Free for a Fee

The MPEG Licensing Association—the group responsible for handling the necessary patent licensing for use of MPEG video codec standards—has announced that it will not charge royalties for AVC/H.264 encoded video that is made available to view via the Internet for free. The group earlier this year had extended its limited moratorium on licensing fees for free Internet video until the end of 2015.

The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/08/mpeg-la-counters-google-webm-with-permanent-royalty-moratorium.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rssand was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The content in this post was found at http://commonsresource.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/post-bilski-buzz-next-round-in-patents-v-open-source-software/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

The SCO Group was dealt a serious, potentially fatal blow today in its courtroom battle against Linux. The jury in the trial between SCO and Novell has issued a verdict affirming that Novell is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This verdict will make it difficult for SCO to continue pursuing its baseless assault on the open source operating system.

The SCO saga began in 2003 when the company claimed that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. SCO filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging that Big Blue misappropriated UNIX code and included it in the Linux kernel. Although SCO repeatedly claimed to have compelling evidence to support its accusations, the company has yet to provide proof in the seven years since. Internal SCO memos that came to light during the discovery process of SCO’s conflict with IBM revealed that SCO’s own internal code audits did not identify any evidence infringement.

The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/sco-loses-again-jury-says-novell-owns-unix-svrx-copyrights.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

Jacobsen v. Katzer involves a dispute over rights in software code distributed pursuant to the open source Artistic License. Last year the case yielded one of the very few judicial rulings dealing with open source software. As we wrote at the time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected the argument that open source licenses are enforceable only in a breach of contract action. In a broadly worded opinion that endorsed the open source approach to licensing, the court held that open source license restrictions are enforceable under U.S. copyright law, thereby making the federal courts, and the potent remedies under the Copyright Act, available to open source licensors.

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The content in this post was found at http://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2009/12/articles/open-source/jacobsen-v-katzer-open-source-software-project-gains-key-rulings-in-copyright-infringement-litigation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewMediaAndTechnologyLaw+%28New+Media+and+Technology+Law%29 and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law.
The content in this post was found at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/main/rss/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.