Digital Copyright Canada

Does Linux really need another application packaging and installment system? Ubuntu will be adding another one for its Ubuntu Touch smartphones and tablets.

Here's the video of "It's not a fax machine connect to a waffle iron," the talk I gave at the Re:publica conference in Berlin this week: "Lawmakers treat the Internet like it's Telephone 2.0, the Second Coming of Video on Demand, or the World's Number One Porn Distribution Service, but it's really the nervous system of the 21st Century. Unless we stop the trend toward depraved indifference in Internet law, making – and freedom – will die."

re:publica 2013 - Cory Doctorow: It's not a fax machine connect to a waffle iron

Blackberry's amicus brief [PDF] is now made public in the Apple v. Motorola appeal of Judge Richard Posner's order which seemed to say that if you own FRAND patents, you have no right to seek an injunction under any circumstances.

But that is not how folks understood their rights back when they volunteered their patents for use in standards; it's a change in the rules midstream. And Blackberry tells the Federal Circuit exactly that. This is a change, and it isn't fair, or in the public interest. SEP owners might behave badly, but so can prospective licensees. Here's how attorney Matt Rizzolo at the Essential Patent Blog sums up the Blackberry argument:Just as it has argued in prior submissions to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. International Trade Commission, BlackBerry asserts here that a categorical rule against injunctions for FRAND-encumbered standard-essential patents is wrong - both as a matter of policy and as a matter of violating Supreme Court precedent. BlackBerry alleges that industry participants have "never understood FRAND to absolutely preclude a patent holder from seeking injunctions." The misunderstanding by one and all, if that is what it is, stems from accepting Apple's argument that a FRAND agreement is a contract, as Motorola's brief points out, but if it's a contract, then contract law should apply. Motorola never waived its right to injunctions, and since that is a right under law, it would have to have specifically waived its rights to lose them. Not even judges can just waive their hands and remove legal rights. Why, indeed, would they want to?

In Pelchat v. Zone 3 Inc., 2013 QCCS 78, a Quebec court decision has addressed the dichotomy between the idea for a TV show, and the "form and expression" of ideas, as embodied in a TV show. In this case, the defendant Zone 3 was sued for a claim of ...

Ever wondered if you would infringe a patent but wanted to know before any infringement occurred? Honeywell International, Inc. and Arkema Inc. are competitors in the field of automotive air-conditioning systems. Honeywell owns certain United States patents covering refrigerant inventions - in this case, innovations for a cooling system with low ...

- "The world has changed dramatically in the last two decades... An entity may now have a profound impact upon a foreign jurisdiction solely through its virtual projection via the Internet." This statement from the New York Court of Appeals in the recent decision in Overstock v. New York Taxation and Finance (PDF) ...

- Field Law is proud to host the Spring 2013 meeting of the Calgary Chapter of the Licensing Executives Society on May 16, 2013 on the topic of licensing negotiations between members of Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA). Calgary - 07:00 MDT

When is one trade-mark too close to another? This is a question that we work through collaboratively with our trade-mark clients. The short answer is: "It depends..." The long answer is illustrated by these two recent cases. A trade-mark owner can apply for registration of the trade-mark, and part of the ...

- When a cloud privacy breach occurs in Canada, what happens? In some cases, businesses are subject to mandatory breach notification requirements. This means that a privacy breach - whether as a result of a hacker, a lost USB or some other human error - must by law be reported to the ...

- ICANN's new gTLD process has taken another step forward. The period for filing formal objections against new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) has now been closed, and the Trademark Clearinghouse has been opened. The Clearinghouse is a global database of trade-marks to permit trade-mark owners to verify trade-mark information and use it to support trade-mark ...

- The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has released guidance on "Computer-Implemented Inventions" as planned, in the wake of the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Amazon.  While "software" is technically not patentable, a "computer-implemented invention" is.  Such an invention could fall into one of several categories: a method (art, process or method ...

- In 2012, LinkedIn made headlines as a result of a significant data breach. The passwords and email addresses of over 6 million LinkedIn users were hacked and posted online. Encryption and security was improved by LinkedIn in the wake of this breach. A class action lawsuit was commenced in the ...

Parliament has introduced a new bill (Bill C-56) to amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act, to combat counterfeit products. The bill, if it becomes law, would add new civil and criminal remedies such as: opening up new rights to sue for damages for counterfeits and infringing activity; creating new criminal offences for ...

Google, Red Hat, HTC, SAP America, and Rackspace have asked leave of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to file an amicus brief [PDF] in the Apple v. Samsung appeal. That's on the first case., the one Samsung lost but has been whittling down a bit in post-trial motions. Here's the issue they'd like to address: Amici are all innovative technology companies that develop and provide a variety of products and services that, like the mobile devices at issue in this appeal, incorporate a wide array of features. As such, an issue presented in this appeal - whether a court may enjoin the sale of innovative and technologically complex products based on the incorporation of trivial patented features without evidence that the accused features drive sales of the products - is a matter of great concern to amici. Apple opposes [PDF]:The lead party on the brief, Google, Inc., admittedly has a direct interest in the outcome of this appeal. As the motion explains (ECF No. 55 at 4; ECF No. 60 at 4), Google is the developer of the Android operating system running on the Samsung smartphones that Apple seeks to enjoin in this case. That interest conflicts with the traditional role of an amicus as "an impartial friend of the court-not an adversary party in interest in the litigation." United States v. Michigan, 940 F.2d 143, 165 (6th Cir. 1991) (emphasis in original). Even if they win, they still lose, though, because there are several others seeking to file the same material, and they are not by any stretch of imagination parties in interest. Except for HTC, none of the rest of the proposed filers is even in the mobile phone marketplace.

