Dr. Dobb's Journal November 1997
A year-long dispute over the trademark for Linux has been resolved, with William R. Della Croce, Jr. of Boston, Massachusetts, agreeing to assign ownership of the registered mark to Linus Torvalds, the author of Linux. The resolution was reached after a challenge by Torvalds, Specialized Systems Consultants, Yggdrasil Computing, Linux International, and Work Group Solutions. As part of the deal, Della Croce was reimbursed for his trademark filing fees and associated costs. Other terms of the settlement are confidential. A copy of the original cancellation petition (which was dismissed) is available at http://www .iplawyers/text/ linux.htm.
-- Jonathan Erickson
After ten years and enough intrigue to satisfy John Le Carre readers, enough money to put a smile on the face of any member of Congress, and enough source code to bring down a mainframe, a federal judge has rejected claims that the Justice Department stole a computer program from Inslaw, Inc. At the heart of the case was a 1982 $10 million contract Inslaw received to develop case-management software for the Justice Department. After a dispute, the Justice Department revoked the contract, then, according to Inslaw, improperly gave the software to others -- including foreign governments. Inslaw filed for bankruptcy in 1985. In 1987, a bankruptcy judge ruled in Inslaw's favor and awarded the company $7 million, stating that the Justice Department "took, converted, stole" the software through "fraud, trickery, and deceit." In the recent ruling, Judge Christine Miller found no merit to Inslaw's claims..
-- Jonathan Erickson
The Distribution and Replication Protocol (DRP) proposed to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has lawyers scrambling. The DRP, jointly drafted by Marimba, Netscape, Novell, Sun, and @Home Network, provides a means of incorporating push technology to a standardized infrastructure for web-based data distribution. It is based on Marimba's Application Distribution Protocol (ADP) developed as part of the company's Castanet suite of tools. According to the DRP FAQ, Marimba is releasing ADP to the standards process and waiving financial control of the technology.
Novadigm CEO Albion Fitzgerald responded that "Standards are clearly a positive force in the industry, but the fact remains that this technology is not Marimba's to give away." Seems Novadigm has a lawsuit against Marimba over a broad patent granted to Novadigm covering "Distributed Computer Network Including Hierarchical Resource Information Structure and Related Method of Distributing Resources." Novadigm's patent encompasses push/pull distribution and fractional differencing.
Novadigm claims the proposed DRP may infringe on its property rights, and has requested the W3C hold off on the DRP until the Marimba lawsuit is resolved. According to Novadigm's Fitzgerald, "we own this technology, and we're going to vigorously defend it."
-- Deirdre Blake
Ever since McCulloch and Pitts wrote their seminal paper on perceptrons in the early 1940s, scientists have been studying vision computationally. Although quite a bit is known, there are relatively few commercial applications of machine vision.
Mark Nitzberg wants to change that. Nitzberg is president of BlindSight, a company that is exploring commercial applications of machine vision. Cofounded by former Harvard professor Alan Yuille, a well-known authority on machine vision, BlindSight's first project is to build machines that will assist the blind. Among other things, BlindSight is developing a hand-held device that recognizes and reads street signs. Some of these applications have potential beyond aiding the visually impaired. Nitzberg said, "Someone told me that there are more people in this world who can't read than those who can't see." You can get more information on BlindSight at http://www.blindsight.net/.
-- Eugene Eric Kim
A federal judge in California upheld the Child Pornography Act of 1996, much to the chagrin of civil liberties activists who were contesting the law. The expanded child pornography law bans any visual depiction (whether computer-generated, photographed, or filmed) that portrays a minor in or what appears to be in sexually explicit conduct, or conveys the impression of such conduct. An organization called the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) had challenged the law, citing its ambiguous terminology. When the law was originally enacted, the ACLU objected, predicting "extraordinary" ramifications that would lead to abuses by prosecutors.
In its lawsuit, the FSC said the law would criminalize the film Romeo and Juliet, Calvin Klein ads, or sex education manuals. However, presiding U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti ruled that any such vagaries did not merit overturning the Child Pornography Act, deciding that it's not likely such materials will be treated as contraband and that the law will protect children from exploitation without violating freedom of speech. The ACLU plans to appeal the decision.
-- Deirdre Blake
U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has ruled that source code is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that the Commerce Department acted illegally when it implemented regulations requiring academics to obtain a license from the government before discussing their research with other scholars via the Internet.
Judge Patel granted a permanent injunction covering the plaintiff, Daniel Bernstein, an Assistant Professor for Mathematics at the University of Illinois, who wrote the encryption program "Snuffle." Government regulations had prevented him from publishing his encryption program on the Internet.
-- Jonathan Erickson
Like everyone else, the insurance industry is worried about the Year 2000 conundrum, too. Speaking at the American Bar Association's annual meeting, Nancy James, owner of an insurance agency, said that liability is limited only by one's imagination. The insurance industry must be ready to respond to possibly the single greatest loss issue it has ever faced, James said, with the technological complexity of litigation being as costly as the damages asserted.
In a panel discussion entitled ""Suing, Defending, and Insuring Software Development Companies At Home and In Cyberspace," James speculated that courts failing to honor Y2K exclusions (for which there is precedence) or Congress stepping in to help by declaring Y2K a "national disaster" or "virus," could invoke coverage not intended or funded in current rates.
-- Jonathan Erickson