A victory for Facebook in its case against typosquatters — those who own domain names that are similar to those of a popular site, which they use to confuse people and potentially capitalize on that. The U.S. District Court for Northern California has ruled in favor of the social network in an action it took against several squatters, recommending the turnover of 105 domains and statutory damages… → Read More
Nokia today posted Q1 earnings that show the Finnish company still trying to recover from a fast-declining legacy handset business. But in the meantime, it is continuing to play another card in its hand, that of patents and intellectual property licensing. This is an area that will bring Nokia €500 million ($653 million) in revenues this year, CFO Timo Ihamuotila said in Nokia’s earnings call… → Read More
Apple is in court again in China, defending another of its products from attack based on pre-existing claims from a Chinese company. This time around it’s Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, that has landed it in Chinese legal trouble, after last year another company took issue with the iPad trademark resulting in a $60 million settlement deal. → Read More
According to InsideSocialGames, Zynga and EA have settled their legal dispute over the former’s alleged copying of EA’s popular game “The Sims.” It was clear to many that once Zynga started teasing “The Ville,” it took some major elements from EA’s classic. A source has told TechCrunch that no money has exchanged hands as part of the settlement. At the… → Read More
The Aaron Swartz tragedy has unleashed an intense debate about computer “crime” and the US criminal justice system. Heavyweights like Lessig, Doctorow, Greenwald, Masnick, Wu and Kerr have all written with great passion about the case. But the one article that really resonated with me was written by the Harvard Business Review blogger James Allworth. → Read More
Facebook has been cooperating with law-enforcement officials for some time when it comes to handing over user data as evidence in court cases. But the situation is less clear when those legal requests are made by others — a predicament being highlighted right now in a murder case in Oregon, where the social network has (so far) refused to comply with requests from the defense team of a murder… → Read More
Good news for Amazon, and for consumers on the lookout for bargain prices for e-books in Europe. Apple, along with the publishers Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins, Hachette and Holtzbrinck (Macmillan), have reached a settlement over e-book pricing in Europe. That deal had become the subject of an antitrust probe initiated in December 2011: the European Commission believed it gave Apple and… → Read More
Nokia may be struggling to reach a critical mass of users to adopt its Windows Phones instead of Android or iPhone devices, but today it got a little light relief in its bigger battle: it’s had a class action suit over its choice of the Windows Phone platform formally dismissed, with no compensation paid. → Read More
Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Newark, NJ, a jury convicted Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer for his role in a 2010 exploit that caused an AT&T account maintenance website to leak 114,000 email addresses of iPad owners. Auernheimer was convicted on both counts for which he was charged. → Read More
Apple and HTC today announced jointly a settlement of all ongoing patent litigation between the two, in a licensing agreement with a 10-year term, any further terms of which were not released. Many will be wondering if this is a sign that Apple’s hard-line stance with regards to its IP and patent litigation may be experiencing a general softening, but it’s much more complicated than that. → Read More
Another dramatic turn of events in the case of Ellen Pao, who has been suing the VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers over gender discrimination. Pao was fired on Monday — a development Pao herself revealed in a Quora post this week, picked up by AllThings Digital. Up to now, KPCB had still employed her as an investment partner, something that Pao herself had confirmed, also in a message… → Read More
Another legal tangle for Apple in Portugal? Just days after a consumer rights group in the country said it was preparing to bring legal action against Apple over the wording of its AppleCare warranty service, it has emerged that an IT reseller and distributor called Taboada & Barros is already suing Apple over claims of price fixing and unfair trade practices, asking for €40 million ($49… → Read More
You might not think that something like a website’s Terms of Service would be all that interesting, but you’d be wrong. After that post about how awesome 500px’s Terms of Service are (tl;dr: they translate them into human speak), the inbox kind of blew up with questions. Is anyone else doing this?, emailers wanted to know, can I talk to them? (Also: hey, stupid, Aviary has done this forever.… → Read More
On the heels of a payout from the owners of P2P filesharing site Limewire, another claim finally settled for Merlin, the group that represents independent music labels in licensing negotiations and legal actions: the group says that Sirius Satellite Radio has settled for $1.6 million in a copyright infringement suit brought against Sirius by the agency.
