Motorola drops one ITC Patent case against Apple

Motorola Mobility, the unit of Google Inc. (GOOG)’s has become ready to to withdraw a patent-infringement complaint it filed in August against Apple Inc. (AAPL) at the U.S. International Trade Commission. However, it did not come with any reason for such step.

Motorola Mobility reserves the right to refile claims against the AAP, and it denied the existence of any agreement between the two companies, according to filing on the ITC’s electronic docket. Also, a notice of dismissal was filed in a companion civil lawsuit filed in a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.

California based Apple, and Illinois based Motorola Mobility, have been fighting about smartphone-related patents since around 2010 after licensing talks failed. Apple is claiming that Motorola Mobility violated obligations to license some of its patents on fair terms. A non-jury trial on the same issue is scheduled to begin in the first week of November this year, in a federal court in Madison, Wisconsin. 

In the case that has been withdrawn, Apple was accused of infringing seven Motorola Mobility patents on features including interactive voice commands, location reminders, e-mail notification and phone/video players. Motorola Mobility said that it hoped the filing of the suit in August and the threat against Apple’s iPhone would push the two sides into settlement talks.  

In the order passed yesterday by the ITC Judge Thomas Pender said that he will make a decision by Dec. 21 on that issue. 

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Apple embarks on a winning spree

In a setback for Google and another win for Apple, a German court has found Google-owned IT company Motorola guilty of infringing Apple patents on the design of smartphones and tablets, a court spokesman said on Thursday. The court ordered Motorola to pay a yet-to-be-specified fine and pull the infringing devices, from the market.

This particular patent involves a feature known as "overscroll bounce" or "rubber-banding" that pulls a written text or image back to the centre of the screen to signify to the user that the end of a list or menu has been completed. Motorola had won a similar patent case in western Germany last July and has one month to appeal the decision.

 It would be interesting to see, what would be the outcome of the appeal. On the other hand for Apple, it has been a winning spree, till now. In August, a California court decided in favour of Apple in a patent case against Samsung, awarding the iPhone maker about one billion dollars in damages.  

The case is just one of many patent battles that technology companies have waged worldwide, but especially in Germany where patent protection laws are particularly strict. This case might just give Apple, the required boost to sell its latest IPhone, which has got a mixed review.

Contributed by

Abhishek Kukreti

Copyright tussle compels Google to alter search results

It may be a thrash for the torrent hosting websites. But, it was a victory day for the big media companies as they won a battle against online piracy on Friday. The event of their victory emerged when Google agreed to alter its search algorithms to favour web sites that offered legitimate copyrighted movies, music and television.

With the beginning of next week, algorithms of the Google would take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices, that are received by the web sites. As a result, the web sites facing multiple, valid complaints about copyright infringement may appear lower in Google search results.

The move of Google came as victory news for the entertainment industry, as it was, for years pressurising Google and other Internet sites to act against online piracy.

This announcement from Google came after more than six months of a much heated tussle between big media companies and technology companies. The entire tussle involved the proposed legislation intended to crack down on pirated online content, particularly by rogue foreign Web sites.

However, Google has denied removing pages from copyright-infringing web sites from its search engine unless it receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights’ owner.

According to the statements of Google, it had received copyright removal requests for over 4.3 million web addresses in the last 30 days, according to the company’s transparency report, which was more than what it received 2009.

Google should pay $750 per book, says authors in copyright case

Authors suing Google for copyright infringement for  digitization of their works in Google books case have made a filing in a federal court in Southern District of New York to make an order requiring the internet giant to pay $750 per book it copied, distributed or displayed as a part of Google book project.

In its filing  president of Authors Guild, Scot Turow urged the court to rule that Google's unauthorized digitization of works does not amount to fair use. Current motion claims that Google has implemented its library project for commercial reasons to gain competitive advantage over its competitors, Microsoft and Amazon which were also digitizing books but with permission of authors.

On the contrary Google's spokesman took a stand against this view and puts that "Google library project constitutes fair use within copyright law by allowing the users to identify interesting books and find ways to borrow or buys those books and acts much like a card catalog in digital age.

