Favorite Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could allow companies to keep a dead hand of control over their products, even after you buy them. The case, Impression Products v. Lexmark International, is on appeal from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, who last year affirmed its own precedent…
All posts tagged Innovation
Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email
Favorite Update: March 1, 2017 Today IBM told Ars Technica that it “has decided to dedicate the patent to the public.” While this is just one patent in IBM’s massive portfolio, we are glad to learn that it has declared it will not enforce its patent on out-of-office email. We hope that IBM files an…
EFF to Appeals Court: Protect Software Interoperability
Favorite An essential principle of copyright law is under threat: the principle that a copyright cannot grant a monopoly over the idea of adding up numbers, drawing a design specified by the user, or moving a robot arm using the designer’s movement commands. We are all free to write our own code to achieve the…
FCC Abandons Zero-Rating Investigation and Moves Backward on Net Neutrality
Favorite Bad news for Internet users. In his first few days in office, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has shelved the Commission’s investigation into Internet companies’ zero-rating practices and whether they violate the Commission’s Open Internet Order. As recently as January, the FCC was rebuking AT&T (PDF) for seemingly prioritizing its own DirecTV content over that…
Stupid Patent of the Month: A Lyrics Website With User Interaction
Favorite Song lyrics are some of the most searched-for topics on the Internet. This has lead to fierce competition among lyrics sites. If you scroll to the bottom of one of these websites, you’ll see the claim: “Song discussions is protected by U.S. Patent No. 9,401,941.” We are honoring this “song discussions” patent as January’s…
EFF To Patent Office: Supreme Court Limits On Abstract Patents Are a Good Thing
Favorite EFF has submitted comments to the Patent Office urging it not to support efforts to undermine the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Alice v. CLS Bank. The Patent Office had called for public submissions regarding whether “legislative changes are desirable” in response to recent court decisions, including Alice. We explain that, far from harming…
“Everyone Made Themselves the Hero.” Remembering Aaron Swartz
Favorite On January 18, 2012, the Internet went dark. Hundreds of websites went black in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The bills would have created a “blacklist” of censored websites based on accusations of copyright infringement. SOPA was en route to quietly passing. But when millions…
What Happened to Unlocking the Box? 2016 in Review
Favorite EFF spends a lot of time investigating the latest trends and developments in technology, trying to stay one step ahead of the most recent threats to your digital rights. This isn’t one of those stories. This is a story about a technology that’s even older than our organization, that’s barely changed since we’ve been…
Open Access Rewards Passionate Curiosity: 2016 in Review
Favorite In February 2016, a team of scientists published one of the most important pieces of scientific research so far this century. For the first time, researchers had directly observed gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime whose discovery Albert Einstein first predicted a century ago. The team effectively placed the last piece in…
San Francisco Passes Ordinance to Protect ISP Competition
Favorite New Law Will Help Preserve Net Neutrality and Privacy at the Local Level San Francisco EFFers: you did it! Thanks in part to your phone calls and tweets to the Board of Supervisors, the Board unanimously passed an ordinance last night that will address the problem of landlords unfairly restricting their tenants’ choice of…