# A Seattle man, 51, has been arraigned in New York on a misdemeanor
charge of endangering the welfare of a 14-year-old girl in a case
involving the exchange of sexually explicit electronic mail. Alan Paul
Barlow is accused of contacting the girl at her residence in
the New York area, by computer and phone. Barlow flew from Seattle to
meet the girl, and the police were alerted when the girl's mother found
her and a 10-year-old brother in Barlow's company at a shopping mall.
(New York Times, June 26, 1994, p.13.)
# Kenneth Lee Poulsen, 28, pled guilty to 7 federal charges, including
conspiracy and computer and mail fraud, and faces a trial in federal
court on 14 other counts ranging from espionage to breaking into private
and government computers and eavesdropping on
telephone calls, including those of a former girlfriend. On the charges
to which he pled guilty, Poulsen faces up to 40 years in prison and a
$1.75 million fine. He could receive up to 67 years in jail on remaining
charges. (San Jose Mercury News, June 16, 1994, 5H.)
# The U.S Supreme Court, by a one vote majority, upheld a broad Federal
regulation of cable television, but ordered a lower court to reexamine a
law requiring cable television systems to carry all of the broadcast
television stations in their market area. The Court held
that the rationale for limited First Amendment protection for television
broadcasters does not apply to the cable industry, but did not find that
cable operators enjoy the same First Amendment protections as
newspapers. (New York Times, June 28, 1994, C1 and C4.)
# The Federal Communications Commission will reserve more than 1,000 new
radio licenses for small businesses, women and minority groups to
operate "personal communication services," which includes pocket-sized
telephones, hand-held computers, advanced
pagers and facsimile machines. (New York Times, June 30, 1994, C1.)
# Jefferson Airplane filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against
Berkeley Systems, alleging that Berkeley's on-screen flying toaster
infringes the toaster on the cover of the group's 1973 album "Thirty
Seconds Over Winterland." Last year, Berkeley Systems sued a
rival firm for using a similar toaster in its screen saver. . (San Jose
Mercury News, June 15, 1994, 1F.)
# Novell Inc. will ask the federal government to overturn a software
patent awarded in 1987 to Roger E. Billings of Blue Springs, MO, which
purports to cover technology that is basic to using a central file
server to store data and make it available to a network of other
computers. Novell said it found at least 13 examples of software
technology that predate the patent. In 1992, Billings and his company,
the International Academy of Science, sued Novell and Bank of America
for $672 million, alleging violation of the patent. Bank of
America settled with Billings for $125,000. The case is set for trial in
September. (San Jose Mercury News, June 7, 1994, 4E.)
# Microsoft Corp. and Stac Electronics Inc. settled a software patent
infringement lawsuit over disk-compression technology following a jury
decision that Microsoft should pay $120 million to Stac and a court
order that Microsoft pull from stores copies of its MS-DOS
operating system that violate Stac's patents. Stac had been ordered to
pay Microsoft $13.7 million for misappropriating Microsoft trade
secrets. The settlement includes a cross-license, a payment by Microsoft
to Stac of $1 million per month for 43 months as well as a
$40 million investment by Microsoft in Stac, among other things. (San
Jose Mercury News, June 11, 1994, 11D and June 22, 1994, 11D; New York
Times, June 15, 1994, C5.)
# Compton's New Media requested that the Patent and Trademark Office
reconsider awarding it a multimedia patent on a commonly-employed method
of retrieving graphic, video and text information. (San Jose Mercury
News, June 28, 1994, 1E.)
# The Software Publishers Association said it will work with 4 other
industry groups to develop ratings criteria and symbols for a voluntary
system to label the sex and violence content of new computer games. The
group will try to coordinate its ratings with those of
video game makers. (San Jose Mercury News, June 15, 1994, 1F.)
# A federal jury found Nintendo of America guilty of violating a patent
held by Alpex Computer Corp. for a device that helps video game
characters move and interact. (New York Times, June 7, 1994, C5.)
# Poland enacted a law that subjects copyright violators to hefty fines
and prison terms. (New York Times, June 14, 1994, C4.)
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