Ric Richardson

It has now been some years since the Uniloc versus Microsoft battle and although it is Uniloc's internal policy to not comment outside of official communications, I as a simple shareholder and as an independent inventor want to make some things clear.  I am and will remain a good friend and supporter of Uniloc's leader Craig Etchegoyen. I am not a board member, officer or employee of Uniloc. I have not sold any stock, received any dividend income or received any significant income from Uniloc since arriving back from the US eight years ago. My policy is "first in last out" and to wait till the team decides when an exit is appropriate. While I personally do not make a living from acquiring other peoples patents and leveraging them for justice against patent infringers I do not think less of Uniloc for doing so. Fighting for patent justice is a long hard and expensive road and I think the team is doing the best they can under the circumstances. The 216 patent (...

Yesterday I arrived home from Texas on a 17 hour Qantas direct flight. The day started with the first day of Jury deliberations for the case of Uniloc vs Electronic Arts... the day ended with a verdict in favour of Uniloc and a dash to Dallas airport to get back home. I came to Tyler for the case as a witness. It was my first time in court representing myself as the inventor of the 216 patent and it was a real eye opener. Top things learned was how great it is that an Australian can go to Tyler in Texas and ask the American people for justice from a worldwide respected Judge (The Honourable Judge Leonard Davis) and eight patient and long suffering jurors. I never got to meet the jurors but I did get to say hello to the Judge. After 5 long days it was a real honour to meet such a well respected and even handed member of the judiciary. The first thing that hits you in court is just how solemn and serious the law process is. Judge Davis has a coat and tie rule so there is a rack...

Yet again someone really has outdone themselves on an article regarding DRM on Wikipedia... the article includes summaries of many main DRM technologies and a failry complete listing of all the anti-DRM resources available on the net. Ill be researching these links soon to make sure we at Uniloc are addressing as many of the issues as we can with the release og Polite Copy Control in the near future... Wikipedia.. search term DRM Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to any of several technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to and usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. The term is often confused with copy protection and technical protection measures ; these two terms refer to technologies that control or restrict the use and access of digital content on electronic devices with such technologies installed, acting as component...

Microsoft lost a case for $1.5 billion in damages for ignoring patent ownership in the case of MP3 (an almost free audio compression technology). Makes me wonder what the damages should be for a technology that is worth up to a quarter of all their sales? clipped from yro.slashdot.org "A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp. href="http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2097780,00.asp">infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Microsoft said Thursday. The news comes after reports that U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2097387,00.asp">should be liable for infringing AT&T Inc. patents in Windows software sold overseas."

This web page uses the same algorithm as the feds listing system... check for your name... or you on it? clipped from nofly.s3.com According to published reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere, the federal government is using an algorithmic software product known as Soundex to search databases for potential terrorists. Developed in 1918, Soundex removes vowels from names and applies numerical values to remaining consonants. Names are matched according to those resulting numerical values.

clipped from ricricho.wordpress.com Just as the Uniloc people www.uniloc.com and I get a handle on how to do polite DRM Microsoft comes out with yet another damaging practise to turn even more people off the idea of enforced copy control. Microsoft WGA Phones Home Even When Told No Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 07, @11:51AM from the huge-shocker-here dept. Aviran writes “When you start WGA setup and get to the license agreement page but decided NOT to install the highly controversial WGA component and cancel the installation, the setup program will send information stored in your registry and the fact that you choose not to install WGA back to Microsoft’s servers.”

clipped from ricricho.wordpress.com The nonexclusive license covers services offered by Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. and The Frost National Bank in the “Financial Services Call Processing” Field of Use including customer service delivered through automated systems and live agents. Other terms of the license were not disclosed. Ron Katz is probably the single biggest private patent licensor/ inventor in history. His strategy of going after infringers from the biggest first is really paying off for him. It remains to be seen if courts will require inventors to actually try to produce products based on their invention rather than just licensing patent rights.

http://www.informationweek.com/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197801668&pgno=1&queryText = clipped from ricricho.wordpress.com DRM is too clunky… too publisher centric and just plain unworkable… its more about squeezing dollars out of punters rather than the ethical imperative… to stop mass piracy… The debate over digital-rights management is coming to a head. On the one hand, efforts to implement technology to prevent the copying of consumer-oriented entertainment is increasingly viewed as ineffective. Indeed, no less an industry figure than Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called for the elimination of DRM . At the same time, content providers continue to search for a magic technical elixir that’ll protect their revenue streams against unauthorized copying.

clipped from ricricho.wordpress.com Vi Labs partnering with Us. Weve spent a while looking at wrapper partners and these guys are really up there. Good solid code and anti hacking strategies… we should go a long way together… clipped from www.bloglines.com A technology partnership was inked with Uniloc USA, a leading provider of device-locked product activation software. The resulting product integration allows Uniloc softANCHOR™ and CodeArmor to ensure that protected applications run only on authorized PC’s. … Add comment March 11th, 2007

Consumer Software Activation and Try&Buy over the web are the two most powerful and pervasive usage models of machine locked copy control as demonstrated by the models almost exclusive use by the worlds top software publishing companies including Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and Intuit. Other forms of digital distribution and online license management are very popular and in common use, however these two simpler forms of machine locked copy control have proven to be the only realistic options when large numbers of consumer customers are involved are large scale site or OEM licensing of software. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents 1. Summary of common types of digital copy control for software publishing. 2. Criteria for evaluation of Activation and Try&Buy technologies 3. Table comparing popular Activation and Try and Buy Technologies. -----------------------------------------------...