Administrivia

Mark H. Anbinder writes to tell us the latest in the court case concerning Mark Pilgrim and David Blumenthal, authors of the MBDF virus discovered this spring. "I just found out today that Pilgrim and Blumenthal were arraigned in Tompkins County court last Friday. They each entered Not Guilty pleas, and the matter is being held for forty-five days by Judge Betty Friedlander to allow the defense counsels to file any motions. Nothing is likely to happen until that time… but assuming things go forward as they are, it seems likely that there will be a trial."

In other, stranger legal news, Judge Vaughn Walker agreed to reconsider his April decision throwing out a number of the issues in Apple’s suit against Microsoft and HP. Apparently this doesn’t mean that he will necessarily change his mind, but he certainly couldn’t change his mind without reconsidering. Hmm. More news when it’s news. Perhaps even stranger yet was the announcement that Quorum, makers of Mac emulation software, is suing Apple in a pre-emptive legal strike. It seems that Quorum wants the court to rule that Quorum’s software does not infringe on Apple’s copyrights or patents, and that some of those patents may in fact be invalid. I hope Quorum has a lot of legal firepower or it won’t even be a fair fight. Tune in next week when Apple lawyers declare that Apple actually own rights to the concept of the personal computer and sues IBM over the original PC – the entire case has already been picked up by several major cable TV networks as a spectator sport. 🙂