Items tagged with Court
Apple is still on the hook for a $450 million settlement as part of a class action lawsuit with 33 states and private individuals after losing an appeal on Tuesday. By a divided 2-to-1 vote, the 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals upheld the 2013 decision and sided with the U.S. Justice Department in finding that Apple responsible for conspiring with book publishers to jack up the prices of e-books. The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Justice Department back in 2012 and went to court the next year. Then in 2014, Apple agreed to pay $450 million to settle the suit, with most of the funds going to e-book buyers. The agreement was contingent on the outcome of appeal. "We conclude that the district court correctly...
Read more...
The RadioShack bankruptcy took a harder turn into ugly territory yesterday with Apple's filing of a complaint in a Delaware court. The move is intended to keep the once-prevalent hardware giant from selling their customer data, joining the states of Texas and Tennessee in their efforts to prevent the company from opening their customer information coffers to the highest bidder. The Apple complaint states that as a condition of the arrangement by which RadioShack was allowed to sell iPhones and iPads in its stores, the retailer would protect the personal data of customers choosing to buy Apple products. Specifically, Apple's complaint states, “The Reseller Agreement between Apple and RadioShack...
Read more...
Microsoft is flat out ignoring a federal court order to provide U.S. prosecutors access to a customer's emails being held on a server in Ireland. For Microsoft, this boils down to a matter of trust with its users, and so long as the case continues to maneuver through the appeals process, the Redmond outfit has no intention of complying with the order. Judge Loretta Preska, chief of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, ruled back on July 31 that Microsoft was required to hand over the email messages to U.S. prosecutors investigating a criminal case. However, she temporarily suspended the order so that Microsoft could appeal. Prosecutors have since argued that her order was not a "final, appealable...
Read more...
A restaurant owner in France sued a blogger for writing a negative review of her experience at his establishment and ultimately won because the review became too popular in Google's search results. Seriously. Apparently the judge in the case isn't familiar with this whole Internet thing and how it works, hence the goofy outcome. According to BBC News, the owner of II Giardino restaurant in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France sued Ms. Doudet for writing a blog posted title, "The Place to Avoid in Cap-Ferret: II Giardino." In the post, which no longer appears online, Ms. Doudet takes the restaurant to task for what she perceived as poor service and an unfriendly attitude on the part of...
Read more...
Right on schedule, OCZ Technology is receiving an injection straight to the heart via Toshiba. After falling into bankruptcy last year and nearly instantly being rescued by Toshiba, the latter has announced today that it has "finalized the purchase of substantially all assets of OCZ Technology Group, making it a wholly owned subsidiary and Toshiba Group Company." Effective immediately, the Group company will operate independently as OCZ Storage Solutions, which means that we'll yet again see OCZ storage products making the rounds and breaking benchmark records. Here's perhaps the greatest news of all, straight from Toshiba: "The acquisition provides Toshiba with OCZ’s enterprise and client...
Read more...
Editor's Update - 11/27 - 7:45PM We just had a call with some key team members at OCZ. Our contacts inform us that OCZ plans to continue operations in a "business as usual" mode. In fact representatives from OCZ noted specifically that the company will continue to manufacture product for existing customers, support warranties for existing customers, support customer service requirements and otherwise continue to function normally. The team at OCZ was actually fairly positive with respect to today's news and while the word "bankruptcy" typically conjures up a notion of the end times, it actually was portrayed more as a new beginning for OCZ. It was specifically noted that Toshiba values...
Read more...
Here's something you don't hear about often: Microsoft is under investigation with regard to bribery. U.S. authorities are examining the company's potential involvement with "companies and individuals that allegedly paid bribes to overseas government officials in exchange for business." The United States Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have both cracked open cases to investigate the allegations, which specifically involve Microsoft in China, Italy and Romania. Microsoft itself confessed that it has acknowledged the ongoing investigation, stating: "We take all allegations brought to our attention seriously, and we cooperate fully in any government inquiries. Like...
Read more...
