Tech Law

New laws and regulations inevitably follow massive and profound technological changes as societies come to grips with how new technologies may be used. Given the extent of changes the Internet has fostered across nearly every aspect of modern life, it comes as no surprise that innovations dealing wi...

A joint sting operation by the FBI and the People's Republic of China has netted more than half a million dollars' worth of counterfeit software, the FBI announced Monday. The unprecedented cooperative effort, code-named "Summer Solstice" and dating back to 2005, resulted in the arrest of 25 people ...

A federal judge in Boston is set to hear arguments this week in a case that accuses Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the code on which he built his massively popular Web site. The lawsuit could at least damage the young Web 2.0 entrepreneur's reputation, and at worst result in a Facebook...

When consumers buy software, they typically don't spend much time reading through the rather long, tortuous legalese that makes up the end user licensing agreement or terms of service agreement that users must agree to before getting access to a product or service. However, distributed applications,...

A ruling by a federal court in a case involving an online roommate matching service will hamstring Web innovators, a civil liberties group argued this week in papers filed with the judicial panel. In a "friend of the court" brief submitted Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals in California, the Elect...

After months of controversy and global outcry, Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick will undergo congressional scrutiny later this year in a planned closed hearing before the House of Representatives' Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), ...

It seems like everybody's talking about e-discovery nowadays -- just take a look at any IT trade journal or IT news source and you're likely to see at least one article about what e-discovery is and how to prepare for it. However, despite all this attention, both in IT and legal circles, there are s...

As the July 15 deadline for new Internet radio royalty rates to take effect sailed by in relative peace, most Internet radio webcasters remained up and running following initial results of compromise talks late last week between webcasters and SoundExchange. Most recently, SoundExchange, the arm of ...

Warner Music Group has settled a federal copyright-infringement lawsuit it filed in May against the social networking Web site Imeem. Warner alleged that Imeem had allowed members to illegally download copyrighted material and was operating its site without any sort of copyright compliance or filter...

Sony BMG has filed a $12 million lawsuit against the Amergence Group, claiming that the company did not perform as expected in developing copyright protection software for music CDs. The suit comes after Sony refunded millions of dollars to consumers who complained about digital rights management so...

An appeals court declined to issue a stay on steep hikes in royalty fees for Internet radio, clearing the way for the new fees and 18 months of retroactive collections -- which some say could kill Web radio -- to come due on Sunday. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Cir...

Citing information from documents obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the Freedom of Information Act, a civil liberties group this week alleged the federal agency has had chronic problems with its use of anti-terror letters to collect personal information about American citizens....

Time Warner's AOL has reached a settlement with 48 states attorneys general that calls for the online service to pay $3 million, offer refunds to some customers and make it easier for people to cancel service in the future. The settlement was announced late Wednesday, and culminates years of complai...

Samsung and Ericsson have agreed to end patent infringement lawsuits against each other, signing an agreement to cross-license their mobile technologies instead. The cross-licensing agreement covers a host of patents relating to second- and third-generation, or 2G and 3G, mobile services. South Kore...

A U.S. subsidiary of Germany's SAP made "inappropriate downloads" of documents from the Web site of rival Oracle, SAP acknowledged, but the company denied the actions represented corporate espionage. In response to a suit filed by Oracle in March, SAP said its division TomorrowNow was authorized to ...