In a plot twist that I am sure is making Apple very happy, an appeals court has paused the ban on Apple Watch sales in the US. Reuters has the details:
Apple scored a victory on Wednesday as a U.S. appeals court paused a government commission’s import ban on some of its popular Apple smartwatches following a patent dispute with medical-technology firm Masimo.
The tech giant had filed an emergency request for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt the order after appealing the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (ITC) decision that it had infringed Masimo’s patents.
The full decision is here. But here is the TL:DR. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has granted an interim stay from January 5, 2024 to January 10, 2024 while the court reviews Apple’s request for a full stay for the length of the appeal. The International Trade Commission in turn now has until January 10 to file its response to Apple’s request for a full stay while the appeal plays out. However, this does not mean that Apple can start selling Apple Watch 9 and Ultra 2 models immediately. That’s because US Customs And Border Protection has to take this court order and put processes in place to re-allow imports of Apple Watch products into the US. Assuming that things don’t come to a screeching halt again. But all things considered, this is still a win of sorts for Apple.
UPDATE: To clarify, Apple can now sell Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 until at least January 10, 2024 where another extension would need to be granted.
New York Times Sues OpenAI And Microsoft
Posted in Commentary with tags Microsoft, OpenAI on December 27, 2023 by itnerdFrom the “Expect to see more of this coming soon” file comes news that that The New York Times is suing Microsoft and OpenAI for using its work to train their AI models. The argument is that doing so infringes on their copyright:
The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.
The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.
Microsoft declined to comment on the case. OpenAI did not immediately provide a comment.
The lawsuit could test the emerging legal contours of generative A.I. technologies — so called for the text, images and other content they can create after learning from large data sets — and could carry major implications for the news industry. The Times is among a small number of outlets that have built successful business models from online journalism, but dozens of newspapers and magazines have been hobbled by readers’ migration to the internet.
OpenAI and Microsoft who have an alliance as Microsoft has invested in OpenAI are the prime targets for this sort of thing as they have the deepest pockets. But I fully expect other media companies to start filing lawsuits against any AI company that does anything similar to this. Oh, in case you were wondering, these lawsuits won’t likely include Apple which for the record wants to cut a deal to license content to train its AI models. Which is the correct thing to do in my opinion.
Get your popcorn ready for this one.
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