Intellectual Property Law

EFF's Cindy Cohn Wins IP Vanguard Award from State Bar of California

Posted on August 25, 2010
We're pleased to announce that EFF's Legal Director, Cindy Cohn, has won a

Security Researcher Arrested for Refusing to Disclose Anonymous Source

Posted on August 23, 2010
An Indian computer scientist was arrested this weekend when he refused to disclose an anonymous source who provided an electronic voting machine to a team of security researchers. Hari Prasad is the managing director of Netindia Ltd., an Indian research and development firm...

Jury Invalidates One of EFF's 'Most Wanted' Patents

Posted on August 23, 2010
Good news in the fight against bad software patents: a jury in the Eastern District of Texas recently found the Firepond/Polaris patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,411,947) invalid. This patent was on EFF's "Most Wanted" list, targeted because it claimed nothing more than a system using natural language processing to respond to customers' online inquires by email...

Steve Jobs Is Watching You: Apple Seeking to Patent Spyware

Posted on August 23, 2010
It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we're calling "traitorware." While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices...

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?E-Personation? Bill Could Be Used to Punish Online Critics, Undermine First Amendment Protections for Parody

Posted on August 22, 2010
A bill that could undermine a new and important form of online activism has quietly worked its way through the California legislature. If signed by the governor, the new law would make it a crime to impersonate someone online in order to ?harm? that person...

How to Protect Your Privacy on Facebook Places

Posted on August 19, 2010
Yesterday, Facebook introduced Places, a new location feature that competes with popular services like Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, and Gowalla. Places allows Facebook users to 'check in' to real world locations and to tag their friends as present (similar to how Facebook allows tagging in photos)...

Government Uses Social Networking Sites for More than Investigations

Posted on August 16, 2010
In the midst of recent controversies over Facebook?s privacy settings, it?s easy to forget how much personal information is available from other sources on the Internet. But the government remembers. EFF recently received a number of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) highlighting the government?s ability to scour not only social networks, but record each and every corner of the Internet...

EFF to Verizon: Etisalat Certificate Authority Threatens Web Security

Posted on August 13, 2010
EFF will soon be launching the SSL Observatory project, an effort to monitor and secure the cryptographic infrastructure of the World Wide Web. There is much work to be done, and we will need the help of many parties to make the HTTPS-encrypted web genuinely trustworthy...

EFF Files Appeal of Warrantless Wiretapping Case Jewel v. NSA

Posted on August 13, 2010
EFF today asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate its landmark case against the federal government for warrantlessly wiretapping millions of ordinary Americans. The case, called Jewel v. NSA is part of EFF's ongoing efforts to Stop the Spying...

Breaking Down the DMCA Exemptions, Pt. 2: Free Your Phone and the Rest Will Follow?

Posted on August 12, 2010
As the initial furor over the 2009 (in fact delayed until 2010) DMCA rulemaking subsides, a number of questions have been raised about the nature and scope of the exemptions. We?ve gotten a lot of inquiries about two cell-phone related exemptions that EFF championed: one to clarify the legality of cell phone "jailbreaking" ? software modifications that liberate iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other than those approved by the phone maker ? and another to renew a 2006 rule exempting cell phone unlocking so handsets can be used with other telecommunications carriers...

EFF Staffs Up in Patent, Copyright, and Trademark Law

Posted on August 12, 2010
EFF is pleased to announce the hiring of our newest staff member: staff attorney Julie Samuels. Julie will be working on intellectual property issues, with a focus on stopping abuse of software patents. Before joining EFF, Julie litigated patent and copyright cases in Chicago at Loeb & Loeb and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal...

A Review of Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal

Posted on August 11, 2010
Efforts to protect net neutrality that involve government regulation have always faced one fundamental obstacle: the substantial danger that the regulators will cause more harm than good for the Internet. The worst case scenario would be that, in allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet, we open the door for big business, Hollywood and the indecency police to exert even more influence on the Net than they do now...

Publisher, Former Partners Agree to Destroy Personal Information About Gay Customers

Posted on August 11, 2010
Last month, we wrote about a New Jersey case in which the former publisher of a magazine and dating website for gay youth had declared bankruptcy. He and his former business partners were fighting over ownership of various business assets of XY Magazine and XY...

Panel Picker Voting Begins for SXSW 2011: Vote for EFF's Panels!

Posted on August 11, 2010
The panel picking process has begun for SXSW 2011, which runs March 11-20 in Austin, Texas. This is your chance to vote for the panels you want to see at SXSW Music, Film, and Interactive. EFF has proposed several panels this year, including The Epic Fail of BitTorrent Indie Film Lawsuits, Legal Bootcamp: Electronic Privacy Law for Internet Startups, Identity Correction: Fair Use or Fraud?, I Can Has Appz and Privacy Too? and Big Brother on a Big Screen...

EFF Urges Supreme Court to Block NASA's Invasive Background Checks

Posted on August 10, 2010
Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the United States Supreme Court Monday to uphold an appeals court decision that blocks invasive and unnecessary background checks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), arguing that the over-collection of personal data puts employees' privacy at risk...

