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Another Supreme Court ruling... and another smackdown of CAFC, the Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit that handles all patent appeals. This regular smackdown of CAFC by the Supreme Court has become such a recurring story that it would almost be surprising if the Supreme Court took a patent case to do anything but smackdown CAFC. The key issue here is that the Supreme Court basically has taken away CAFC's powers to review a patent directly to determine if the patent itself is valid or not. Instead, it can only review the district court's findings, to determine if there was an obvious error by those district courts in handling claim construction. While this takes away power from CAFC, it actually is seen as beneficial to patent trolls, since (especially lately), the now-chastened CAFC has suddenly been rejecting patents left and right. But that might stop now as the CAFC's ability to do that is now greatly limited.

On Friday in New Zealand—meaning Thursday in the United States, because, well, time zones—Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds ended a keynote presentation at a New Zealand open source conference by offering flip responses to questions about diversity, future projects, and his gruff attitude toward Linux developers.

The EFF has produced a new mobile app that allows users to access its alert center and instantly take action on issues pertaining to digital rights and other areas the group focuses on. And, it's Android-only, because the EFF took a long look at Apple's walled garden and said, "Include us out."

Sadly, though, we had to leave out Apple devices and the folks who use them. Why? Because we could not agree to the outrageous terms in Apple’s Developer Agreement and Apple’s DRM requirements.

Last June, Elon Musk and Tesla made some news in freeing up Tesla's patents, hoping to jumpstart the market for electric cars. As we pointed out at the time, this highlighted how patents can, and often do, hold back innovation -- and we hoped that others might take notice. It's taken a while, but at CES this week, Toyota also announced plans to free patents, focusing on the 5,680 patents (including pending patents) it has on fuel cell drive systems. The details still matter, but Toyota says that the patents are all available, "royalty free."

For many years we've seen DMCA takedowns that were clearly based on little more than quick keyword searches. There are so many of these cases that it's difficult to keep track of them, but a few examples: Fox demanded a takedown of an article on the SF Chronicle's website... because Fox owns the rights to the movie Chronicle.

Among the most powerful moments of Selma, the new film about the march Martin Luther King, Jr. led in 1965 in support of voting rights for African Americans, are the speeches, sermons, and eulogies King delivered during that tumultuous period. However, the speeches performed by actor David Oyelowo in the film do not contain the actual words spoken by King. This is because the King estate would not license the copyright in the speeches to filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Thus, the King estate's aggressive stance on copyright has literally forced the re-writing of history.

When making their case against alleged infringers, patent-holders have two options in the US legal system: filing a case in federal court, or petitioning for an investigation at the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The ITC can't award money damages, but cases there can result in an "exclusion order" banning an imported product from US shelves. It became an increasingly popular venue for high-tech cases in recent years, and several rounds of the smartphone patent battles were fought there.

Every year for the past few years, the good folks at Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain have put up a list of works that should have gone into the public domain on January 1st had Congress not massively expanded the law. Each year, it's a depressing look at what works should be in the public domain. As a reminder, when these works were created, the creators knew the terms under which they were created and knew that they would have gone into the public domain by now -- and they found that to be more than enough incentive to create those works.

The textbook publishing industry has turned books of facts into overvalued goods on par with "priceless" finds at antique stores. To keep margins high and the revenue stream flowing, publishers screw with pagination in order to create "new" editions every year, turning textbooks into useless piles of paper the moment they're purchased. Trading one in at the end of the class means receiving pennies on the dollar for your original investment. Stocking up for another semester's worth of classes means shelling out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Rinse. Repeat.

A few years ago, we wrote about some research by Paul Heald that did an astounding job visually demonstrating how much copyright law today harms the dissemination of content. The key graphic was the following one: What it shows is that while new books are available for sale, they quickly go out of print and are basically not available -- until you get down to 1923, at which point the works are in the public domain.

Although not many outside the world of the biological sciences have heard of it yet, the CRISPR gene editing technique may turn out to be one of the most important discoveries of recent years -- if patent battles don't ruin it.

Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 is 70% off right now as part of the 2014 Steam Holiday Sale, but would-be neonoir crime story aficionados were denied entry into the cynical world of of the drug-dependent detective yesterday by a failure in the game’s third-party authentication and matchmaking system.

The US Patent and Trademark Office handed out patents on human genes for about 30 years, but genomic patents were blocked after a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year. The patent holder in that case, Myriad Genetics, had patented a test on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The test shows mutations that reveal which women are more susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. The BRCA test is substantially cheaper in countries where it wasn't patented, such as Canada.

After losing its case, Myriad didn't give up. Instead, it quickly filed a new round of lawsuits, trying to keep competitors like Ambry Genetics out of the business of BRCA testing. The new suits named different patents, which instead of simply claiming the gene itself, included "method" claims and also discussed the use of DNA "primers"—an entirely lab-made substance which Myriad lawyers said were still open to being patented.

Myriad Genetics Inc. (MYGN) can’t block competitors’ DNA tests to determine risk for breast and ovarian cancer after a U.S. appeals court said three patents on the tests never should have been issued.

The patents cover products of nature and ideas that aren’t eligible for legal protection, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in an opinion posted today on the court’s docket. The court upheld a trial judge’s decision to allow the competing tests, including those made by Ambry Genetics Corp., to remain on the market.

Microsoft will cease showing EU-based Windows users a selection screen offering a choice of different browsers to install, known as the browser ballot.

But, results aside, EA would tell you that it needed to use DRM to protect the company from piracy. Even if SecuROM failed, the company had to at least try, or else the freeloaders that live the highlife getting around intellectual property laws would win. Violating IP laws is wrong, damn it, and EA was going to do everything in its power to right that wrong.

Including violating a notorious patent troll's intellectual property to do so, apparently -- at least, according to an East Texas court, which awarded Uniloc nearly $5 million after determining that EA violated the patent troll's patent with the SecuROM platform.

On Tuesday, the makers of indie couch-gaming collection Sportsfriends announced that the title, which launched on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 earlier this year, finally had a home-computer release date. This Friday, shoppers at Steam and Humble Store will be able to purchase the four-game collection for $15 on Mac, Linux, and Windows.

However, the announcement came with an asterisk not normally seen in computer-game launches..

One of this week's Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 7 has been withdrawn after some users discovered that it blocked installation of software containing digital signatures, including first- and third-party software, and even other Windows updates.

IFC Center (a major independent theater in New York) has decided to defy the MPAA's ridiculous rating system again -- for the documentary on Ed Snowden by Laura Poitras, Citizenfour.

"... it became clear that the lawsuits were being filed by people who had identified a way to extract unjust premiums for often worthless patents because of weaknesses in our legal system. The majority of defendants, both large and small companies, are forced to settle with patent trolls because of the high costs of defending themselves."

Last week marked the one year anniversary of the passage of the Innovation Act in the House, by a bipartisan majority. The bill, which would have made real progress in addressing the patent troll problem, was blocked in the Senate, but there is no good reason this bipartisan bill supported by the President should not be law. Today, the CEA urges you to contact your U.S. Senator and ask them to pass patent litigation reform using the contact tool at that link and embedded below.