Author: Joe Mullin

A patent trial has just kicked off in the patent hotspot of East Texas, and it's a big one. VirnetX, a patent-holding company that says it owns wide-ranging rights to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), is facing off against Apple.

VirnetX says that Apple's VPN technology, as well as its Facetime video-messaging, both infringe the company's patents. A jury trial began today, and VirnetX is seeking $532 million in damages.

“Apple hasn’t played fair," VirnetX lawyer Brad Caldwell told the jury, according to a Bloomberg report on the trial's first day. "They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission."

Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which governs both the massive Wikipedia online encyclopedia and related projects, appointed Arnnon Geshuri to its board earlier this month. His appointment wasn't well received by the Wikipedia community of volunteer editors, however. And last week, an editor called for a "vote of no confidence on Arnnon Geshuri."

The voting, which has no legally binding effect on the Wikimedia Foundation, is now underway. As of press time, 187 editors had voted in favor of this proposition: "In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board." Just 13 editors have voted against, including Wikimedia board member Guy Kawasaki.

The top US patent court has upheld an award of attorneys' fees (PDF) against a patent troll that sued a startup called FindTheBest (now Graphiq) in 2013. The fee award against Lumen View Technology was the first one granted under new rules that came into effect as a result of the Supreme Court's 2014 Octane Fitness decision.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, published Friday, serves as a signpost as to what kind of fees will be upheld under the new standard. But, it's not a complete win for Graphiq. While the three-judge appeals panel upheld the basis of the fee award, they vacated the award itself, which was a little more than $300,000. The panel's opinion said that the lower court's decision to double the requested fees wasn't justified.

"It's been a lengthy battle, but seeing the Federal Circuit explicitly inviting the District Court to award sanctions under Rule 11 is a great signal," said Graphiq CEO Kevin O'Connor in an e-mailed comment to Ars. "We're confident that a fair assessment of fees will occur back in the District Court. This is just one more step in our fight against Lumen View, and believe me, it's nowhere near over."

A shell company that sued dozens of computer peripheral makers has quickly dropped Newegg house brand Rosewill from its list of defendants. The motion to dismiss, filed yesterday, comes just days after Newegg's lawyers filed notices of their appearance in the case.

Minero Digital LLC dismissed its case against Rosewill one day after Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng authorized his outside lawyer to try to settle the case in exchange for a "nominal donation to charity." During that conversation (the attorneys' first discussion about the case), Newegg's outside counsel said that although the proposed agreement wouldn't pay Minero anything, it was likely to be Newegg's best and final offer. He suggested Minero search the Internet for news articles about Newegg's policies on settling "patent troll" type cases. (The short version: Newegg doesn't pay patent trolls.)

The next day, Minero dismissed the lawsuit against Rosewill. The dismissal is without prejudice, which means it could be re-filed in the future.

Facebook has agreed to change some of its procedures around refunds to minors who made purchases without their parents' consent.

The changes are part of a proposed settlement (PDF) in Bohannon v. Facebook, a class-action lawsuit originally filed in 2012. The original complaint described how Glynnis Bohannon gave her child, identified as I.B., permission to spend $20 on his Facebook account using her Wells Fargo MasterCard.

But I.B. continued to play "Ninja Saga" and make in-game purchases, thinking he was spending "virtual, in-game currency." In fact, he had made "several hundred dollars" worth of real-money purchases, which were charged to his mother's MasterCard. The complaint says that Bohannon found a phone number to contact Facebook "after several hours of searching" and left a message describing her situation but received no reply. (Bohannon was later granted a "courtesy refund" after the class-action suit was filed.)

One month from now, Samsung will be banned from selling certain smartphones in the US. The phones involved are so old, however, that the legal order will not affect the marketplace in a meaningful way.

The injunction by US District Judge Lucy Koh is part of the long-running Apple v. Samsung lawsuits, which began nearly five years ago. In the second lawsuit, a jury awarded Apple $120 million, but Koh didn't grant an injunction against Samsung's infringing phones. Last September, she was overturned by the Federal Circuit.

Yesterday, Koh entered the injunction order (PDF) as the higher court mandated. Still, the banned phones and features are fairly irrelevant to the Samsung of today.

Supap Kirtsaeng built himself a business on eBay buying textbooks in Asia and reselling them to students in the US. That practice made him the target of a copyright lawsuit by John Wiley & Sons, a large textbook company that didn't like Kirtsaeng undercutting their US prices. Lawyers for Wiley said that they should control the right to import their copyrighted works.

Kirtsaeng won a resounding victory in 2013, when the Supreme Court said he was protected by the first-sale doctrine. He'd bought the books legally and could resell them, even if that involved moving the books across the border.

After his win, Kirtsaeng sought to get his attorneys' fees paid. In the US legal system, parties must generally bear their own expenses. However, copyright law allows for judges to "award a reasonable attorney’s fee to the prevailing party," at their discretion. Because of that provision, fee-shifting is more common in copyright cases.

Two major providers of police body-worn cameras have become embroiled in a patent battle.

Kansas-based Digital Ally sued Arizona-based Taser International late last week. The company accused Taser's Axon Flex body cameras of infringing its US Patent No. 8,781,292. The patent describes linking together a body-worn camera, a vehicle-based camera, and a "managing apparatus" that communicate with each other.

The lawsuit was filed just after the Digital Ally patent overcame Taser's legal challenge at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

A lawyer representing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has demanded that several of the campaign's logos be removed from Wikipedia, saying that reproducing the logos violates copyright law. The Wikimedia Foundation has complied with the DMCA takedown notice and removed the notices.

It's fairly surprising that the campaign would seek to ban wide distribution of its logos, which are clearly positive advertising for the campaign. It's even more surprising that after getting a call from the Wikimedia Foundation, the Sanders campaign didn't back down or blame an overzealous volunteer attorney—the campaign confirmed it wants Wikipedia to comply with the notice and not publish its logos.

"We also contacted the attorneys representing the Bernie Sanders campaign to discuss the issue, and they asked that WMF carry out a takedown in compliance with the DMCA rather than work with the community to update the licensing information or allow the images," wrote Wikimedia community manager James Alexander on a discussion page about the Sanders DMCA notices.

Online copyright enforcer Rightscorp has agreed to pay $450,000 to end a lawsuit accusing the company of making illegal calls to cell phones.

Morgan Pietz, an attorney who played a key role in bringing down Prenda Law, sued Rightscorp in 2014, saying that the company's efforts to get settlements from alleged pirates went too far. Rightscorp's illegal "robocalls" violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a 1991 law that limits how automated calling devices are used. The class-action lawsuit claimed that some Rightscorp targets were receiving one robocall on their cell phone per day. It's generally illegal to have automated devices call cell phones.

Earlier this week, Pietz and his co-counsel filed court papers outlining the settlement. Rightscorp will pay $450,000 into a settlement fund, which will be paid out to the 2,059 identified class members who received the allegedly illegal calls. Each class member who fills out an "affidavit of noninfringement" will receive up to $100. The rest of the fund will pay for costs of notice and claim administration (about $25,000) and attorneys' fees and costs, which cannot exceed $330,000. Rightscorp will also "release any and all alleged claims" against the class members. The company had accused the 2,059 class members of committing 126,409 acts of copyright infringement.