Under the American system of jurisprudence, anybody can sue anybody for anything. Unlike more enlightened justice systems, the American legal system is premised on the idea that each party to a lawsuit pays its own way, regardless of whether the legal claims in question have any basis and, more painfully, regardless of whether the party being sued ultimately wins. (There are exceptions, of course. Certain statutes have “fee-shifting” provisions where the loser pays and courts sometimes order the loser to pay the winner’s legal bills.)
The upshot of our everybody-pays-his-own-way model is that companies with lots of cash to burn, or companies that spend their money foolishly, file lawsuits that they can’t hope to win solely in the hopes of crushing their perceived adversaries under huge legal bills. Typically this means that big companies sue little companies just to get them out of the way or to keep them from becoming bigger companies.
A more odious example of this practice, however, is Apple’s effort to snuff out publication of what it deemed secret information by suing individual bloggers. This wasn’t a case of a personal vendetta or an attempt to hobble a would-be competitor; Apple was suing to limit the speech of a group of industry bloggers. My guess is that Apple thought the tiny publications would cave quickly rather than incur massive legal expenses, with Apple gaining the added benefit of scaring away any other writers from digging too deeply into the company’s inner workings.
That’s why it’s good news that Apple lost its fight and even better news that the tech and media giant has been forced to cough up $700,000 to pay the legal bills of the bloggers. Of course $700,000 is pocket change to a company the size of Apple. And the bloggers had EFF fighting for them.
Still, Apple (and we hope the rest of the business world) will think twice before suing any blogger again. In its decision in this case, the court wrote:
We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish ‘legitimate’ from ‘illegitimate’ news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:38 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Here’s the obligatory nod to the technology tsunami that is Windows Vista. Microsoft’s first update to its operating system in five years is now on the shelves of tens of thousands of retailers and is expected to indirectly generate $70 billion in revenue for tech suppliers that build Vista-related products.
More than that, we’re all going to be hearing about Vista a lot for months to come. Microsoft is purportedly spending $500 million to market the new platform, and is pursuing all kinds of new ways to get the message out (take a look at this offbeat site and this bizarre site called The Institute for Advanced Personhood).
While we’re at, check out Bill Gates’ appearance on the Daily Show last night, during which Jon Stewart tried to worm Gates’ password out of him and asked what the purpose of the F12 key is.
OK, I had no idea that major litigation is underway that could give tech giant Alcatel-Lucent billions in royalties from just about every major Internet company out there. And I could find very little material on the public Internet that would bring me up to speed on this case.
But, here’s what I do know: a jury trial is underway in San Diego that could result in Microsoft being forced to pay $2 billion to Alcatel-Lucent for the Redmond software titan’s use of MP3 technology in its Windows Media Player. Alcatel-Lucent filed the infringement suit against Microsoft arguing that it’s not being paid for its patent on the audio technology.
Microsoft, on the other hand, along with just about every other Internet-related company, is paying MP3 royalties to German researcher Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS through Thomson SA. Somehow Alcatel is claiming that the royalties should flow to them since Fraunhofer worked on the technology with BellLabs, which was a predecessor company to Lucent, which Alcatel acquired last year.
The prospect of billions of easy dollars flowing into Alcatel-Lucent strikes me as news, particularly given that the royalty payments involve MP3 technology, which the music industry is starting to embrace in a bigger way.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:40 AM | Print | Comments (0)
VoIP and now video-on-the-net entrepreneur Jeff Pulver is running a contest for video bloggers which has a grand prize of $25,000. (Disclosure: I’m running an event, The New Video Summit, in conjunction with Jeff’s company pulvermedia that leads into this year’s Video On the Net conference. It’s very cool, with lots of top Hollywood and Silicon Valley types. Om and Rafat will be there too, moderating. But I digress.)
Jeff’s goal is to promote his new video site, Network2 and contestants are asked to produce a videoblog entry that deals with “How to Watch Internet TV,” and, hopefully, mentions Network2. Submissions are due March 9 and there will be three cash prizes: $25,000 for first place, $10,000 for second and $5,000 for third. Who says blogging doesn’t pay?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:23 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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