182269
submission
chameleon_skin writes:
Richard Silver, purported creator of the Electric Slide, has backed down from his earlier assertion that under the DMCA videos of the dance he supposedly created cannot be shown on YouTube without his explicit permission. In the face of an EFF lawsuit, Mr. Silver agreed in the settlement to release the rights to the dance under the Creative Commons License. Put on your dance shoes and fire up your video cameras!
151495
submission
chameleon_skin writes:
In its most important ruling on patent law in years, the Supreme Court has taken a stand on the crippling effects that obvious patents are having on innovation in the United States. From the article:
If the combination results from nothing more than "ordinary innovation" and "does no more than yield predictable results," the court said in a unanimous opinion, it is not entitled to the exclusive rights that patent protection conveys. "Were it otherwise," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the opinion, "patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts."
This judgement changes the standard needed to overturn a patent from "clear and convincing" evidence to simply "a preponderance" of evidence.
