Oracle?s lawsuit against Google over alleged infringement of Java slipped from epic battle to soap opera this week: The relationships between the judge, jury, plaintiff and defendant have become a tangle of legal ambiguity and financial suffering ? or is it avarice? The jury deferred to the judge on the extent of Oracle?s intellectual property protections. The judge, in turn, wrested from the jury control over the lion?s share of damages, yanking Oracle?s prize another few inches out of reach. With major issues still to be decided, it is becoming clear that Judge William Alsup holds the hi...

When it comes to ACTA and TPP, China is the elephant in the room -- or maybe that should be the dragon in the room. For without China's participation, these treaties designed to reduce counterfeiting will have little effect. And despite rather desperate optimism on the part of some that China will rush to sign up, its comments so far suggest otherwise.

A crucial factor here is China's own copyright framework, since this will inevitably color its perception of the terms of any treaty that it might sign. That makes the outcome of a planned third revision of its copyright laws highly pertinent to the fate of treaties like ACTA and TPP. A paper reviewin...

Private spaceflight company SpaceX is scheduled to fly its Dragon capsule toward the International Space Station early on Saturday, marking the first…