Author: Joe Mullin

IBM is pushing big Internet companies to pay patent licensing fees in part because IBM invented the Prodigy service, a precursor to the modern Web.

Yesterday, Big Blue filed a lawsuit (PDF) against Groupon, saying the company has infringed four IBM patents, including patents 5,796,967 and 7,072,849. Each of those relates to the Prodigy service. IBM inventors working on Prodigy "developed novel methods for presenting applications and advertisements," and "the technological innovations embodied in these patents are fundamental to the efficient communication of Internet content," according to the company.

The Prodigy patents were filed in 1993 and 1996, but they have "priority dates" stretching back to 1988. That's because they're based on "divisional" and "continuation" patent applications, which were abandoned but first filed in that year.

John Emanuele, who plays in the ambient and electronic music group The American Dollar, has sued three different music streaming services in the past two weeks. Emanuele and his lawyers say that in different ways, Slacker Radio, Jay-Z's company Tidal, and now Google Play, have all ripped him off.

The lawsuits are all proposed class actions, as Emanuele's lawyers believe other artists have been cheated, too.

The complaint (PDF) against Tidal was filed on Saturday. It's received the most press attention, in part because Tidal's marketing is based on the idea that it will pay artists more generously than other streaming services. The lawsuit claims Tidal never served a "notice of intention," which is required to get the needed compulsory music license, and never paid the necessary royalties.

South Carolina news outlets are reporting a story about a Union County high school student who grabbed his teacher's phone, found nude pictures of her, and shared them with his friends. But it's the teacher—not the student—who's in hot water.

Union County High School teacher Leigh Anne Arthur says she left her phone on her desk for a few minutes while she went out on a routine patrol of the school's hallways. A 16-year-old student opened her phone, which wasn't protected with a password, and found pictures of Arthur that included shots of her partially undressed. The student used his own phone to take pictures of the partial nudes and send them around.

"He told the whole class that he would send them to whoever wanted them,” Arthur told TV station WSPA. The student who took the pictures "told me 'your day of reckoning is coming,'" she added.

"Personalized content" is a phrase so vague that it could mean just about anything. That quality makes it just about perfect for use by a patent troll. This month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's patent lawyers have honed in on a patent describing a way of "presenting personalized content relating to offered products and services," owned by Phoenix Licensing LLC, a patent-holding company controlled by Richard Libman, an Arizona man who's sued more that 100 companies.

The main claim of US Patent No. 8,738,435 is little more than a description of sending a "communication" with "identifying content" to a "plurality of persons." The patent essentially describes any type of personalized marketing, as long as it involves a "computer-accessible storage medium."

In other words—personalized marketing, but on a computer.

The head of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia and related websites, has unexpectedly resigned. Lila Tretikov said Thursday in a statement that "with great respect," she has tendered her resignation as executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "The Board tasked me with making changes to serve the next generation and ensure our impact in the future," Tretikov wrote. "Driving these changes has been challenging, and I have always appreciated the open and honest discourse we have had along the way."

Tretikov's resignation comes at a time of unprecedented tension between the community of editors and the Board of Trustees that runs the Wikimedia Foundation. Last month, a newly appointed board member stepped down after hundreds of editors signed a "vote of no confidence."

Following that resignation, a second uproar arose over a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to help Wikimedia Foundation create a "knowledge engine" that would improve search. Some activist Wikipedia editors had been asking to see documentation about the Knight Foundation grant for several months, but Wikimedia was not forthcoming with the details.

Apple's second high-profile patent win against Samsung was appealed, just as the first was. In an opinion (PDF) published today, a panel of appeals judges entirely wiped out Apple's victory, along with its $120 million verdict.

The decision found that out of three different patent Apple became famous for winning with, one wasn't infringed, and two of them are invalid.

The '647 patent described how to turn phone numbers and other software "structures" into links, allowing users to take actions like calling a number with one "click" rather than copying and pasting. The jury awarded Apple $98.7 million based on that patent, but the appeals judges today held that the patent wasn't infringed at all. They held that "Apple failed to prove, as a matter of law, that the accused Samsung products use an 'analyzer server' as we have previously construed that term."

Record labels have won a copyright lawsuit against MP3Skull, a website that linked to MP3 song files from around the Web.

The labels sued MP3Skull in April 2015, calling it a "very popular rogue website" devoted to "the massive, brazen, and egregious theft of millions of copyrighted sound recordings." They didn't know who owned the site, but a summons was issued to Monica Vasilenko of Petrozavodsk, Russia, the name last listed as the site owner.

According to the complaint (PDF), MP3Skull operators helped users acquire "obviously infringing files," offering tips via Facebook and Twitter telling users to be "very creative when you are searching our site" to avoid copyright notices and get their files. MP3Skull had already been banned in the United Kingdom at the time of filing.

The Walt Disney Company has a reputation for lobbying hard on copyright issues. The 1998 copyright extension has even been dubbed the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” by activists like Lawrence Lessig that have worked to reform copyright laws.

This year, the company is turning to its employees to fund some of that battle. Disney CEO Bob Iger has sent a letter to the company’s employees, asking for them to open their hearts—and their wallets—to the company’s political action committee, DisneyPAC.

In the letter, which was provided to Ars by a Disney employee, Iger tells workers about his company's recent intellectual property victories, including stronger IP protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Supreme Court victory that destroyed Aereo, and continued vigilance about the "state of copyright law in the digital environment." It also mentions that Disney is seeking an opening to lower the corporate tax rate.

Details remain scarce regarding the second arrest of corrupt Silk Road investigator Shaun Bridges, but in a new court filing, prosecutors insist that the details remain under seal—in part, because they believe he has one or more co-conspirators.

Following the trial and conviction of Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht, two federal agents, Carl Force and Shaun Bridges, were charged with stealing from the Silk Road even while they were investigating it.

Bridges used admin privileges, taken from an arrested Silk Road admin, to steal $800,000 worth of bitcoins from Silk Road drug dealers. He pled guilty last year, and in December was sentenced to nearly six years in prison.

Lumen View Technology sued several small businesses in 2013 over a patent that described little more than online "matchmaking" before its demands for quick $50,000 payoffs ran into a Santa Barbara startup called Graphiq (formerly FindTheBest).

Graphiq CEO Kevin O'Connor, who had also co-founded online ad giant Doubleclick, pledged to spend his own money to defeat Lumen View—and defeat them he did. O'Connor's battle with the patent-holding company has finally come to an end, with the still-unknown owners of Lumen View agreeing to pay him $100,000.

"We took their patent, and we got sanctions against their lawyer," said O'Connor in an interview with Ars. "We probably spent $350,000 to get $100,000. It was worth every cent. It definitely wasn’t the best investment, but goddamn, I feel good. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for those bastards."