Wait, Editing An XML Document Is Patented And Worth $98 Per Application?

from the say-what-now? dept

A bunch of folks sent in variations on the story about Microsoft losing a patent infringement lawsuit to the tune of $200 million to a small Toronto firm (the ruling also came right on the heals of another ruling against Microsoft in a patent case, for $388 million). Since both rulings will certainly be appealed, it seemed a bit early to pay too much attention, but Joe Mullin has dug into the details of the $200 million ruling, and it's fairly startling. The patent in question is for separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document, which the company, named i4i argues, covers basic XML editing. It's quite troubling that doing something as simple as adding an XML editor should infringe on a patent, but what's even more troubling is that the court somehow ruled that such an editor was worth $98 in the copies of Microsoft Word where it was used. An XML editor. $98. And people say patent awards aren't out of sync with reality?

Filed Under: damages, patents, xml editing
Companies: i4i, microsoft

Remember How ACTA Wasn't Supposed To Be A 'Major' Change To Copyright Laws?

from the yeah...-not-so-much dept

One of the excuses given by the various trade representatives negotiating the ACTA treaty for the fact that they were keeping it quite secret, was that it wouldn't represent any significant change to copyright laws, and thus it was no big deal. Yet, the various drafts of the proposed treaty have suggested otherwise. TorrentFreak examines one of the latest leaked drafts and notes that it would require agreeing nations to change copyright laws concerning damages, pushing judges to consider every unauthorized file to be considered as a lost sale for the calculation of damages. This is a key point that plenty of folks have made clear over the years: assuming that every shared file would have been a lost sale is absolutely false. Putting that into the law and suggesting judges use that false concept as a basis for calculating damages is quite troubling. In the meantime, we're still trying to figure out why ACTA is even necessary? And... on top of that, no one has yet explained why industry lobbyists have been integral to the negotiations, but the public and public interest groups are being blocked from any information based on bogus national security claims.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, damages, transparency

More Judges Realizing That Statutory Damages In Copyright Suits Out Of Line

from the bringing-some-sanity-back dept

The heart of Charles Nessons' case against the RIAA is that the copyright law cited to attack file-sharers is unconstitutional due to the ridiculous statutory fines put on copyright infringement. The original fines were really meant for commercial copyright counterfeiters -- and the law was never intended to be used against random internet users sharing some songs off of their computer with no profit motive at all. The law also didn't anticipate songs being sold for less than $1. So, with statutory fines for each act of infringement sitting between $750 and $150,000, there are some big problems. Luckily, it appears some judges are beginning to agree with the idea that these fines are ridiculous. Ray Beckerman highlights a recent ruling by District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin in the Southern District of New York, where Schendlin stated:

"At the end of the day, 'statutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'... and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'"

Beckerman notes that a more reasonable standard would be somewhere between zero and nine times the actual damages -- with the lost profit on a single download being approximately $0.35 -- meaning damages per song should range from $0 to $3.15 per song file. Somehow, I'm guessing the RIAA will disagree.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, penalties

E-Voting Isn't Perfect, But It Takes Less Work to Corrupt Big Elections

from the O(1) dept

Thad Hall, a political scientist at Caltech, complains that e-voting critics rarely make apples-to-apples comparisons between electronic and paper voting systems. They contend that if traditional paper voting systems were subjected to the same kind of close scrutiny that e-voting endures, security experts would find flaws—ballot tampering, ballot box stuffing, and so forth—at least as serious as the problems commonly identified in touch-screen voting machines. Rice computer scientist Dan Wallach responds by pointing to a new paper he's written proposing an elegant way to think about the security of voting systems. Computer scientists use "big-O" notation to describe the complexity of algorithms. He suggests a similar terminology to describe the effort required to compromise voting systems as a function of the size of the election. A security flaw that can be compromised with an effort proportional to the number of voters N is said to be a O(N) flaw. A flaw that can be exploited with an effort proportional to the number of polling places is an O(P) flaw. A flaw that can be exploited with a constant amount of effort, regardless of the number of voters, is an O(1) flaw.

The last kind of attack is the most dangerous because it's feasible for a small number of people—perhaps even a single individual—to do a lot of damage. The reason paper-based elections tend to be better than touch-screen elections isn't that the former don't have flaws. The difference is that attacks against paper-based voting systems are far more likely to be O(N) or O(P)—that is, you have to tamper with a lot of ballots or corrupt a lot of poll workers. In contrast, because they contain re-programmable computers at their hearts, touch-screen voting systems are far more susceptible to O(1) attacks such as a custom-developed virus or a corrupt employee at the e-voting vendor. Because they allow a single individual to do extensive damage, they're much more dangerous than other kinds of attacks, even if carrying them out takes relatively more skill or effort than other attacks with O(P) or O(N) cost. The reason to prefer paper-based voting to touch-screen voting isn't that paper voting is flawless, but that the attacks against them are labor-intensive enough that it's difficult to carry out large-scale attacks without getting caught.

