strredwolf | If's and Maybe's....

Some intresting cases you may want to keep an eye on:

RIAA v. Everybody part I: A "John Doe" has filed papers in a three-pronged attack against a RIAA lawsuit. In summary, he (and his lawyer) claims that:

the RIAA cannot join him with 24 other defendants because there's no connection other than running a P2P client (no colaboration between them);
the RIAA has not proven that said Doe ripped those songs (with an affidavit of a programmer with fifty-plus reasons why the RIAA hasn't, and how difficult it is to do so to boot[1]);
and the RIAA cannot get an "one-sided" order for ISP's to get a person's name with what it has before any discovery, because it has nothing to go on and hasn't even proved there was actual theft.

RIAA v. Everybody part II: RIAA are suing a couple, but are using fabricated testimony. Whoops! Can't do that. The couple is rightfully moving to get the case dismissed and make the RIAA pay for their legal fees.

Patent Wars -- NTP v. RIM: The US Patent Office is doing right for once, by moving to reject all five patents NTP owns and alledges RIM (maker of the Blackberrys) is using w/o licencing. If the USPO makes the rejection final, the lawsuit NTP has against RIM goes away.

Patent Wars -- RTI v. Google: Google's being sued over Google Talk and it's voice capabilities -- because RTI (the patent holder) says it infringes on it's "Lowest Rate Autopicker" patent and "Rate Database update method" patent. There's one main problem: The patents only work on phone lines and uses a regular phone. Google Talk works only through a PC, a headset, and the Internet -- kinda like MSN's Voice chat, eh?

Should be a fun 2006 in the courts.

[1] And yes, I was reading the court documents. The programmer knows his stuff well, and wasn't BS'ing. RIAA doesn't have a clue.