Cable programmer Discovery Communications Inc. filed suit Tuesday against Amazon.com Inc., claiming it owns a patent to technology used in Amazon’s Kindle electronic-book reader.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, claims Discovery owns a patent to encryption technology for electronic books that it believes is part of the operation of the Kindle. http://xrl.in/1smn
A new legal issues has arisen over Amazon’s Kindle 2. Amazon sent take down letters to MobileREad.com demanding the removal of links and posts to software code that allows users to open and read LEGAL purchases of e-books from non-Amazon sites on the Kindle 2. Threatened with DMCA provisions, MobileRead.com, which never hosted the script, removed all links and postings.
Section 1201 of the DMCA says: “No person shall… offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology… is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”
However an exception exists. It allows for circumvention for “interoperability” of computer programs. Interoperability is defined as the “ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.”
Would have been interesting to see how a court would have ruled on this issue. http://xrl.in/1sfz