Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

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Thad
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Jul 11, 2014 12:30 am

Obama nominates anti-patent reform lawyer Johnson from Johnson and Johnson (really) to head USPTO, then backs off under pressure.

Well, that second part is pretty good news.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby sei » Fri Jul 11, 2014 12:38 am

Now if only he'd retroactively back off of Wheeler for FCC chairman.
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Mothra » Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:50 am

Thad wrote:Obama nominates anti-patent reform lawyer Johnson from Johnson and Johnson (really) to head USPTO, then backs off under pressure.

Well, that second part is pretty good news.

Good god.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Tue Jul 15, 2014 2:06 pm

The American Bar Association wrote:Finally, while it is technically possible for trademark and copyright owners to proceed with civil litigation against the consuming public who affirmatively seek out counterfeited products or pirated content or engage in illegal file sharing, campaigns like this have been expensive, do not yield significant financial returns, and can cause a public relations problem for the plaintiff in addressing its consuming public.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Tue Aug 05, 2014 2:31 pm

Like a lot of artists, Darkchylde creator Randy Queen is sensitive about his early work.

So when a Tumblr called Escher Girls posted and criticized some of it -- well, this isn't the "Artist Asks Nicely to Have Something Removed Because It's Embarrassing" thread, so you can probably see where this is going.

Queen issued DMCA takedowns. And then when the Escher Girls bloggers noted that he had issued DMCA takedowns, he threatened to sue for defamation.

And then when they reported on THAT, he accused them of harassment.

Gail Simone puts it succinctly:

I have been in Randy’s spot, I have overreacted to criticism, especially in the early days of my career. It can be hard to see your work mocked or criticized.

But overreacting is a failure of the CREATOR in question, not the critic. And bullying and threatening readers with fake legal nonsense is just wrong and grotesque.

Randy Queen, you are wrong. The best course of action for you is an IMMEDIATE and sincere apology. Leave these people ALONE.

Once your work is out there, it is subject to criticism like the work of every other creator since time began. You are in no way special or immune.

This is already not going well for you and it’s only going to escalate. Drop your ridiculous threats right now and apologize. It’s the only way to salvage anything out of this.


She's right -- there's still time for him to walk away from this and get some goodwill out of the deal. Everybody has bad days; everybody sometimes makes mistakes and overreacts. I think if he apologizes things can still go well for him.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Thu Aug 07, 2014 1:51 pm

This may be the greatest copyright dispute ever: Who owns monkey selfies?

WRCB-TV wrote:Slater plans legal action, saying that the photo is his because he supplied and set up the camera. “In law, if I have an assistant then I still own the copyright,” he said.

“I believe there's a case to be had that the monkey was my assistant.”


The photo was taken in Indonesia. I don't know anything about Indonesian copyright law, or how it's recognized in the United States where Wikipedia is based.

But I do know a little bit about US copyright law. And the Copyright Act of 1976 says that if that monkey didn't sign a work-for-hire contract in advance, then it's not work-for-hire.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Büge » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:21 pm

I look forward to the day that a banana leaf smeared with dung is a contract admissible in court.
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Classic » Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:55 pm

There's no rule saying it ISN'T admissible in court!

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Grath » Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:48 pm

Twitch.tv is now muting VODs (aka previous broadcasts) for 30 minutes whenever it detects copyrighted music. It is just as bad if not worse than Youtube's content matching system.

Their CEO did an AMA today on Reddit.
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This was the AMA in a nutshell, along with the general sentiment of "I'm cancelling all my subscriptions, won't renew any Twitch services, and am moving to an alternate service". The CEO claims they don't plan to mute live broadcasts that are using copyrighted material; Several people printed that statement out and threatened to mail a copy to him every week when they start muting live broadcasts.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Blossom » Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:51 pm

I gotta wonder what happens if, say, you're playing GTA 5 and listening to the radio.
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Grath » Thu Aug 07, 2014 6:35 pm

TA wrote:I gotta wonder what happens if, say, you're playing GTA 5 and listening to the radio.


Currently? It gets muted. They muted a bunch of The International 2014 stuff, some of their own broadcasts....

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Aug 07, 2014 7:58 pm

I may be in an echo chamber, but the phenomenal speed at which Twitch seems to be falling into the crapper over this is such that it could very well wind up in a textbook on social media.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Mothra » Thu Aug 07, 2014 8:30 pm

Latest victim: KAZZ

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Tue Aug 12, 2014 5:24 pm

So this shouldn't really surprise anyone: the patent office has the same work habit problems as any other workplace.

In some cases, patent examiners simply don't work much of the time and then submit a burst of work at the end of a quarter, suddenly doing 500 to 1,000 percent of their production goals. This process is called "end-loading" their work. The report explains:

In the fourth quarter of FY 2012, for example, approximately 20 percent of examiners (roughly 1,600 examiners) completed 50 percent or more of their total annual balanced disposals in the last two pay periods (or four weeks) of the quarter (typically six or seven bi-weeks), and approximately five percent of examiners (roughly 450 examiners) completed 70 percent or more of their total balanced disposals in the last two pay periods of the quarter.

"Our quality standards are low," said one director interviewed about end-loading. "We aren't looking for good work. We're looking for work that meets minimal requirements."


This shouldn't really surprise anyone who's been paying attention. But that's not the biggest problem:

Recently, the US Patent and Trademark Office concluded an internal investigation that it began about two years ago. The investigation resulted in a bruising 32-page report, finding that a significant fraction of the roughly 7,900 patent examiners at the US Patent and Trademark Office routinely lie about their hours worked. About half of those examiners work from home, but even the half in the office have proven hard to supervise.

But that strongly worded report didn't end up on the desk of the inspector general. Instead, Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser was given a 16-page scrubbed-up version of the report with inconclusive findings. The potentially incendiary quotes and cases in the original report were all gone.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Classic » Tue Aug 12, 2014 5:38 pm

So I'm hearing openings in the patent office?

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:10 pm

Keurig DRM allegedly cracked before even being brought to market.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Mongrel » Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:30 pm

*girlish giggle*
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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Mothra » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:21 pm

HAHAHAHAHA

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 03, 2014 4:53 pm

Apple will face $350M trial over iPod DRM

I'd love to see a precedent set here. Apple may have abandoned iTunes DRM years ago, but we're still seeing major digital retailers (by which I mostly mean Amazon) using DRM to lock customers into their platforms.

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Re: Copyrights, Trademarks, Patents, and branding irons

Postby Thad » Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:37 pm

EFF: new Wii U update is mandatory. Not just for online play, but for your console to continue to function at all.

Best guess: this will go the way these things usually do; Nintendo will argue for a few days, then claim it was an accident and stop doing it.

Plan B, of course, will eventually involve a whole lot more bad press and an eventual settlement, because I think even a private arbitration clause (do they have one?) isn't going to go their way on this one.

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