The 2013 Locus Awards final ballot has been announced, and as ever, it is a fabulous guide signposting some of the very best work published science fiction and fantasy in the past year -- a perfect place to start your explorations of the year's books.

I am very honored to have been included on the ballot; my novel Pirate Cinema made the Best Young Adult novel list, which is a particularly strong category this year:

* The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown; Atom)

* Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen)

* Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)

* Dodger, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)

* The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends; Much-in-Little ’13)

See the full ballot after the jump.

2013 Locus Awards Finalists

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

* The Hydrogen Sonata, Iain M. Banks (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

* Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)

* Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

* 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

* Redshirts, John Scalzi (Tor; Gollancz)

FANTASY NOVEL

* The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)

* The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)

* Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

* Hide Me Among the Graves, Tim Powers (Morrow; Corvus)

* The Apocalypse Codex, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

* The Drowned Cities, Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown; Atom)

* Pirate Cinema, Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen)

* Railsea, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan)

* Dodger, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)

* The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, Catherynne M. Valente (Feiwel and Friends; Much-in-Little ’13)

FIRST NOVEL

* Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed (DAW; Gollancz ’13)

* vN, Madeline Ashby (Angry Robot US; Angry Robot UK)

* Seraphina, Rachel Hartman (Random House; Doubleday UK)

* The Games, Ted Kosmatka (Del Rey; Titan)

* Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)

NOVELLA

* “In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns”, Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s 1/12)

* On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (Immersion)

* After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

* “The Stars Do Not Lie”, Jay Lake (Asimov’s 10-11/12)

* The Boolean Gate, Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean)

NOVELETTE

* “Faster Gun”, Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com 8/12)

* “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”, Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity)

* “Close Encounters”, Andy Duncan (The Pottawatomie Giant & Other Stories)

* “Fake Plastic Trees”, Caitlín R. Kiernan (After)

* “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”, Mary Robinette Kowal (Rip-Off!)

SHORT STORY

* “The Deeps of the Sky”, Elizabeth Bear (Edge of Infinity)

* “Immersion”, Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld 6/12)

* “Mantis Wives”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 8/12)

* “Elementals”, Ursula K. Le Guin (Tin House Fall ’12)

* “Mono No Aware”, Ken Liu (The Future Is Japanese)

ANTHOLOGY

* After, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (Hyperion)

* The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-ninth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin’s Griffin; Robinson as The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25)

* The Future Is Japanese, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington, eds. (Haikasoru)

* Edge of Infinity, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris US; Solaris UK)

* The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Night Shade)

COLLECTION

* The Best of Kage Baker, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

* Shoggoths in Bloom, Elizabeth Bear (Prime)

* At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)

* The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)

* The Dragon Griaule, Lucius Shepard (Subterranean)

MAGAZINE

* Asimov’s

* F&SF

* Tor.com

* Clarkesworld

* Subterranean

PUBLISHER

* Tor

* Subterranean Press

* Orbit

* Baen

* Angry Robot

EDITOR

* John Joseph Adams

* Ellen Datlow

* Gardner Dozois

* Jonathan Strahan

* Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

ARTIST

* Donato Giancola

* Stephan Martiniere

* John Picacio

* Shaun Tan

* Michael Whelan

NON-FICTION

* An Exile on Planet Earth, Brian Aldiss (Bodleian Library)

* Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010, Damien Broderick & Paul Di Filippo, eds. (NonStop)

* Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson (Putnam)

* The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn, eds. (Cambridge University Press)

* Some Remarks, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)

ART BOOK

* Spectrum 19: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, Cathy Fenner & Arnie Fenner, eds. (Underwood)

* Trolls, Brian Froud & Wendy Froud (Abrams)

* Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration, Scott Tracy Griffin (Titan)

* J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull, eds. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

* Steampunk: An Illustrated History, Brian J. Robb (Aurum)

Microsoft has had trouble getting people to use its Windows Phone operating systems, however, it might make as much as $3.4 billion on Android phones.

- Are APIs protected by copyright? In the long-running litigation (and hey, is there any litigation that isn't "long-running"?) between Oracle and Google, a US court decided in 2012 that APIs in this case were not eligible for copyright protection. See our earlier post. This meant a complete loss for Oracle in its lawsuit ...

SCO, of course, is asking [PDF] the judge in U.S. District Court in Utah to reconsider his order denying SCO's request to reopen its case against IBM.

You knew they would: SCO submits that reconsideration is appropriate because the Bankruptcy Court overseeing SCO's bankruptcy proceedings lifted the stay of IBM's counterclaims in February 2012 and IBM agreed to the reopening of the case should that stay be lifted. The Bankruptcy Court order lifting the stay was previously submitted to the Court with SCO's Request to Submit for Decision, on June 14, 2012. (Exs. A and B.) Accordingly, SCO respectfully asks the Court to reconsider its decision and grant the Motion to Reopen the Case forthwith. They are right about the Bankruptcy Court lifting the stay. So unless the judge is much more clever than I am, which is likely actually, I suspect he'll have to grant the motion to reopen, and then we'll see IBM make its moves. But of course, SCO wants more.

See if for yourself: With one major software update, the Barnes & Noble HD e-reader has been transformed into an excellent, low-end Android tablet.