News written by Jari Ketola (April, 2001)

InterTrust, a digital rights management company, sued Microsoft on Thursday, saying the Microsoft's Media Player infringes its patent rights.

InterTrust was awarded a patent for secure delivery and control of digital media files. The patent, which was awarded in February, contains 131 claims. After comparing the information Microsoft has provided about their digital rights management with their patent claims InterTrust decided that Microsoft was infringing the claims.

InterTrust is asking a federal court in Northern California District to issue an injunction against Microsofts infringing activities. They are also seeking monetary damages.

This could be a hard blow on the Microsoft Media Player and Microsoft's digital rights management schemes - something Microsoft has eagerly advertised as a huge advantage over e.g. MP3.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel doesn't think Napster is doing a good job filtering out copyrighted recordings from their service. Instead she appointed a neutral technical expert to see if Napster could improve the filtering efforts.

According to Napster the original court ruling states that record labels have to hand out exact names of the artists and songs they want removed. Judge Patel, and the record labels, on the other hand feel that the name of the artist and the album should be sufficient.

The issue is now pretty much in the hands of the neutral technical expert A.J. Nichols, who will present his initial findings this Friday.

Source:
webnoize

It appears that the MP3.com jury, who ordered MP3.com to pay $300,000 in damages to TVT, could have used a calculator when determining the exact amount.

The jury was put up to a challenge when they had to award the amounts per album instead of a one single amount. It was only after the members of the jury read the press reports they realized that they had made a mistake.

Two jurors have contacted U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff and said that the figures were too small by ten-fold. Rakoff summoned jurors to an hearing to interview them, but this hearing was not open to the public.

It remains to be seen whether or not the judge re-opens the case. If he does, I'd suggest they put the jury to a maths test before proceeding further. Obviously the first jury should still be at school studying addition and multiplication.

Alanis Morissette and Eagles frontman Don Henley have both testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the future on on-line entertainment.

During the hearing in Washington, D.C., Morissette and Henley both talked about how artists tend to be dissed by the big labels when it comes to Web-based music. Both singers also voiced their support for Napster and urged Congress to heed artists' concerns if they decide to write any laws regarding the future of the recording industry.

"Though I cannot speak for every artist, my initial resistance to the new services created online was based on the debate having been framed in terms of piracy. Being labeled as such by the record companies, it understandably sent a ripple effect of panic throughout the artistic community. But what I have since come to realize is that for the majority of artists, this so-called 'piracy' may have actually been working in their favor," Morissette told the committee.

The singer acknowledged that Napster has actually benefited many artists by giving them a direct link to their audience, as well as helping them sell concert tickets and promotional merchandise.

As we know, Napster is looking for a licensing deal similar to what currently exists for radio stations. It remains to be seen whether or not the opinions of the artists have an effect on the legislators.