Jane Espenson is not only a talented TV writer who has worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, and Once Upon A Time, she is also quite adept at constructing impressive Pringles structures.
“I did it!” she tweeted. “I did it! I built a Pringles ringle! No glue, just physics.”
Most impressive to me is how Espenson managed to complete the ring before eating them all, as I most certainly would have done.
…booking and boarding flights on American Airlines could subject them disrespectful, discriminatory or unsafe conditions. This travel advisory is in effect beginning today, October 24, 2017, until further notice.
The series of recent incidents involve troublesome conduct by American Airlines and they suggest a corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias on the part of American Airlines.
1. An African-American man was required to relinquish his purchased seats aboard a flight from Washington, D.C. to Raleigh-Durham, merely because he responded to disrespectful and discriminatory comments directed toward him by two unruly white passengers;
2. Despite having previously booked first-class tickets for herself and a traveling companion, an African-American woman’s seating assignment was switched to the coach section at the ticket counter, while her white companion remained assigned to a first-class seat;
3. On a flight bound for New York from Miami, the pilot directed that an African-American woman be removed from the flight when she complained to the gate agent about having her seating assignment changed without her consent; and
4. An African-American woman and her infant child were removed from a flight from Atlanta to New York City when the woman (incidentally a Harvard Law School student) asked that her stroller be retrieved from checked baggage before she would disembark.
In order to help American Airlines adapt to the reality of changing circumstances, I’ve made a slight change to their logo and name to better represent their preferred customer base.
Senators Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain talk a big game about not letting the GOP be the handmaiden of trumpist corruption, but when the chips were down last night, they voted with their party and a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Handmaid’s Tale to pass legislation that lets financial institutions take away your right to sue them when they defraud you.
In particular, these clauses ban the kinds of class-action suits that make it worth top lawyers’ time to sue deep-pocketed, well-represented blue-chip firms that commit petty thefts against millions of people, no one of whom is worth representing.
With the CFPB rule dead, Equifax, Wells Fargo, and other mass-scale crooks can rip off the public with total impunity.
Epson have contacted a number of resellers on eBay warning them to remove their listings. They have followed up by directly removing the items from eBay, as members of the “VeRO” programme.
Epson enjoy a special trusted status on eBay under their VeRO programme. VeRO allows rightsholders to remove listings that they “believe may infringe on their intellectual property rights”. eBay don’t appear to require an actual proof of infringement, for example a decision of the court, but accept Epson’s word as a trusted company.
The policy for patent takedowns only applies in the EU. This means that Epson compatible cartridges in the US are not affected.
Epson are alleging that certain compatible ink cartridges infringe their patents GB2433473 and amendment GB2465293. The alleged infringement concerns the alignment of chip contacts on their cartridges. So far, we know Epson have issued takedowns against compatible cartridges T16 XL; T18 XL; T24 XL; T26 XL; T27 XL; T29 XL; T33 XL plus T0715 XL; T0797 XL; T0807 XL.
We are concerned that eBay is giving protection to only one party in this dispute. Rightsholders can easily claim infringement but resellers appear to be unable to assert the legality of their products and listings.
This is both unusual and unfair. Indeed, eBay have said as much in relation to US patent claims:
“eBay has a policy to quickly remove listings when a NOCI [Notice of Claimed Infringement] provides a court order, but eBay rarely removes listings based on mere allegations of infringement. eBay has two reasons for this policy. First, eBay believes that removing listings based on allegations of infringement would be unfair to buyers and the accused sellers. Such a policy, in eBay’s view, would give too much power to unscrupulous patent holders. The second reason eBay has adopted its policy is because it lacks the expertise to construe the patent infringement claims submitted to it and cannot assess the claims when it never possess[es] the products.”
It is also concerning that Epson opted to act against resellers and did not contact the manufacturers first. If Epson believe that their patents are genuinely being infringed then it would be more efficient and just to take direct legal action in order to prevent import or manufacture of these products at source.
At this stage, we cannot know if there is any merit to the Epson’s claim that these compatible cartridges infringe their patents but using patents in this way would undermine the legal regime that protects production of compatible products, including components, such as ink cartridges. That would be extremely bad for consumers.
We have contacted the IPO for clarification of eBay’s duties and responsibilities relating to patent claims. We would like to speak to both eBay and Epson about this. Meantime, if you have been affected by takedowns relating to Epson compatible ink cartridges and patent claims, please get in touch with us by emailing policy.monitoring@openrightsgroup.org.
Epson is one of eBay’s “trusted partners,” which means it can send takedown notices that eBay will honor without examining them, giving it enormous power over who gets to sell what on one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces.
The company has been using dodgy patent infringement notices to get its competitors removed from eBay (and other sites), though it won’t say which patents are being violated or how. What’s more, it’s targeting sellers, rather than manufacturers, suggesting that it’s not really interested in enforcing its rights, but rather, eliminating its competition.
Inkjet companies say they need to charge more for ink than Moet charges for vintage Champagne, otherwise they’ll have to raise prices on their printers. That may be true – who knows? – but you could make the same argument about a car that was designed to only accept one brand of gas or a toaster than only accepts one brand of bread. Companies are welcome to try those strategies, but when they abuse the law to prevent competitors from thwarting their plans, they’re no longer in the business of supplying a market need – they’re now in the business of deciding what kinds of markets are allowed to exist at all.
Writing in IEEE Spectrum, iFixit’s superhero founder Kyle Wiens and Repair.org exective director Gay Gordon-Byrne bring the case for the right to repair (previously) to the engineering community, describing the economic, technical, and environmental benefits of permitting a domestic industry of local, expert technologists to help their neighbors get more out of their gadgets.
The benefits of this are undeniable: scrapping a ton of ewaste creates 15 jobs, repairing it creates 200 jobs (and spares our descendants from having to deal with our toxic landfill). But electronics companies deploy technology, law and economic pressure to suppress independent service, in order to monopolize the repair market, mark up replacement parts, and force the public to “upgrade” perfectly good gadgets that they’re not allowed to fix.
With 12 states introducing right to repair laws in 2017, there’s real momentum behind this movement. But it has a big hurdle to overcome: section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass DRM, so companies from GM to Apple are using DRM to limit who can fix their tools, on penalty of imprisonment.
EFF is suing the US government to overturn this law, and the right to repair movement is a big part of making the case for taming the DMCA in the court of public opinion and in state legislatures.
