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.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS