Lorien_the_first_one - Slashdot User

Submission + - Tivo wins appeal on patents for pause, ffwd, rwd (sfgate.com)

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Lorien_the_first_one

on Tuesday October 07, 2008 @05:10AM

Lorien_the_first_one writes: "Well, here it is. After years of wrangling, Tivo has won it's day in court against EchoStar, now known as the Dish Network, "when the Supreme Court declined to take up Dish Network's appeal, forcing the satellite television company to pay $104 million in damages." According to the article, "TiVo originally won a patent infringement case in 2004 against Dish, which was then named EchoStar Communications. It charged that Dish illegally copied its technology, which allows people to pause, rewind and record live television on digital video recorders." Despite an injunction, Dish continued distribution of the set-top boxes in the belief that their software avoided infringing the patents owned by Tivo. Now the case goes back to the lower court for review to see if indeed they did avoid those patents. Say, isn't Tivo using Linux underneath? Doesn't that open them up to claims from people like the Free Software Foundation?"

Submission + - Monsanto uses food patents against farmers 4

Submitted by Lorien_the_first_one on Sunday April 06, 2008 @12:20PM

Lorien_the_first_one writes: Vanity Fair describes how Monsanto goes after farmers for collecting their own seeds after a harvest. According to the article, "This radical departure from age-old practice has created turmoil in farm country. Some farmers don't fully understand that they aren't supposed to save Monsanto's seeds for next year's planting. Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product. Still others say that they don't use Monsanto's genetically modified seeds, but seeds have been blown into their fields by wind or deposited by birds."

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