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Archive for the ‘Intellectual Property’ Category

#Righthaven, a copyright troll that acquires newspaper  from Stephens Media and then sues sites for posting the articles without permission, is in trouble with a Las Vegas federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt of Nevada has threatened to sanction Righthaven for what he calls “disingenuous, if not outright deceitful” litigation efforts, while also questioning the validity of the company’s business model, reports Wired. Righthaven has used a copyright loophole to launch more than 200 lawsuits against blogs and other sites for using material that Righthaven says it owns—all claims that the Hunt believes are false. MORE

For years and much to their frustration, big #banks have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to a tiny Texas company to use a patented system for processing digital copies of checks, making Claudio Ballard, the inventor of the system, a wealthy man and the bank industry’s biggest patent foe. MORE

“F**k Michael Powell,” said a Home Depot executive about the inventor of a new saw safety device, “Let him sue us.” And that is just what inventor and holder Michael Powell did. MORE

With apologies to the Coen brothers, Columbia Pictures is learning the hard way not to f— with the Jesus.

A lawyer for Brazil’s Catholic Church has gone public with a dispute over the destruction of Rio de Janeiro’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue in November’s global hit “2012.” Seems the church didn’t enjoy the scene as much as we did, prompting archdiocese attorney Claudine Dutra to tell the AFP that Columbia didn’t get a proper copyright license to depict the country’s most famous statue.  MORE

Hulu announced yesterday that Comedy Central was pulling “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” from the popular video website. The decision will impact the many downstream websites that have relied on Hulu’s embedded player to gain access to these shows.

“Yes, we intend to do so,” says… MORE