Filed Under: corruption, damages, dan wallach, e-voting, mistakes

When Suing For Copyright Infringement On A $500 License, Don't Ask For $766 Million

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Eric Goldman has a short blurb describing the outcome in a copyright lawsuit where a title company apparently infringed on the copyright of another company by reusing its web-based "rate calculator" on its own site without a license. Where the case got bizarre was that the copyright holder tried to claim that the title company now owed it every single cent it made, which amounted to $766 million in revenue -- even though (1) a license for the calculator would run $500 for the year and (2) it's difficult to see how all of the company's revenue could have been because of that single rate calculator. Luckily, the judge practically laughed them out of court, calling the request "preposterous." Instead, the court awarded a mere $1,500, or the equivalent of a three year license. As Goldman notes:

[This is] an amount that the defendant surely would have happily paid to settle before going to court if the plaintiff would have accepted it. Instead, this is great example of a dispute that had no chance of settling because the plaintiff’s demands were so out of this universe.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, infringement

Funny How Universal Music Thinks Infringement Fines Are Unconstitutional When It's On The Receiving End

from the and-how-does-that-work? dept

You may recall Bridgeport Music as a company that claims to own the rights to various musical compositions and has a long history of suing anyone who samples even the tiniest bits of that music. The worst part is that there are very serious questions concerning whether or not it really has the rights to much of the music it claims to control. George Clinton, for example, claims that Bridgeport used forged signatures to get control over his catalog. A recent Bridgeport case may be interesting for a different reason, though -- one that shows how the record labels have no problem contradicting themselves when on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit.

The lawsuit involved Univeral Music, who lost the original decision and was hit with a rather large fine. Universal Music appealed that decision on a variety of points -- and appears to have convinced the judge that the punitive damages tacked onto the copyright infringement claims were unconstitutional. This is quite interesting because, as Ray Beckerman notes in that link, Universal Music is involved in a bunch of lawsuits where it's pushing for extremely high fines for individuals found guilty of infringement. In fact, Universal Music is actually on the receiving end of a lawsuit that accuses the company of requesting unconstitutionally high fines. In that case, Universal Music is asking for fines that are more than 1,000x the actual damages. Pretty high, right? So what were the damages that Universal Music (and the court) found so unconstitutionally high in this case from Bridgeport? Turns out they were about 10x the actual damages. Funny how that works.

It seems like Universal Music may come to regret pointing out the variety of reasons (pdf) why punitive damages can be seen as unconstitutional, as one would imagine that UMG's own filing will be raised against it in its own copyright infringement suits:

"While the Supreme Court has declined to adopt concrete or bright-line constitutional limits for the ratio between actual or potential harm and a punitive-damage award, the Court nonetheless observed that, "in practice, few awards exceeding a singled-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process."... The court cited a 4-to-1 ratio as being close to the line of unconstitutional impropriety."

Universal Music would likely claim in its own defense that it was complaining about punitive damages, and in the other lawsuits it's fighting for statutory damages, but there are already plenty of folks pointing out that there really isn't much of a difference in many cases.

Filed Under: constitution, copyright, damages, infringement, punitive damages, statutory damages
Companies: bridgeport, universal music

Court Questions Patent Damages Against Microsoft For Guatemalan Patent Holder

from the more-delays dept

Microsoft has been fighting for years against a Guatemalan patent holder, Carlos Amado, who claims to hold a patent on the concept of linking a database to a spreadsheet. The patent itself has been thoroughly debunked. Even the patent itself admits that it's merely taken a bunch of concepts that were widely used before and combining them -- which is exactly the type of thing that the Supreme Court has said should not be patentable. Microsoft has appealed the ruling, but the Supreme Court turned it down. However, it then appealed the amount of damages, and the appeals court has now thrown out the lower court's damages based on the fact that it appeared to pick the damages number out of thin air. It seems likely that Microsoft will still have to pay damages for infringement (though, the court also admits that new Supreme Court rulings may impact the amount as well), but the lower court is going to at least have to justify how much Microsoft needs to pay Amado for basically putting such an obvious idea on paper and filing a patent.

Filed Under: carlos armando amado, damages, patents
Companies: microsoft

RIAA Can't Explain Why Copyright Damages Should Be Higher

from the um...-just-'cause? dept

Back in December, many people were surprised that Congress had put forth the PRO IP bill that would increase the fines that could be assessed to people found violating copyrights -- especially coming so soon after the outrage over the huge amount allowed under existing law. As Congress is trying to figure this issue out, the US Copyright Office held a roundtable discussion to examine the issue, where it asked the RIAA to explain why larger fines would be a good thing, and even the RIAA couldn't come up with a decent answer. Specifically, RIAA supporters were asked to name a single case where the damages were seen as too low under existing laws, and there was little response. While there was some discussion of cases where the RIAA didn't like the outcome, that wasn't because the fines were limited to too low a number based on the law.

Filed Under: copyright, damages, riaa
Companies: riaa