The fight against illegal file sharing sites took a trip to France to this week as the alleged men in charge of one of France's most popular file sharing links forums have all been arrested. The three men accused of copyright shenanigans ran a site known as Liberty Land, which has been in operation since 2009 and was currently serving around 800,000 members at the time it was shut down. If convicted, the three men, none of which are older than 30, could face sentences of up to 5 years behind bars and fines of $700,000. Liberty Land falls into France's top 200 sites and contains some 30,000 links to albums and 100,000 links to movies and TV shows. The links direct users to third-party downloading...
Read more...
We definitely had to take a second look at our calendar, but it's not April 1st. In fact, it's nowhere near it. Microsoft--the giant that you would think could never be taken down--has just has its holiday thrown for a loop. Or, at least Microsoft's team of lawyers. If you'll remember back, Microsoft had heard from a judge that its immensely popular Word program could no longer be sold due to the software infringing on patents of one i4i. Of course, Microsoft appealed and did its best to delay things, but it looks as if today's verdict could mean business. i4i had a patent on some XML inner-workings, which Word evidently uses freely. Naturally, i4i isn't too pleased with this. Imagine all of...
Read more...
Is it over? Is it really, really over? Can we finally stick a fork in Psystar and consider them "done?" We can't honestly say we can until the company comes forward and makes a claim that it's giving up the act of selling its own flavor of OS X-loaded machines, but it sure looks as if it may have sold its final rig based on new reports from the legal side. According to AppleInsider, Apple and Psystar recently wrapped up nearly 1.5 years of court battling, but it was less of a handshake and more a judge-mandated injunction. An injunction of the "permanent" variety. The ruling essentially does what you'd think it would--it bans Psystar from selling hardware with Apple's operating system. According...
Read more...
Uh, this is weird. If you're a judge and/or lawyer in Florida, you should probably go through and clean house on your Facebook account. If you're a judge, you're now disallowed from "friending" lawyers for fear of having some sort of bias when or if that lawyer steps into your courtroom. No, we aren't kidding.The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has just banned all judges in the state from clicking "Confirm" on Friend Requests from lawyers, and the reason why goes a little something like this "It reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer 'friends' are in a special position to influence the judge." We suppose we can kind of understand this. Those in court relying...
Read more...
File this one under "news of the weird." In a completely strange and unexpected twist of events, Activision has filed a lawsuit that could prevent a Jack Black-based video game from becoming a reality. The aforementioned company sued game developer Double Fine Productions this past week in order to halt the impending release of "Brutal Legand" by Electronic Arts. The suit was filed in Santa Monica, California, and it alleges that Double Fine failed to deliver the game "on time." Furthermore, it claims that the outfit then offered the completed (albeit late) game to EA instead. Failing to meet a deadline is one thing, but offering up the work to a rival firm is just downright crazy. (If true,...
Read more...
Is there someone in your life insisting that technology, like a fine wine, only improves with age? Are you carrying a cell phone the size of a brick or trying to surf the net on a computer that fills an entire room? Do your mom or dad print your e-mails and reply by phone? Is your best friend the only person you know who still listens to cassettes on a boom box or watches movies on Betamax?Do you need a tech makeover? Does someone you know need one?Intel invites you to submit your story or nominate someone you love for a chance to win a $5,000 tech makeover with setup and training from the crew here at HotHardware!To enter, register and upload photos or video of the tech travesty in your life....
Read more...
In an interesting ruling with far-reaching ramifications, a US Court of Appeals in New York has decided that Cablevision was within its rights to offer a network Digital Video Recorder service to its customers. Instead of a hard drive in every home, your set-top cable box would be able to use a cloud computer arrangement to view programming stored centrally. A group of media companies had sued, claiming that showing recorded programs held on a network server is a form of copyright infringement, even though the Cable company would pay for the right to show the programming in the first place. The media companies had prevailed in a lower court, but the reversal means that the producers of media...
Read more...