Government Finds Uses for Social Networking Sites Beyond Investigations

Posted on August 10, 2010
Recent news has made it abundantly clear that the government uses the Internet and social networking sites as tools for investigation. But what?s not clear, and what the government has been reluctant to reveal, is how this information has been collected and utilized...

Court Rejects Warrantless GPS Tracking

Posted on August 06, 2010
Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today firmly rejected government claims that federal agents have an unfettered right to install Global Positioning System (GPS) location-tracking devices on anyone's car without a search warrant...

Stomping for Digital Civil Liberties

Posted on August 06, 2010
Every year, people astonish and amaze us with the inventive ways in which they raise funds for EFF. EFF supporters have given away free games, shaved people's hair into mohawks, and drawn cartoons to show their support for digital civil liberties. For the second year in a row, Michael Wigren of WKID "Froggy" Radio in Vevay, Indiana, has chosen the potentially dangerous pastime of grape-stomping as the medium through which he demonstrates his devotion to EFF...

Government Abuses Computer Crime Law to Boost Criminal Charges

Posted on August 06, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers asked a federal appeals court Thursday to block the government's attempt to wrongly expand federal computer crime law, turning misdemeanor charges into felonies...

EFF Offers New Help for Targets of Predatory Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

Posted on August 04, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today published "U.S. Copyright Group v. the People," a comprehensive collection of resources designed to assist the thousands of individuals accused of online copyright infringement by a Washington, D...

Thank You From EFF

Posted on August 04, 2010
On behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we would like thank all of you who contributed and supported our work at the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences in Las Vegas last week. In particular we would like to acknowledge Jeff Moss and the Black Hat and DEF CON organizers for their ongoing support of EFF each year...

BlackBerry Bans Suggest a Scary Precedent: Crypto Wars Again?

Posted on August 04, 2010
Recent news reports have presented somewhat contradictory analysis of government plans in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and other countries to block the use of BlackBerry smart phones as a form of pressure on Research in Motion, BlackBerry's Canadian manufacturer...

The Wall Street Journal Asks: What Do Online Advertisers Know About You?

Posted on August 04, 2010
In a groundbreaking new series titled "What They Know," the Wall Street Journal is taking a close look at the information that online advertisers collect about you as you browse the Web: "The tracking files represent the leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of, their interests and activities, in real time...

EFF and Boing Boing TV Go Mile High!

Posted on August 03, 2010
Next time you fly Virgin America, you just might see one of EFF's new PSAs as part of your onboard entertainment. Earlier this year, EFF worked with Bucknell University Professor Eric Faden (of A Fair(y) Use Tale fame) to create these two video PSAs about important, cutting-edge digital rights issues! Digital Books and License Agreements Online Behavioral Tracking Hopefully, viewers are reminded of the very important idea that many of the rights and protections we have in the physical world should apply to the digital world as well...

DOJ Pushing to Expand Warrantless Access to Internet Records

Posted on July 29, 2010
This morning's Washington Post reveals that the Department Of Justice has been pressuring Congress to expand its power to obtain records of Americans' private Internet activity through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs). NSLs, you may remember, are one of the most powerful and frightening tools of government surveillance to be expanded by the Patriot Act...

Breaking Down the 2009 DMCA Rulemaking, Part 1: Victory for Vidders

Posted on July 29, 2010
Now that the dust has settled on the long-awaited announcement of new DMCA circumvention exemptions, it?s time for an explanation of what these exemptions will (and will not) do for consumers and creators. We?ll start with a tremendously important exemption that we fear was somewhat overlooked in the excitement about jailbreaking and unlocking: breaking DVD encryption in order to take short clips for purposes of criticism and commentary for noncommercial use, educational use and documentary films...

House Committee to Examine Public Access to Federally-Funded Research

Posted on July 28, 2010
Tomorrow afternoon, legislators from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding a hearing on the topic of "Public Access to Federally-Funded Research." The hearing will be a perfect opportunity for key representatives to look into supporting public access policies — various requirements that scientific research funded by the federal government be made available on the Internet to the tax-paying public...

In Perfect 10 v. Google, Round 3 Goes to Google: No Sloppy DMCA Notices

Posted on July 28, 2010
Copyright owners, take note: If you're going to use the streamlined Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") process to require a service provider to remove allegedly infringing content, you'd better make sure you actually comply with the DMCA notice requirements...

LIGATT Security Tries to Silence its Online Critics With an Unsubstantiated Lawsuit

Posted on July 27, 2010
LIGATT Security, a controversial Georgia-based computer security firm, is embroiled in an ongoing flame war with its online detractors, who question the firm's legitimacy and stock prospects. Earlier this month, LIGATT upped the ante by filing suit in a Georgia court, threatening about 25 anonymous commenters on Yahoo! Message Boards and demanding a $5 million judgment and a court order prohibiting criticism...

Recording Industry Giant Tries to Undermine 'Safe Harbor' Rules for Online Video Sites

Posted on July 26, 2010
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of nonprofit groups have asked a federal appeals court to protect the "safe harbor" rules for online video service providers that encourage free expression and innovation on the Internet...

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