AP: Microsoft wants more Appeals time. The company said the 19 issues it plans to appeal and the many technological details of the case warrant a court schedule far longer than federal appellate guidelines.
Amazing gall. Microsoft has had legions of lawyers on this case from the beginning. They’re pretending that the Justice Department’s move to take the case straight to the Supreme Court is responsible for any delays, as if the same issues weren’t at stake no matter which higher court was going to hear the case.Microsoft insists it needs vastly more time than other appellants get, and vastly more words in its briefs. The Justice Department has been willing to go part of the way, but not to the ludicrous extent Microsoft wants.
What’s going on here is a massive stall. Microsoft doesn’t want this case resolved soon, so it can consolidate power to the point where any serious remedy is pointless.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Microsoft seems to be counting on that.
Patents and Intellectual Property
NewsForge: Patent Office director: My hands are tied. “Sometimes, I wish I was a professor and had time to think about these things,” said Dickinson, whose office issued 161,000 patents in 1999. “I’ve got an office to run, and I’ve got 1,500 of these applications coming in every day.” Dickinson saying the office is too busy to deal with the issue “seems to be an extraordinary indictment of our government-backed monopoly office,” Lessig responded.
Todd Dickinson’s administration of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office hasn’t been any bigger a scandal than the work his precedessors did in recent years. They’ve all been complicit in a system that, in Dickinson’s defense, was created by a clueless Congress at the behest of those who benefit from the warped process.At least there’s some hope on the horizon. Two of the better-clued members of Congress have introduced patent reform legislation (Wired News) that might actually mean something if it’s passed. There’s no chance of enactment this year, but we can always hope for next year.
Time Warner Calls Off Merger
No, not the one you’re thinking about. Time Warner won’t be buying Europe’s mega-music dealer, EMI Group (Reuters) in the face of fierce opposition from European antitrust authorities.
The EU regulators do not oppose America Online’s purchase of Time Warner, however, according to the story. That leaves it up to American authorities to extract genuine promises from AOL and Time Warner to behave less like oppressive monopolists when they combine, as they surely will one of these days.
But AOL isn’t having any of it. The company insists that (Reuters) no conditions are necessary to protect consumers.
Yeah, right..