So patent holding firm Klausner Technologies figures it has this whole litigation thing down to a T at this point, having already sued a who's-who of companies having anything to do with visual voicemail in the past and ultimately coming away with a whole bunch of lucrative license agreements for its efforts (eleven, to be exact). Needless to say, any new company that tries to break into the game at this point is probably going to get treated with the same warm, fuzzy love, and Verizon and LG are experiencing that firsthand. Klausner has announced that it has filed suit against both companies in Texas federal court, presumably in response to Big Red's recent launch of the refreshed Voyager featuring visual voicemail software on board. Given the track record Klausner has, guys, you might just want to cut to the chase here and pay up.

LG and Quanta have been going at it over patents for eight years now, with LG notably seeking an injunction against the importation of Quanta-built Apple, HP, Dell, and Sony laptops, and the Supreme Court ruling that LG wasn't entitled to additional royalties, but it looks like the fight's finally over -- both sides say they've come to an agreement and will now negotiate royalty rates. No further details, but we're told BMW sales near the offices of LG and Quanta's law firms just skyrocketed.

You wouldn't think that anyone in the market for a $3,000 handheld camera capable of shooting 3K HD at 100MB/s would somehow get confused enough to end up with a mediocre LG plasma TV, but it seems like the folks at RED are worried -- the company's lawyers are preparing an opposition to LG's filing for the "Scarlet" trademark, and they've filed for their own mark. It looks like RED is getting pretty serious about protecting its marks -- president Jim Jannard is politely asking RED fans to include a trademark disclaimer when they post about the company's products, and he says that the proceedings against LG are "just the tip of the iceberg." Honestly, we think RED's going to have a tough time selling a judge on the likelihood of confusion between a consumer-oriented HDTV and a decidedly pro-grade camera, but we've been surprised in the past -- we'll see how this one plays out.

Read - Jim Jannard forum post
Read - Request for extension of time to file opposition

Good news, open source fans -- copyleft licenses just got a big boost from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled last week that the open source Artistic License is valid and enforceable, and that violating the terms of the license constitutes copyright infringement. (You might be familiar with the Artistic License -- it's what governs Perl.) That's a big deal, as it's the first open source license to get put to the test -- while traditional EULAs have been upheld for years, open licenses hadn't been directly litigated like this yet, and it means that similar licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons now stand on firmer ground. As you'd expect, OSS advocates like Lawrence Lessig and the Open Source Initiative are all pretty pumped about the ruling, with Lessig calling it "huge and important news." We'd agree wholeheartedly, but here's some food for thought while you celebrate in the comments: if you're okay with FOSS software developers enforcing open-source license agreements, are you also okay with commercial software developers enforcing their own EULA restrictions? We can think of one in particular that seems to have people pretty ticked off.

Read - InformationWeek article
Read - Lessig blog post

Defcon already delivered by exposing California's FasTrak toll system for the security hole that it is, but that's not nearly all that's emerging from the Las Vegas exploitation conference. For starters, a plethora of medical device security researchers have purportedly figured out a way to wirelessly control pacemakers, theoretically allowing those with the proper equipment to "induce the test mode, drain the device battery and turn off therapies." Of course, it's not (quite) as simple as just buzzing a remote and putting someone six feet under, but it's a threat worth paying attention to. In related news, a trio of MIT students who were scheduled to give a speech on how to hack CharlieCards to get free rides on Boston's T subway were stifled by a temporary restraining order that the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority snagged just before the expo. Don't lie, you're intrigued -- hit up the links below for all the nitty-gritty.

Update: MIT published the Defcon presentation in a PDF.

Read - Pacemaker hack
Read - Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority sues MIT hackers
Read - Restraining order on said hackers

A select bunch of Transmeta investors may not completely agree with how the outfit is being managed, but one thing's for sure: it's bringing in some serious coin on this deal. During a brief timeout from counting those stacks of Benjamins handed over by Intel, it decided to license its Long Run and LongRun 2 technologies (among "other intellectual property") to NVIDIA for a cool $25 million. Additionally, the agreement grants NVIDIA a "non-exclusive and fully paid-up license" to all of Transmeta's patents and patent applications. Unfortunately, it's still unclear how exactly this will end up affecting NVIDIA fanboys (and girls), but we'll go out on a limb and suggest that a mobile GTX 280 with a remarkably low power draw is just around the bend.

[Via SlashGear]

It's been a while since we've heard about Canon's legal troubles with SED, but it sounds like things are taking a turn for the better -- the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that Canon had not broken its contract with Nano-Proprietary (now called Applied Nanotech Holdings) since Canon is now the sole owner of its previous joint venture with Toshiba, SED Inc. The court also reinstated Canon's license to the SED tech, but since Canon stopped working on the tech last year, it'll probably be a while before we see any SED displays actually show up. We'll see how it goes down -- hopefully those rumors of a skunkworks SED project inside Canon will make this all seem like a bad dream someday.

