3 Count: Decloned

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1: Pirate Bay Co-Founder Peter Sunde Freed After 5 months in Prison

First off today, Cyrus Farivar at Ars Technica reports that Peter Sunde, one of the four founders of The Pirate Bay convicted of criminal charges in relation to the site, has been released from prison after serving five months.

Sunde, along with three codefendants, were convicted in 2009 of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay millions in damages. However, Sunde fled and was arrested in May of this year. He served his time in a high risk wing.

Last week, another of Sunde’s co-defendants, Fredrik Neij, was arrested on Laos after he too fled. He is being brought back to Sweden to serve his sentence. Another defendant, Gottfrid Warg was subsequently convicted of hacking into a government database and is serving 3.5 years in Denmark for that. The final defendant, Carl Lundstrom, paid a small portion of his fine before declaring bankruptcy. He also served four months under house arrest.

2: Computer Experts Push Supreme Court to Hear Google’s Appeal in API Copyright Case

Next up today, Jeff John Roberts at GigaOm reports the the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with several prominent computer scientists, has filed a amicus brief on behalf of Google in its possible upcoming case with the Supreme Court.

Oracle, the company that owns the copyright to the Java programming language, sued Google alleging that, when building its Android mobile operating system, Google used the APIs when making their implementation of Java. Though Google rewrote the entire language, it kept the APIs the same so that existing Java applications could work with it.

Google argued that APIs were mere instructions and could not be copyrighted. A lower court agreed and largely found in favor of Google. However, the appeals court overturned that ruling, prompting Google to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, however, has not said whether or not it will take the case.

3: Blizzard Wins Copyright Lawsuit Against Chinese Hearthstone Clone

Finally today, Eric Jou at Kotaku reports that there is dispute as to whether or not Blizzard has won a large ruling against a Chinese developer that they allege produced a clone of their popular “Hearthstone” game.

Several news outlets in China are reporting that Unico Interactive, the makers of “Crouching Dragon Legends”, widely regarded as a clone of “Hearthstone”, has been ordered to pay Blizzard and its Chines partner 10,000,000 RMB ($1.6 million) in damages for copyright infringement. However, Unico says it hasn’t received any documentation regarding such compensation.

However, Unico has had their game pulled from a variety of app stores, including the iOS store, over copyright concerns. The games servers have also been put on hold since February.

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.

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