Over the years I’ve cataloged the difficulties courts and public schools have had with drawing the line between merely childish expression protected by the First Amendment and disruptive behavior that schools can lawfully punish. In many cases those issues get easier in the university setting, because the students are now (legally) adults in a setting[...]
Trademarks in the Augmented Reality Industry
Saturday, May 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
One sure sign of a healthy industry is the growth of intellectual property developed by companies in the field. I’ve blogged a lot lately about augmented reality patents–both their creation and litigation over them. But other forms of AR-related IP are expanding as well. Trademarks are what companies use to distinguish themselves and their products[...]
Double Whammy – Augmented Retailer Ditto Hit With Second Patent Lawsuit
Monday, April 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment
No sooner had I finished reporting on a new wave of patent infringement lawsuits filed in March 2013 against retailers such as Ditto Technologies–the innovative leader in “virtual try-on” technology for eyewear–than I learned about a second lawsuit aimed specifically at Ditto that had been filed a month earlier, in February. Unlike the series of[...]
Augmented Reality Patent Troll At It Again
Friday, April 26, 2013 By 4 Comments
Last year I reported on a six nearly identical lawsuits that Lennon Image Technologies LLC filed alleging patent infringement against online retailers using webcam-based augmented reality user interfaces. Each complaint was based on the same patent: US 6,624,843 B2, issued Sep. 23, 2003 and titled “Customer Image Capture and Use Thereof in a Retailing System.” Three of those lawsuits–the[...]
The 6th Circuit Copyright Updates Are Out!
Sunday, April 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
What do alarm monitoring software, Tim McGraw, and Teens in Tight Jeans have in common? They have all been the subject of copyright infringement litigation in the courts of the Sixth Circuit within the past six months. Particularly interesting are the growing tidal wave of decisions from BitTorrent cases in the Eastern District of Michigan,[...]
Does Your Workplace Have a Sousveillance Policy?
Friday, April 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Remember the good old days–like, last year–when all that most companies needed to know about their employee’s social media activity is that the company should have a policy about it? Well, those halcyon days are long gone. Now it’s only a matter of days before thousands of newly minted “Google Explorers” start wearing their Google[...]
Augmented Reality as Free Speech – A First Amendment Analysis
Monday, April 1, 2013 By 2 Comments
Does the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protect the right to augment reality? As with most legal questions about augmented reality (or “AR”), we can’t answer definitively, because no court has yet considered the issue. But with consumer-level digital eyewear just around the corner, we will soon be faced with questions just like[...]
Recent Comments