E-Commerce Blog

Viacom’s billion-dollar copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google’s YouTube took a nasty turn Thursday as a series of documents were released to the public. “Fostering and countenancing piracy were central to YouTube’s economic business model,” Viacom’s filings charge. Viacom “overtly and covertly uploaded to YouTube a vast array of their own video clips for marketing purposes,” Google wrote. While Viacom now portrays YouTube as a pirate site, it thought highly enough of it to try to buy it before it was acquired by Google, the filings claim.

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Viacom v. YouTube: Finger-Pointing Turns to Mud-Slinging

Legislation signed into law on February 24 will have a profound effect on e-commerce and catalog companies that sell to customers in Colorado. Companies that do not collect Colorado sales tax must notify their Colorado customers that they are obligated to file a use tax return to pay the sales and use tax themselves. It also requires them to send out an annual information statement. In addition, out-of-state e-commerce companies with related companies (for example, subsidiaries or sister corporations) in the state must collect sales tax.

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E-Tailers Should Act Fast to Comply With Colorado’s New Tax Law

TiVo stock skyrocketed Thursday following news that it had won its long-running court case against sister companies Dish Network and EchoStar. Specifically, a federal appeals court affirmed a previous contempt finding against Dish and EchoStar for violating a court-ordered permanent injunction to stop making and selling their digital video recorder technology, which had previously been found to infringe TiVo patents. TiVo expects to receive roughly $300 million in damages and contempt sanctions awarded for EchoStar’s continued infringement.

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Court Sees DVR Case TiVo’s Way

While patent practitioners are well familiar with and accepting of the phrase that patentable subject matter may include “anything under the sun that is made by man,” the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently heard arguments that may call the rationale behind that famous quote — or rather infamous quote — into question. The Plaintiffs argue that patents should not be awarded for the discovery of an “ancient secret of nature.” Every invention in the history of man involves something to do with nature, counter the Defendants.

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Putting a Patent on Human Genes

RealNetworks has ended its legal battle with Hollywood over its RealDVD software. The Motion Picture Association of America and Viacom filed suit against RealNetworks in 2008, alleging that RealDVD infringed on content producers’ copyrights. RealDVD allowed users to save copies of DVDs to their computers. The movie industry hated the concept, claiming it would lead to mass piracy of Hollywood movies as consumers would rip a movie, return it to the store or movie rental house, and then trade it endlessly online.

RealDVD Is Dead, Long Live Illegal Ripping?