Living with Facebook Timeline: Do You Have a Choice? Blogging for the Masses

At Digital Life,
Rosa Golijan writes about
How to live with the Facebook Timeline
("because you have no choice").

Essentially,
Facebook has become the blogging interface for the masses.

Netherlands Appeals Court Rules Galaxy Tab 10.1 Not Infringing of Apple Design Foolishly Registered by the EU Authorities

Foss Patents by Florian Mueller is the blog of choice for anyone following the course of patent rights in the technological sector.

A must read, for example, is Mueller's posting of January 24, 2012 titled Dutch appeals court says Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn't infringe Apple's design right.

As Mueller points out, the Dutch court followed a similar line of legal reasoning as applied in a similar case by Judge Lucy Koh in the United States (see our posting on that), by not invalidating Apple's design patent, but narrowing its scope substantially.

We are glad to see that a key role was played in this case by the prior art of a patent application filed by a Latvian, Helmars E. Ozolins, U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0041504 A1 (see also Google Patents). According to the Dutch judge, that patent application covered 9 out of 10 of the allegedly unique design elements alleged by Apple, showing the perfidy of Apple lawsuits in this sector. Not only do these lawsuits rely on the widespread ignorance of some judges in this sector as to prior art, but they also interfere greatly with the normal process of market competition. Apple has thus far had great success in Germany with this tactic, by the way, in selected courts pandering to patent plaintiffs and manned by judges apparently out of their competence zone.

At issue in all of these patent cases is of course not the design issue at all, but the fact that Apple is trying to monopolize the markets by using lawsuits based on flimsy patents and overly broad design registrations to eliminate all the competition they can. We are surprised the EU competition authorities have not yet put a stop to it by assessing Apple with massive penalties for bad faith lawsuits and bad faith viz. fraudulent and/or negligently researched -- in terms of prior art -- patent applications and design registrations.

We do not buy Apple computer or related telecommunications products for the reason that the company has a long and sordid history as a monopolist and it has always seemed to us to be unconscionable to support such a firm in any way.

See U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0041504 A1 ("Ozolins")
See Google Patents
See Thom Holwerda, Dutch Court Obliterates Apple's Appeal, Tab 10.1 Not Banned

USA State of the Union Message by U.S. President Barack Obama Highlighted by A Slide Show of Charts, Graphs and Media Presentations

U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union Message



set a new standard for the use of graphics media by a President.

A slide show of important economic and other facts can be seen at

State of the Union - Enhanced Graphics

View more documents from White House