Tech Law

A method for screening new hires that counts the likes of Google among its adherents may create some fertile ground for future employment lawsuits. That's the opinion of two attorneys writing the New York Law Journal this week. The attorneys, Robert Ottinger and Carrie Kurzon, of The Ottinger Firm i...

Google has been ratcheting up its campaign to compel Microsoft to further open its Vista operating system to third-party search engines. Its latest tactic entailed petitioning the judge overseeing Microsoft's antitrust agreement with federal and state governments to extend it past November, when mos...

The U.S. International Trade Commission has denied a request from Qualcomm to put on hold an order barring phones containing chips made by Qualcomm that have been found to infringe on a rival's patents from the U.S. market. The decision, handed down on Thursday, likely leaves Qualcomm with few optio...

Earlier this month, it looked for a while as though there might be another wave of multi-jurisdictional investigations against Microsoft reminiscent of the antitrust saga that began in 1998. Google had been complaining -- first behind the scenes, then publicly -- about the lack of access for third-p...

The three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court has upheld a ruling that grants extensive new privacy protections for e-mail users. It is an ambitious decision -- said to be the first for the Circuit Courts -- and one that is almost surely headed to the Supreme Court for review. In Warshak v. Unite...

LG Electronics has filed a countersuit against Hitachi alleging that the firm has infringed seven of its patents relating to plasma display panel technologies. The suit comes in response to similar accusations made by Hitachi against LG Electronics in April -- namely, that LG was improperly using Hi...

Police in the UK have broken up a Web-based child pornography and pedophilia network, rescuing 31 children in the process and charging some 700 people worldwide with crimes. Two hundred of the suspects and 15 of the children were located in Britain, according to the UK's Child Exploitation and Onlin...

Another day, another charge that Microsoft has violated its consent decree -- or so it must seem to the software titan, which has been battling such accusations ever since the mega antitrust case against it ended in 2002. In the latest controversy, though, the company lodging the complaint is none o...

A memo apparently written by a key antitrust enforcement official in the U.S. Justice Department is raising suspicions that the Bush Administration unduly favored Microsoft's positions. Issued by Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, a former antitrust partner at Covington & Burlington, ...

Mobile phone technology maker Qualcomm plans to ask the White House to step into a trade and patent dispute with rival Broadcom, hoping the Bush administration will overturn a trade ruling that could ban new models of third-general mobile phones containing the company's technology from being sold in...

ChoicePoint is still doing damage control two years after identity thieves set up fake businesses and bought personal information on 163,000 U.S. residents from the data broker. A settlement reached this week between ChoicePoint and attorneys general from 43 states and the District of Columbia may w...

Corporations appear to be spending more time and money on regulatory compliance now than at any other time in recent history. In fact, the largest U.S. corporations spent an average of $4.6 million implementing Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 404 controls in their first year of implementation, and Forres...

The Federal Trade Commission reportedly is formally investigating Google's proposed takeover of interactive ad firm DoubleClick, with the agency weighing both the potential antitrust and consumer privacy issues of the blockbuster deal. The FTC has acknowledged receiving complaints about the possible...

The state of Connecticut is suing electronics retailer Best Buy, saying the company deceived customers by using in-store kiosks linked to an employee-only Web site to suggest that bargains posted on the company's public-facing site were no longer available. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blume...

HP and the SEC have reached a settlement on charges that HP misled investors by not disclosing that a board member had resigned over the spying tactics used by the former chairman. HP agreed to an SEC order that contains no penalties and admits no wrongdoing but contains a pledge that the company wi...