Tech Law

It was a David versus Goliath case that made international headlines. Russian authorities, determined to fight pirated software, came down hard on a school found to have 12 computers with phony versions of Windows and Microsoft Office. A court on Thursday dismissed the charges, calling the case "tri...

Last year, the average click fraud rate of pay-per-click advertisements appearing on search engine content networks rose to 19.2 percent for the last quarter of 2006, the highest yet, according to Tom Cuthbert, CEO of Click Forensics. Click fraud occurs when online advertisers pay search engine comp...

Google suffered a legal setback Tuesday as a Belgian court ruled that the search giant violated copyright law by publishing portions of a newspaper's stories on Google News without prior authorization. A higher court upheld an earlier ruling requiring Google to remove snippets of copyrighted news st...

MySpace has launched a pilot project that will help the popular social networking site identify uploaded content that may infringe on someone's copyright. Its new content management and antipiracy system, which it licensed from Audible Magic, can recognize certain uploaded copyrighted content, match...

Music company EMI Group is reportedly in talks with online retailers about providing its digital music catalog in an unprotected MP3 format, allowing downloaded songs to be played on multiple devices. The company is in talks with RealNetworks, eMusic, MusicNet and Viacom's MTV Networks. This follows...

Click fraud is a growing problem for online advertisers who rely on paid search services. Marketing experts are urging e-commerce vendors have to take proactive steps to combat it. Online advertisers pay the search engine company hosting their ad a set amount of money each time a computer user click...

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday ordered DRAM chipmaker Rambus to license its technology to third parties and capped the amount the company can charge others for using the technology -- penalties stemming from a long-running antitrust probe. The FTC's remedy is designed to correct "effects of ...

Apple Inc. has reached a settlement with the company that manages the Beatles' intellectual property holdings, ending a trademark lawsuit and possibly paving the way for Beatles songs to be sold through the iTunes Music Store. On Monday, Apple announced the pact with The Beatles' music publisher App...

On the same day that founder Michael Dell returned as CEO of his namesake firm, a class-action lawsuit was filed claiming Dell had used rebates from its main business supplier Intel of about $1 billion to inflate its profits. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas. Dell has s...

Media conglomerate Viacom demanded on Friday that Google's video service YouTube remove from its Web pages as many as 100,000 video clips containing copyrighted material. The two sides had been negotiating a licensing agreement that would allow Viacom-owned content on the YouTube site when talks bro...

Music label Sony BMG has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that it violated federal law by installing spyware and digital rights management software onto music CDs without telling consumers. The deal calls for Sony BMG to allow consumers to exchange CDs purchased be...

Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular have settled a lawsuit over their secret use of adware Internet software programs as marketing tools filed by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. As part of the settlement, Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular agreed to pay $35,000, $30,000 and $35,000, r...

Despite losing an antitrust case in the European Union nearly three years ago, Microsoft is releasing its new Vista operating system in Europe with features similar to those found illegal by the European Commission in 2004, charged a coalition of Microsoft rivals. Microsoft, of course, is still appe...

Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed Google's YouTube, demanding that the video service release the identities of users who recently uploaded pirated videos of the "24" and "The Simpsons" TV series. With the subpoena, which was issued January 18, Fox may be taking a page from the legal playbook of t...

20th Century Fox has served YouTube and another video-sharing site, LiveDigital, with subpoenas to hand over information about the user who uploaded episodes of the hit TV series "24" before they aired this month. The user also uploaded recent episodes of "The Simpsons." It is not known how YouTube ...