News Summary

MP3 - Record-breaking Patent Settlement

If the U.S. Federal Jury's February decision in favor of Alcatel-Lucent is upheld in appeal, Microsoft will have to pay US$1.52 billion for its use of the MP3 patent - the largest patent judgement ever. This could also effect hundreds of other companies that make products, such as software, portable players, computers, etc, that play MP3 files. Alcatel-Lucent owns two patents which were filed by Bell Labs on the technology before Thomson (France) and Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) - the current licensor of the MP3 technology - joined forces with Bell Labs to develop MP3.

This decision above is part of a series of trials by Alcatel-Lucent to enforce Bell Lab patents on technology related to speech recognition, user interfaces and video processing. A week after the MP3 decision (March 2), a federal judge dismissed Alcatel-Lucent's patent claim against Microsoft over speech recognition technology.

Microsoft said it will petition the judge in the MP3 case to set aside or reduce the judgement. If that does not work, it will probably appeal the case.

A pokesperson for Alcatel-Lucent Jean Campion commented, "Intellectual property is a core asset of the company. We will continue to protect and defend that asset."

Captain Copyright's Nemesis

Early in his super hero career, Captain Copyright - the comic strip character created by Access Copyright (Canada) - has met a sticky end. The character was developed to teach schoolchildren about the importance of copyright, but from the moment he was launched on the Internet last year to defend his cause, he ran smack into opposition from critics who labeled him as propaganda. His stance, they said, was one-sided and did not show the full picture. Even the Canadian Library Association criticized his lack of balance.

In response to the criticisms, Access Copyright worked extensively to remedy the Captain's shortcomings, seeking assistance from educational and copyright experts, and teacher-testing the revised lessons. But in vain. Despite progress in addressing the concerns, as well as...