The claim concerned Sirius’ Stiletto… → Read More
Last year, Alexia covered a funny Chrome web browser extension called “Defaceable” that allowed you to comment anonymously on Facebook and on other websites using Facebook Comments. Instead of having to associate your comment with your real name and identity, the Defaceable extension let you once again post your troll-isms to friends’ walls and blogs like TechCrunch (which uses Facebook Comments)… → Read More
Here we go again: today brings another mobile patent infringement suit — this time against T-Mobile USA, and over a technology that has had very little use to date, but a lot of potential.
On Track Innovations says that the carrier is selling, “or offering to sell”, “at least” two handset models — the HTC Amaze 4G and the Nokia Astound — that it claims violate a near-field communications… → Read More
The lawsuit filed on Monday by Yahoo against Facebook over alleged infringements of certain “method” patents was a high profile step for Yahoo to take in the lead-up to Facebook’s IPO.
But although Facebook has seen patent suits against it double in the last year, don’t necessarily take this as a sign that Yahoo will necessarily extend its fight to more jurisdictions, nor that social media will… → Read More
Just hours before Apple is due to unveil what many think will be a new version of its best-selling iPad tablet, Samsung has tried to steal a little thunder by filing a lawsuit against the Cupertino company over patent violations in the newest models that Apple has on the market as of this morning, the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2. The suit was filed in Samsung’s home market of Korea.
Given how… → Read More
The dispute between Apple and Proview over the “iPad” trademark has just gotten a lot more domestic. Proview, which owned the “iPad” trademark in several countries until they sold the rights to Apple, has been alleging shenanigans, specifically that part of the company never authorized the sale. Apple, for their part, says that everything is in order, and they have the signatures of the… → Read More
In July, we wrote about an ongoing case wherein a woman accused of fraud was being asked by the prosecution to provide the password to access her computer’s data, which otherwise would remain encrypted and unreadable, weakening their case. They got permission to compel her to reveal the password, but the defense said that it was unconstitutional to do so, as providing that information was… → Read More
The much-maligned SOPA bill is facing a lot of heat as much of the tech industry sets its weight against it. But while the legislation is being discussed, its extreme solutions to criminal online sites are already being adopted. A judge in Nevada has ordered that 228 websites be seized, their domain names transferred, and their listings removed from search engines.
There are several serious… → Read More
It’s no secret that an employer can, and probably should, do a little check-up on your internet presence before hiring you, and possibly afterwards. But as several unhappy people have found out, sometimes they look pretty hard, and have access to information you thought private. It can result in foot-in-mouth moments and occasionally punitive action. That was certainly the case when five workers… → Read More
After more than a year of uncertainty, the case of the stolen iPhone 4 has been brought to something like a conclusion. San Mateo County Assistant District Attorney Morley Pitt announced that charges would not be filed against Gizmodo’s Jason Chen, whose liberty has been in question since the police raided his house shortly after the alleged theft.
Pitt said that “it is a very gray area,” but… → Read More
The patent nonsense out there is very deep water for humble bloggers like ourselves, so we’re just going to point you in the right direction and wait for the dust to settle a bit before offering an opinion. It seems that Samsung has seen fit to retaliate on Apple, citing 10 patents it alleges are being infringed upon. It’s not much of a surprise, really — they filed lawsuits in… → Read More
There’s just no way around it. Sony really screwed up. And not just in the way they consistently have in the past. I mean big time. The outage that started last week and was finally addressed yesterday is worse than anyone expected, and naturally, someone has already sued. The lawsuit alleges that Sony was both remiss in its security responsibilities and its duty to inform its customers of… → Read More
Now, although there is likely to be a little flare-up of concern regarding this issue over the next couple days, it’s not so much the potential privacy breach I’m worried about as not knowing what tools the police have at their disposal. In this case, although this device might potentially be used for less-than-ethical purposes, the important part is simply raising awareness of the availability of… → Read More
It looks like Apple has gotten the go-ahead to continue a suit against eForCity, a company that was manufacturing cheap connectors for Apple devices. This is a topic ripe for discussion, but try as I might to argue against Apple’s position in this particular case, I don’t really see a problem with it except for my fundamental objection to lock-in technologies, and that’s a much bigger issue. → Read More
So we’re all pretty desensitized by now to the mind-blowing stupidity on display by the record industry in its foolhardy attempts at assigning damages in piracy cases — was anyone surprised when they told one woman, who had shared 24 songs, that she owed nearly two million dollars? Yes, ridiculous. But this — this is beyond ridiculous. This is… sublime.
The record companies suing… → Read More
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