jimmyLi's blog

Late last night local time, the nine man jury of the Apple vs Samsung legal case in California has ruled in favour of Apple and putting over a billion in their pocket in the process. Just days after the case was given to the jury , they have found that the vast majority of  Samsung devices concerned infringed upon the iPhone front fascia design patent. They also ruled that the trade dress (this is basically the design) of the iPhone line has been diluted by several Samsung products. To top it all of, it was ruled that Samsung willingly copied Apple’s patented designs and the resultant damages were tripled. There wasn’t much in favour of Samsung. Their own tablets were found to not rule upon the trade dress of the iPad and none of the Korean company’s patent were ruled in invalid, neither were any of Apple’s. Samsung will appeal the decision, but the verdict is unlikely to be changed. The company can only really dispute the amount of damages they owe and th...

While organisations like the MPAA and RIAA get a lot of press for lobbying governments into taking down music and movie related file sharing sites, the US authorities have been targeting a new kind of piracy as well – app piracy. In a single swipe, the US government has taken down three websites involved with the distribution of copyright protected applications. These include: applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com. Visiting those pages now gives you the simple message below: This wasn’t just some local scuffle however. Most of the servers operating these websites were found to be overseas, so it ended up taking internaional cooperation to take them offline. Assistant attorney general Lanny Breur came forward to comment (via Wired ): “Software apps have become an increasingly essential part of our nation’s economy and creative culture, and the Criminal Division is committed to working with our law enforcement partners to protect the creators of these apps...

Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes. Surveillance of the audio and video feeds remains impractical — even when courts issue warrants, say industry officials with direct knowledge of the matter. But that barrier could eventually vanish as Skype becomes one of the world’s most popular forms of telecommunication. The changes to online chats, which are written messages conveyed almost instantaneously between users, result in part from technical upgrades to Skype that were instituted to address outages and other stability issues since Microsoft bought the company last year. Officials of the United States and other countries have long pushed to expand their access to newe...