 Google books project began seven years ago, where millions of books where scanned and converted into digital format after entering into agreements with libraries. Further details of project is available here.

Soon after the launch of this project, the authors across world came against it claiming copyright infringement. They claim that scanning in real sense means copying and  thus unauthorized digitization of their works by Google amounts to copyright violations.On the other hand Google always maintained its position that The Books Project amount to fair use within copyright legislation.

It was in mid 2005,  the  Authors Guild and American Association of Publishers filed a suit against Google in a Federal Court of New York to prevent them from digitizing works. The case was sooner declared to be a Class action suit.

In May 2011, a settlement package offered by Google amounting to $127 million USD was rejected by a Federal Judge.

Current motion filed by Authors guild was a  response to Google's motion on 27/7/2012 seeking dismissal of the long running case by claiming that authors have not suffered any economic harm owing to its copying and displaying of digital copies.

Source

ICANN Arbitration denies Google's claim

An ICANN-approved arbitration body decided the arbitration award against Google, denying its complaint involving the domain Oogle.com. According to the complaint filed by Google, the concerned domain is confusingly similar to its own. Therefore, as a remedy, it sought the same to be transferred to it.

Facts. 
A complaint was filed by Google with the National Arbitration Forum (NAF). NAF is body that resolves disagreements under its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). It has been approved by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to perform dispute resolution function.

Dispute Involved.

1. Google in its claim has alleged that Oogle.com is confusingly similar to its trademark as it merely the name Oogle merely lacks one letter from its name. Thus it appears to be intended to procure benefit from frequent user misspellings or typographical errors, according to the ruling issued by the arbitration forum. In other words, conduct by the owners of the domain name Oogle falls in the category of "typosquatting". 
2. Oogle.com's home page has historically mimicked the look and feel of Google's.
3. Oogle.com was registered in bad faith, as the Google trademark was registered in 1997, much before Oogle.com's registration (registered on Feb. 7 1999 by Christopher Neuman). Google being a well known name, it is unacceptable that Oogle.com was registered without independent knowledge of Google.

Pleadings by Defendant.

1. Oogle.com was registered on Feb. 7 1999 by Christopher Neuman, who was 13 years old at the time and has remained in his ownership since then. The name Oogle.com was chosen because Neuman came to know about another young software programmer named Justin Tunney, who used the online moniker "Oogle" or "Criminal Oogle". Noticing that Tunney had registered Oogle.net, and not Oogle.com,  Neuman proceeded to register the domain because he intended to collaborate on a website with Tunney.
2. The Oogle.com was served as a shopping site between 2000 and 2002 and programming-related website in 2002 and 2003, according to Neuman.
3. Accepting the contention of Plaintiff that Oogle.com offered sexual services and displayed pornographic and profane content, Neuman who said the domain was temporarily used in connection with "adult matchmaking services," which he considered as a lawful and permissible practice.
4. In 2010, during a few weeks where Oogle.com displayed a logo that resembled Google's, with a tag line saying: "Due to the economy the G has been laid off." "At the time we thought it was a funny and innocent usage, however upon reflection, I had it taken down after only a matter of weeks," Neuman said.
5. Replying the contention of the Google that the Defendant offered the domain name to Google for $600,000, Neuman told the arbitration forum that "there is nothing inherently wrongful in offering to sell a domain name for in excess of out of pocket expenses, when the domain name was registered in good faith to begin with."

Issues to be considered. 

According to ICANN policy rules, Google had to prove that:

1. the domain name is confusingly similar to a trademark or service to which it has rights; 
2. the Defendant has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and 
3. the domain name had been registered and was being used in bad faith.

Award of the Forum.

1. While the panel found the explanation of the Defendant "extremely suspicious" for coming up with the name Oogle, it said it did not have the authority to ascertain whether the claims of the Defendant were credible.
2. Also the panel found no answer of the issue as to whether Google had the rights to the Google trademark as it apparently did not own any trademark registrations for the name when Oogle.com was registered. It added that the company had received little media attention at the time.

As all three elements required under the ICANN policy were not fulfilled, Google's claim was denied and the rights of the Defendant to keep the Oogle.com domain name was upheld by the arbitration forum.