[Thanks, Alex]

Quick, you ever heard of WiAV Solutions? You know, the owner or exclusive licensee of several vague patents on the use of GSM tech in smartphones? The company that doesn't make anything or even have a web site, but files so many patent lawsuits that some companies have taken to pre-emptively filing suits for declaratory judgment against it? Yeah, well, get used to the name -- it's just sued RIM, Apple and Palm for violating ten patents on things like detecting the difference between silence and voices, mobile device power management, and altering music to accommodate voices. WiAV wants a permanent injunction on the sale of all devices that allegedly contain its tech, and not surprisingly, it's asking for damages and attorney's fees as well. There are some procedural hurdles to jump through here -- WiAV is Mindspeed's exclusive licensee for eight of the patents, not the outright owner, so it has to ask the court to join Mindspeed as a plaintiff as well -- and it doesn't sound like any of the companies are talking just yet, so we wouldn't expect this one to get resolved any time soon.

[Thanks, Becky]

Read - AppleInsider post on the suit
Read - WiAV's complaint [Warning: PDF]

Man, Sprint just can't catch a break lately -- the beleaguered wireless carrier was just told that it would have to pay some $73M in refunds to customers for improperly charging early-termination fees. The ruling, from a California state court, will basically set off a flood of similar cases if it stands -- but Sprint still has two weeks to respond to the ruling before Judge Bonnie Sabraw, and you can bet Yellow Swoosh will appeal if it loses in the end. Interestingly, Verizon was facing a similar lawsuit earlier this year and chose to quickly settle -- a lesson Sprint, with far less revenue and shrinking profits, might do well to learn from.

[Thanks, Roger A]

One of the longest-running -- and certainly most fascinating -- soap operas in the entire wireless world, the seemingly endless patent drama between Nokia and Qualcomm, has finally drawn to an amicable (dare we say anti-climactic) close. After just a single day of arbitration, the two firms have basically agreed to a patent swap, allowing Nokia to use all of Qualcomm's patents and vice versa. Furthermore, Nokia is just stone-cold handing over a bunch of patents it holds related to GSM, WCDMA, and OFDMA, which presumably means companies that are currently licensing those patents can get ready to start writing those checks to Qualcomm. What's more, Espoo's dropping its anti-competition claims against Qualcomm in Europe -- but beyond that, specific terms (read: cash money) weren't disclosed beyond the typical PR pleasantries that both sides are happy with the outcome. If this means we finally have to retire our Nokia-Qualcomm starburst graphic, we're going to pout like little children, so we can only hope these two lovebirds find something else to squabble over in the not-too-distant future.

Sony and Microsoft may have sorted things out with Anascape (otherwise known as the self-proclaimed ruler of all analog sticks) before things got too out of hand, but Nintendo has been busy fighting it out with the company in court, which resulted in them being ordered to dish out a hefty $21 million earlier this year -- a ruling that Nintendo naturally appealed. The big N is now facing another setback, however, as a US District Judge has rejected Nintendo's request for a new trial, which could potentially result in a ban on sales of Wii Classic Controllers, WaveBirds, and GameCube controllers (not to mention GameCube systems). To avoid that, Nintendo will apparently either have to post a bond or put royalties from the controllers into an escrow account. For its part, Nintendo seems to be remaining defiant, saying that it "was already planning to appeal this case to the Federal Circuit court," and that this new ruling "does not impact that decision."

[Via Slashdot]

Looks like that agreement between Nokia and Qualcomm to postpone the dozen or so lawsuits they've filed against each other worldwide while an arbitrator tries to help sort out the mess is starting to bear some fruit -- the two cellphone giants are headed to court in Delaware on Wednesday to start the healing. In essence, Qualcomm says that Nokia still owes license fees on a CDMA agreement that expired in 2007 since it's been using the patented tech, and Nokia says that it doesn't owe anything because it's shelled out over $1B since 2001 and giving Qualcomm any more cash would be unfair. Not surprisingly for these two, it's likely that the outcome here will essentially be a draw, with the judge ruling that Qualcomm can charge whatever it wants, but that Nokia didn't extend the agreement. We'll see how things go, though -- this is just the beginning of what could very well be the early start of close to the end. Video summary of the entire dispute after the break.

It's hard enough for Motorola's handset division to go about its business these days without losing talent, but losing executives to Apple's iPhone team? That's just a straight-up slap in the face, and Moto's not gonna take it lying down. The We Generation has filed suit against Michael Fenger, the dude running its handset business for the EMEA market for six years until March this year, when he quit to take up a posh job as Apple's veep of global iPhone sales. That isn't a problem in itself -- businessfolk switch teams all the time -- but it seems Mr. Fenger had an agreement in place not to work for a competitor inside of two years following his departure. Moto claims he "was privy to the pricing, margins, customer initiatives, allocation of resources, product development, multiyear product, business and talent planning and strategies being used by Motorola" (not to say that data's worth much more than the paper it's written on these days) and wants over a million bucks back plus a court order banning him from working for Cupertino for those promised two years retroactively to March 31; non-compete clauses generally aren't valid in California, but since this one was executed in Illinois and the case is filed in Chicago, they've got a shot here. Note to current execs still out there in Schaumburg: better start righting that ship you're on, because you ain't getting on a more buoyant one without a fight.

[Via CNET]