The US Supreme Court has handed Google a decisive victory in its decade-long battle with Oracle over the Android operating system (OS).
AP And Meltwater Make Up And Work Together
The Associated Press and Meltwater, once bitter legal rivals, have decided to squash their beef, and move forward working together on new products that will benefit both parties. Both (who were suing each other) have elected to cease all litigation…
Ruling In AP/Meltwater Case Could Be Trouble For Search Engines
Search engines and fair use suffered a legal blow this week, as a judge sided with the Associated Press in its ongoing case against Meltwater, a service that scans news from around the world, and helps businesses track keywords and…
German Law Says Google Can Use Snippets Of Certain Size, Fails To Define Size
Google will not have to pay to use snippets of news content in Germany, according to a copyright law (pdf) that was passed in the country. We discussed the proposed law last year, which Google had spoken out about. At…
Newspapers Support AP Fight Against Meltwater
A group of newspapers, including The New York Times, has lent its support to The Associated Press in a lawsuit against Meltwater, a company that scans news from around the world, and helps businesses track keywords and topics of interest.…
Should Sites Be Forced To Pay For Linking? Harvey Weinstein Thinks So.
Harvey Weinstein, an Oscar winning producer and prolific proponent of Obama, told Deadline that he is going to push for legislation that would force websites to pay for linking to news articles. This legislation would require news websites and blogs…
In Case You Were Wondering, Quoting Isn’t Duplicate Content [Matt Cutts]
Google’s Matt Cutts has put out his latest Webmaster Help video. This time he takes on a pretty classic topic – duplicate content. There’s not much here that any industry veterans will find to be of particular interest, but he…
Google Adds Copyright Removal Notices To Its Search Algorithm
Google announced a new change to its search algorithm today. Starting next week, the search engine will begin taking into account the number of valid copyright removal notices in rankings. That is the number of valid notices Google receives itself.…
The Government Is Putting Fair Use In Danger
Fair use – what do those two words mean to you? If you’ve been following copyright law at all lately, you probably have heard the term thrown around a few times. It’s considered by many to be the most important…
South Park Cites Fair Use, Wins “What What (In The Butt)” Infringement Case
According to a ruling from the 7th U.S. circuit Court of Appeals, Butters is not a copyright infringer. The court upheld a lower court decision that ruled Viacom’s Comedy Partners were correct in their fair use defense concerning a 2008…
Perfect 10 Sues Tumblr
A porn company called Perfect 10 recently sued microblogging platform Tumblr for copyright infringement almost five years to the day of the social network’s inception. Tumblr, host to over 46 million blogs, is also home to a spectacular amount of…
Google Speaks Out Against Righthaven In Court
The last time we checked in with the Righthaven saga, righthaven.com had just been sold in a domain auction, as Righthaven struggled to pay legal costs and fines. Now, when you go to righthaven.com, you are greeted with the image…
Righthaven Domain Sold In Auction
We recently reported that Righthaven.com was up for auction on Snapnames, and it has now sold. And not for much. It ended up going for $3,300. That’s unfortunate for Righthaven, seeing as how they’ve been ordered to pay about $60,000…
Righthaven Domain Now Being Auctioned
Righthaven, which is commonly referred to as a “copyright troll,” is now having its domain name RightHaven.com auctioned off by domain auction site SnapNames, as pictured above. If you’re not familiar with the story, the irony here is that RightHaven…
Righthaven Ordered to Pay Huge Fine
The woes continue for Righthaven, the company designed to sue bloggers and others on the web for allegedly infringing upon the copyrights of its clients/partners. You can see our past coverage of the Righthaven saga here. The last time we…
Should You Have to Pay to Link?
This isn’t about paid links in relation to search. This is about paying publications to link to their content as if you were paying to republish it. Do you think a publication should charge others to link to their content?…
Righthaven Gets Taste of Irony as Defendant Seeks Assets
The Righthaven storyline continues to get even more interesting. The company, often referred to as a “copyright troll,” first stopped filing new suits against bloggers, then reports came out that the it may even file for bankruptcy, as it was…