tequila bomb

Interesting piece on the debate in the US right now about whether it’s a violation of the First Amendment for a state to enact a law restricting the sale of video games to minors.

A PDF transcript of oral arguments can be read here .

Apple’s legal battle with Nokia looks to have seen some setback, with staff at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) telling the judge in the case that Apple’s patent allegations are ‘unfounded’.

“The evidence will not establish a violation” of Apple patent rights, the staff, which acts on behalf of the public as a third party in the case, said in a pre-hearing memo released yesterday.

Bloomberg tells us the case will begin before Judge Charles Bullock today. Apple is attempting to have Nokia’s US phone imports banned on strength of its four allegations.

Nokia also has a case against Apple. Meanwhile, Apple is suing HTC and Motorola over Android phones, and Microsoft is suing Motorola. In fact, the mobile business is a minefield of legal fun and games, as displayed in the above info-graphic.

From 9TO5Mac.

The graph above shows just how crazy this has become.

In the end this will come down to who has the most influential lobbyists. Or who blinks first, and settles in a back room somewhere with an undisclosed deal.

VLC Developer Rémi Denis-Courmont confirmed that Videolan sent a copyright infringement notice to Apple about the iOS version of its popular video playing app, VLC. The notice targets the DRM-based distribution method of the App Store and its restrictive terms and conditions. VLC is distributed under a GNU General Public License (GPL), an open source and free software license program that does not allow the restrictive policies of the iTunes App Store. By tightly controlling how VLC is distributed, Apple’s App Store violates this GPL and Videolan was compelled to notify Apple.

Apple will not comply with this request. So their only option is to remove it.

If you want VLC on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch then I suggest you go get it now.

Late yesterday, Apple filed a pair of patent infringement lawsuits against Motorola Inc. and Motorola Mobility Inc. in the Wisconsin Western District Court. The combined lawsuits cover six patents.

…

The main focus of these lawsuits centers in on the most important technology of all pertaining to the next generation smartphones: Multi-Touch. In 2009, Apple’s COO Tim Cook warned the competition during a financial conference, as follows: “we like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.” Obviously Apple now thinks that Motorola has crossed that line.

This lawsuit is in response to earlier failed negotiations between the two companies, and a resulting pre-emptive lawsuit that Motorola filed against Apple…

Last week Motorola Mobility, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola, launched three separate patent infringement lawsuits against Apple Inc. which are available for review in our archives. If that wasn’t enough, Motorola Mobility Inc. has now launched an offensive Declaratory Judgment against Apple and NeXT. Motorola was fully aware of Apple’s patent infringement lawsuit against HTC and it appears that they were even in confidential negotiations with Apple to license their technology so as to avoid litigation. Evidently the negations went sour and they are now preemptively trying to stop Apple from launching a similar patent infringement against them.

Also from Patently Apple.

That strategy didn’t work out so well then.

Motorola has just barely returned to profitability after a long period of losses.