argue that recent copyright law changes were violations of the First Amendment. In Eldred, the Supreme Court had ruled that it was only a First Amendment issue if changes in the law changed the "traditional contours of copyright protection." It's that clause that some other cases have been challenging lately. As we noted in that last post, there appeared to be a split among the different circuit courts concerning whether recent copyright changes did, in fact, change the traditional contours of copyright protection. That, it seemed, was actually a good thing, because different circuits with different readings is the sort of thing that attracts the Supreme Court's interest.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Supreme Court just isn't all that interested yet. Larry Lessig has the update, where he notes that the Supreme Court has refused to take the case so far, though part of its reasoning was that the government's filing insisted that the one ruling that said the traditional contours had been changed was an obvious mistake that would be overturned when the 10th Circuit agreed to rehear the case. Except... the same day that the Supreme Court turned down the case, the lower court turned down the request to rehear the case. As Lessig notes, this is far from over, but it appears that the Supreme Court won't be settling this matter any time soon, which is a bit unfortunate.

Filed Under: copyright, eldred, golan, kahle, lessig, supreme court, traditional contours

Why Is Yahoo Siding With Patent Hoarders?

from the something-yahoo-wants-to-share-with-us? dept

Back in September, we noted that the Supreme Court was going to hear a rather important case concerning patents, determining whether or not it's possible for a patent holder to "double dip" and get license fees up and down the supply chain. The anonymous Patent Troll Tracker alerts us to the fact that a ton of organizations and companies have now filed amicus briefs in support of one side or the other (or neither, in a few cases). While the Troll Tracker's post focuses on the fact that most of the briefs filed in support of LG's position appear to come from patent hoarding firms (and their attorneys), at the end he does mention in passing that Yahoo! sided with LG as well. While he doesn't name them, the Troll Tracker notes that most of the firms filing against LG's position come from the tech industry. This is the usual breakdown. Companies that rely on patents to make a living tend to want stronger patents (no surprise there). Companies that tend to focus on business models that don't require intellectual monopolies tend to favor weaker patent laws. That said, it seems quite odd that Yahoo! falls in with the former, rather than the latter. While it has been involved with some patent lawsuits (most notably, the dispute with Google over paid search patents), Yahoo tends to be more focused on providing useful services rather than focusing on its patent portfolio. Hopefully, this isn't a sign of things to come. We've certainly seen other formerly successful companies turn to patent lawsuits after they failed in the marketplace. Perhaps Yahoo is signaling to the world where its future lies.

Filed Under: patent reform, patents, supply chain, supreme court
Companies: lg, yahoo

Supreme Court Tells Perfect 10 It Can't Blame Payment Processors For Copyright Infringement

from the let-me-explain-to-you-the-concept-of-safe-harbor dept

Perfect 10 was an "adult" magazine publisher who had trouble adjusting to the massive change in the market called "the internet," and has since gone on a rampage suing just about everyone for copyright infringement -- though, amusingly, it almost never seems to target those actually responsible for copyright infringement. The issue is that people took scans of images from Perfect 10's magazines and put them online. That is, without a doubt, copyright infringement. No one denies that. But there's no money in suing individual random people, so Perfect 10 went after those with money, starting with Google. Why Google? Well, because Google's image search results would show thumbnails of the images it found (though, of course, Google had no way of knowing they were infringing). Courts have ruled that simply showing a thumbnail in a search result is not infringement, so Perfect 10 contorted to make the case even more confusing, by saying it was the combination of the thumbnails and the fact that many of the sites hosting the scanned images showed Google Ads that was the problem. Luckily, after a lower court agreed with Perfect 10, the appeals court overturned the ruling. Despite this, Perfect 10 has gone on to sue others, including Microsoft with nearly identical charges to the Google case.

Even worse, Perfect 10 then tried to sue anyone who processed payments for the sites that hosted the infringing images, claiming that they were liable for copyright infringement as well. Of course, as is clearly stated in the law, and well supported in the case law, a service provider is not responsible for what its users do. Everyone knows this by now, but it didn't stop Perfect 10 who got slapped down in the lower courts, at the appeals court and now (finally) at the Supreme Court. Yes, the Supreme Court had to waste it's time deciding whether or not to take this case and wisely turned it down. At some point you would think that the folks at Perfect 10 would stop trying to sue everyone and start focusing on maybe changing its business model. Or is that too difficult?

Filed Under: copyright infringement, safe harbors, supreme court
Companies: perfect 10

Supreme Court To Determine If Patent Holders Can Shake Down Entire Supply Chain

from the more-judicial-patent-reform dept

While Congress continues to fight over patent reform (often missing the bigger issues for those that the lobbyists are most interested in), it's been the Supreme Court that's been doing its best to bring some sanity back to the patent system. After ignoring patent law as being a boring "commercial" dispute for years, the Supreme Court finally realized a few years ago that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (that handles patent cases) had basically redefined patent law over the last few years, creating much of the mess we're in today. Suddenly, the Court started taking a bunch of patent cases -- and almost every time it slapped down CAFC and brought some common sense back to the patent system. Of course, there's still a lot more to do on that front, and apparently the Supreme Court agrees. It's now taken yet another patent case that could have major ramifications.

This case, officially between LG and Quanta, really concerns the question of how many times patent holders can get a cut of any component found violating a patent. Currently, patent holders will often sue up and down the food chain. So, if you happen to have a patent on a component within a motor that is used in automobile wipers, you could sue the motor maker, the wiper maker and the auto manufacturer -- and get all three to pay, even though the same product is used throughout the supply chain. This case will look at whether or not it makes sense to allow for that type of double, triple or quadruple dipping. Patently O has a good summary of the case, pointing out that it's effectively asking if the concept of the "first sale doctrine," which applies to copyrights, also applies to patents. If the Supreme Court follows its recent trend in overturning CAFC, this could have a big impact on a lot of patent cases. For example, it would entirely derail NTP's latest patent suits. In that case, NTP forced RIM into licensing its (questionable and likely to be invalidated) patents, and is now suing all the service providers who offer RIM's Blackberry -- effectively double dipping. Once again, it's nice to see both the sudden interest in patent law -- and what often appears to be very clear thinking on the part of the Supreme Court on the issue.

Filed Under: patent reform, supply chain, supreme court