One day, I’ll write a full-length discussion of intellectual property, including copyright. I’m sure that when I do, I’ll devote some ink to Popcorn Time, a Windows, Mac, and Linux application that makes pirating movies via BitTorrent easy enough for casual users. For now, I’m going to touch on it from the following perspective: movie […]
Palm Patents Finally Find a Home – At Qualcomm
January 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment
One of the long-running stories in the Palm and webOS saga was the value of Palm’s significant patent portfolio, for example speculation that Apple never sued Palm for many seemingly similar patent violations because of the retaliatory benefit of Palm’s patents. After all, Palm was in the PDA and smartphone game long before Apple, and […]
Should Apple Own New Product Categories?
September 1, 2012 by 1 Comment
Gizmodo posted an article today titled “What Laptops Looked Like Before and After the MacBook Air.” The article’s implication is that other companies are being unoriginal in their designs, saying “Let’s try something different next time, yeah?” Gizmodo was linking from Daring Fireball (a very pro-Apple blog) who was linking from this site. Go check […]
No, Apple, You Can’t Patent the Wedge
August 30, 2012 by 3 Comments
I came across this CNET article discussing the Apple MacBook Air’s release in 2010 and how the Sony Vaio X505 had actually beat it to the thin-and-light punch in 2004. Given Apple’s recently granted “wedge” patent for the MacBook Air, I thought it interesting to note that the Vaio X505 has a distinct wedge shape […]
Apple v. Samsung: Some Thoughts
August 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
 v. I’m not a lawyer, let alone a patent lawyer, and so anything I might say about the outcome of the Apple v. Samsung trial that concluded yesterday are the ramblings of a layman. I understand some of the basic principles of intellectual property law, and know trademarks and copyrights well enough to do my […]
Two Quick Patent Ideas
August 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment
I haven’t fully fleshed these out, and I’m nothing close to a patent attorney, but I was thinking a bit about the patent mess we find ourselves in and came up with two quick thoughts. They are: 1. Perhaps a timeframe should be established within which a patent must be converted to an actual product […]
Quick Thoughts on Intellectual Property and DRM
March 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In a recent interview with Forbes, Tim O’Reilly said the following about DRM and intellectual property: Let’s say my goal is to sell 10,000 copies of something. And let’s say that if by putting DRM in it I sell 10,000 copies and I make my money, and if by having no DRM 100,000 copies go […]