Innovation

Most people assume that consumers have a fair use right to time shift television to watch at a later time.

At issue in this case was whether three software programmers who created the BnetD game server -- which interoperates with Blizzard video games online -- were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Blizzard Games' end user license agreement (EULA).

Junger sought an injunction against the enforcement of provisions of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations that require him to get the permission of the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls (the "ODTC") before he can communicate information about cryptographic software to f

EFF filed suit against Apple Inc. to defend the First Amendment rights of an operator of a noncommercial public Internet "wiki" site known as Bluwiki.

Adult entertainment publisher Perfect 10 sued Google's Image Search service arguing that Google violates copyright law by indexing Perfect 10 photos posted on unauthorized websites then making and delivering thumbnail images of those photos in its search results.

In 2005, Macrovision sued Sima to block the sale of the Sima CopyThis! (CT-1, CT-Q1, CT-100, CT-2, CT-200) and GoDVD (SCC, and SCC-2) products, which are designed to digitize analog video, such as the analog video outputs of DVD players and analog VCRs.

EFF defended the right of innovators to build new technologies without begging Hollywood's permission first.

Hollywood has hoped to control innovation by overturning the "Betamax doctrine" - the bedrock principle that the developer of a technology with substantial legal uses cannot be held liable for users' copyright violations. In the Grokster case, 28 of the world's largest entertainment companies sued the distributors of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software. EFF defended one of the software companies all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to overturn the Betamax doctrine or to force technology companies to redesign multipurpose technologies. Meanwhile, EFF helped block the INDUCE Act, a bill that would have severely undermined the Betamax doctrine.

EFF helped convince the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a dangerous patent law precedent that threatened free speech and consumers' rights.

The court unanimously held that issuing automatic injunctions in patent cases improperly removed discretion from trial judges to weigh competing factors, including the effect that enforcing the patent would have on the public interest. This followed the reasoning outlined in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by EFF, which urged the justices to overrule the lower court and protect the public interest in free speech, innovation, and education.

In October 2013, NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a sweeping subpoena seeking identification, financial, and other information on effectively all New York Airbnb “Hosts,” those users offering living space for rent.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Sony v. Universal Studios (aka the Betamax case) is a landmark copyright precedent that has sheltered a wide array of technology innovators from lawsuits at the hands of the entertainment industries.

EFF established that computer code is speech and shielded the developers of privacy-protecting software from government censorship.

In 1995, researcher Dan Bernstein planned to distribute an encryption program he had written that could help prevent strangers from snooping on online communications, discovering passwords, and stealing credit card numbers. But draconian federal laws restricted the publication of his program, treating privacy protection as a potential threat to national security. EFF successfully sued the government on behalf of Bernstein, and a federal court affirmed, for the first time, that software code deserves First Amendment protection.

In the U.S., two copyrights generally exist for every song you hear on the radio or online. One relates to the underlying musical work (think sheet music). It typically belongs to a music publisher or songwriter.