5 years later, Viacom still suing YouTube out of “principle”

A five year-old legal battle between Viacom and Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted content continues to clog up the U.S. court system because Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, believes there’s an important principle at stake, president and CEO Philippe Dauman said Tuesday.

Dauman, in an interview at the D: Dive Into Media event, defended his company’s ongoing litigation against YouTube, the purveyor of user-generated content, despite a 2010 federal ruling establishing that the … Continue Reading

Curebit apologizes for theft, but leaves something out

Curebit co-founder Allan Grant has posted a public apology to 37signals for stealing its design and code.

Social-referral startup Curebit made the admittedly boneheaded mistake of ripping off design and assets from 37signals, one of the best-known schools of UI and startup thought-leadership on the Web. When the mistake was made public over the weekend, a storm erupted on the Internet, causing many to question just how much traditional intellectual property rules come into play … Continue Reading

Curebit’s at it again, stealing more than code this time

Curebit, the Y Combinator friend-referral startup that got busted over the weekend for stealing code and design work from web megashop 37signals, has been caught stealing again, this time from an independent musician.

The startup used music from Random Rab, a San Francisco-based electronic artist, in its demo video.

According to Random Rab, Curebit didn’t contact the artist before nabbing his music, nor are they responding to requests to remove his music from their promo … Continue Reading

Ingk Labs rescues technology behind SwapThing to build the next eBay (exclusive)

Proving that one man’s trash is another’s treasure, New York-based incubator Ingk Labs has salvaged an e-commerce patent gem from a defunct startup. It hopes to use that second-hand technology to corner the online-bartering market and take on eBay and Amazon.

Ingk Labs rescues undervalued intellectual property (IP) from dying startups, and then brings its IP buys back to life as new companies. Today, it has resurrected the technology behind SwapThing, a now obsolete site … Continue Reading

Samsung calls Australian tablet ban “grossly unjust”

Device maker Samsung says an Australian judge who banned the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in that country does not know the basic facts of the case, and her reasoning  is “grossly unjust.” Lawyers for Samsung are appealing a temporary injunction that has frozen the company out of the market due to claims that Samsung  ”slavishly copied” the iPad when creating its own tablet, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Samsung’s attorneys claim the … Continue Reading

More Duke Nukem games coming despite recent game being awful

Take-Two will likely publish more Duke Nukem games despite its most recent title, Duke Nukem Forever, being one of the most disappointing games of the year according to critics.

It’s a risky move, considering that most gamers might ignore sequels to a game that started with a bad piece of intellectual property (IP). That’s prompted many game developers to kill budding pieces of IP and stick to more reliable franchises like Call of Duty or … Continue Reading

Could Kodak's patents threaten photo-sharing sites?

A patent dispute is unfolding between Kodak and photo-sharing site Shutterfly that could have ramifications for some of the broader photo-sharing sites on the web, such as Yahoo’s Flickr, the widely-used Picasa by Google, and Facebook’s Photos feature.

Kodak has filed a lawsuit against Shutterfly over five patents it claims Shutterfly’s online services are infringing on. Shutterfly is a popular way for people to purchase print photo books, stationery, and calendars out of their personal … Continue Reading

New Facebook patent could threaten Foursquare and Gowalla

While Facebook Places wasn’t the first on the location-based services scene, it may have just became the top dog. According to Eric Sherman at CBS’s BNET site, the company has been granted a very broad patent, filed in 2007, called “Systems and methods for automatically locating Web-based social network members.”

If the patent sounds a lot like targeting social network users using their smartphones and allowing them to check in to addresses, then you’ve pretty … Continue Reading

VentureBeat declares war! Why "Google Beat" is a brand extension too far

Larry, Sergey, Eric: Matt Marshall and I are putting you on notice. This “Google Beat” thing is going too far. VentureBeat is mad as hell, and we’re not taking it anymore. This is our official notice to the triumvirate ruling Google that the gloves are off.

Not just off, but OffBeat.

Sure, Google Beat is just the name for a fluffy Web video series for what people are searching for on Google. But VentureBeat, which … Continue Reading

Mutually-assured patent destruction continues with HTC-Apple complaint

Larry, Sergey, Eric: Matt Marshall and I are putting you on notice. This “Google Beat” thing is going too far. VentureBeat is mad as hell, and we’re not taking it anymore. This is our official notice to the triumvirate ruling Google that the gloves are off.

Not just off, but OffBeat.

Sure, Google Beat is just the name for a fluffy Web video series for what people are searching for on Google. But VentureBeat, which … Continue Reading