1: Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED!

First off today, SCO’s legal campaign against Linux is, for all practical purposes, over. The judge in the SCO’s case against Novell has ruled that the case be closed. SCO famously claimed that Linux was an unlawful derivative of its Unix operating system, even suing IBM for allegedly placing the code into Linux, but Novell stepped in claiming that they never sold the copyrights to SCO and SCO had no standing in the lawsuit. A jury ruled in April that Novell was correct and SCO’s last-ditch attempt to have the verdict thrown out was denied, effectively bringing an end to the case. SCO is currently in bankruptcy and will likely be liquidated now that its legal alternatives are exhausted.

2: US Band Sues Over Riff Lift

Next up today, for anyone still actually reading this column, the U.S. band Foo Fighters are suing the real estate firm ReMax in Australia claiming that the company used one of their guitar riffs without permission for a commercial. What makes this case extraordinary is that the lawsuit appears to have stemmed from an off-hand comment on a forum dedicated to the band which noted the similarity, followed by a comment saying that “If FF did know, I highly doubt they would care, and if they did, it would be thrown out of court.” The first part of that statement appears to have been untrue, and the courts in Australia will decide the second. The band is seeking unspecified damages and the case is to be heard in August.

3: 3 More R-J Copyright Suits Filed; Defendant Responds

Finally today, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, through its agent Rightshaven, has filed suit against three more Webmasters for unlawfully using the newspaper’s content. This brings the total sued to 37 though other defendants are responding saying that they were not notified of the infringement, were often unaware and that the potential damages is only in the hundreds of dollars as the content from the newspaper is not registered with the Copyright Office. The defendants are calling this an abuse of the legal system and are seeking to have the cases dismissed.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

1: Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011

First off today, an article on Techcrunch over the weekend told us that maybe music executives aren’t as clueless as some people seem to think. According to the piece by Michael Arrington, he had a “Surprisingly candid lunch conversation last week with a big music label executive” and found out that the record labels are fully aware of what is happening to their business but that they are aware that they well have to alter their business models, but not until 2013.

According to the article, the math, predictions and other tools just say that there is too much money in the current model to engage in a shift of policies until at least 2011, probably 2013. CD sales, licensing deals, etc., though waning in their revenue potential, are still big income makers and will continue to be for the next few years at least.

What exactly will happen when and if the record labels change their business model is unclear.

2: Hulu Goes Medieval on Boxee

What started as a gentleman’s disagreement between Hulu and Boxee has now degenerated into a game of Whac-A-Mole. Recently, Hulu asked Boxee, a service that makes it easy to get online video to your TV, to disable access to Hulu at the request of Hulu’s content partners. Boxee complied and the matter seemed resolved in a very gentlemanly way.

However, Boxee decided it wasn’t done. It then re-added support for Hulu, this time using Hulu’s RSS feeds, in turn prompting Hulu to block Boxee from accessing their content. Boxee, then, modified their side to ensure that Hulu continued to work on their service.

Why Boxee did this is unclear as is what, if any, action Hulu plans on taking.

3: Re/Max says local agency’s logo too similar to its own

Finally today, in a trademark story from my native South Carolina, real estate agency Re/Max has filed a trademark dispute lawsuit against Charleston, S.C.-based agency Rehava saying that their logo is too similar to their own, even though Rehava’s logo doesn’t use any of the same fonts, colors, images or anything else in common with the Re/Max logo.

Rehava says the challenge to their trademark filing is a form of “harassment” and that they intend to fight the challenge, even though it will likely be expensive.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.