In 2004, Jeremy Jaynes was the first person to receive a felony conviction in Virginia for sending Spam. He got nine years in jail. His case has made its way through the state court system, losing all the way; and now in a closely divided decision, The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that the only Spam Jaynes will be allowed to enjoy is in the prison cafeteria. Virginia's law prohibits sending unsolicited bulk e-mail by fraudulent means, such as changing the header or routing information to prevent recipients from contacting or determining the identity of the sender.The decision against Jaynes was not unanimous. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against Jaynes. Justice Elizabeth Lacy...
Read more...
Wikileaks was started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, "an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. " Of course, that only works if the site is reachable.A federal judge in San Francisco has shut down a Web site that posted more than a million government and corporate documents from whistleblowers and others alleging criminal acts worldwide.A permanent injunction was issued Friday by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. It was sought by the Swiss banking group Julius Baer after internal documents were posted to Wikileaks.org claiming to show the bank was connected to money laundering...
Read more...
Not something you could get away with in the U.S., obviously, but Islamic law is something different. After missing a call from her husband on her mobile phone, Iqbal Abul Nasr received a text message from him saying "I divorce you because you didn't answer your husband," Al-Akhbar said.In line with sharia (Islamic law) men do not need to go to court to file for divorce. A unilateral declaration of divorce by a man, repeated three times, formally ends a marriage.It was the third time Abul Nasr, an engineer from Cairo, received a divorce text message from her husband, prompting her to seek a legal decision from the a family court on the status of her marriage. This practice has already been outlawed...
Read more...
Ask.com is the fourth most popular search engine in the United States, accounting for 4.7 percent of all web searches. They've decided to differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitiors by offering AskEraser -- a widget on their service you can use to direct the search engine to discard information like search term, user's Internet address, and other identifying features immediately after your search. If you're worried about what search engines do with the archived information they glean from your searches, this is the service for you. Maybe.“It works like a light switch,” said Doug Leeds, senior vice president for product management at Ask.com. Mr. Leeds said the service would...
Read more...
The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Google in a suit brought by Perfect10, who offers internet pictures of women who have forgotten some or all of their clothes. The images are copyrighted, but the Google search engine displays thumbnail images in search results. And people using the search engine to view the clothing-challenged young ladies rubbed Perfect10 the wrong way.The court focused on the legal question of which party holds the burden of proving whether Google's use of Perfect 10's images constituted a "fair use" under copyright law. Fair use is a defense that allows the use of copyrighted works, under certain circumstances, without the owner's consent.The...
Read more...
You'll recall that just yesterday Vodafone managed to get an injunction against T-Mobile, charging that T-Mobile violated German law by selling the iPhone with a SIM lock and two-year contract. Well, be careful what you wish for.T-Mobile said on Wednesday it will offer the iPhone without a T-Mobile contract for 999 euros ($1,478) at its shops.It will also allow those customers who bought an iPhone since November 19 to unlock the device free of charge so it can be used with other SIM cards. However, that will not enable customers to make use of all the functions that the music-playing and Web-browsing device offers.$1,478? Software unlockers, don't go anywhere, as it appears we still need...
Read more...
The first RIAA court case against an accused "music downloader" begins today. Jammie Thomas will become the first of 26,000 people who have been sued by the RIAA to have their case reach trial. The rest of those sued have settled out of court.The Brainerd, Minn., resident is accused of illegally sharing 1,702 songs for free on a file-sharing network. Her trial offers the first chance for both sides in the debate over online music sharing to show a jury its version of the facts. Thomas is accused of violating the song owners' copyrights. Her lawyer says the record companies haven't even proved she shared the songs.Thomas was initially offered a $3,000 settlement. Now she would...
Read more...
One day after a federal jury ruled Vonage had infringed on Sprint Nextel patents, an appeals court reaffirmed the March decision against Vonage with regards to Verizon patents. It's been a bad two days for them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reaffirmed an order barring Vonage from using Internet phone call technology related to two of the three patents which Verizon claimed had been infringed. The court reversed a lower court's interpretation on the third patent, however, and ordered more proceedings to recalculate damages and royalties from a previous verdict of $58 million plus 5.5 percent in royalties.What was it we said about looking for a new provider?...
Read more...
