Foxy Media Inc (景昌資訊科技) has closed its popular peer-to-peer file-sharing Foxy program after a long-term dispute over copyright infringement.
The company said on Saturday it decided to terminate services because they could help users to illegally download files.
“Foxy’s file-sharing function has resulted in severe leakage of confidential information, as some users were using the program improperly. For this reason, a court in Taiwan has ruled it to be controversial software,” Foxy Media said in a statement.
In April 2009, Foxy Media president Li Hsien-ming (李憲明) was charged by the Banciao District Court with violating the Copyright Act (著作權法).
Prosecutors said the Foxy file exchange Web site and the file-sharing program infringed upon the music copyrights of What’s Music International Inc (上華) and Universal Music Group and the film copyrights of Disney, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox.
Li was given a jail sentence of 18 months by the court in the first trial. He appealed the sentence and said he would close the P2P file-sharing program.
The Intellectual Property Court later sentenced Li to five years of probation.
PATENT DISPUTE
Separately, light-emitting diode (LED) product supplier Everlight Electronics Co (億光) said on Friday it had won an administrative suit that it believes will give it an edge in other patent proceedings against Nichia Corp of Japan.
Taiwan’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a Taipei High Administrative Court verdict, which ruled that a patent asserted by Nichia related to LED component production technology was invalid.
According to Everlight, the court agreed with its contention that Nichia was not the inventor of the patent and that Everlight had the right to apply the technology covered by the patent to its production process.
Everlight, whose production line includes LED components, LED lighting, and testing and packaging services, said the Intellectual Property Office under the Ministry of Economic Affairs is expected to revoke the patent it granted to Nichia.
The company initiated complaint in 2009, saying the use of the disputed patent did not violate Nichia’s intellectual property rights.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day