Tech Law

California's attorney general is investigating Hewlett-Packard. The probe comes in the wake of HP's reported surveillance of board members that led to the company's decision not to renominate George A. Keyworth II to his seat on the board. HP said it discovered that he leaked confidential informatio...

Microsoft appears to be in line to get more time to comply with all the provisions of its antitrust settlement with the federal government, with terms of the deal now stretching until 2012. The U.S. Department of Justice and Microsoft have jointly filed with the court overseeing the settlement for a...

Google's presence in Brazil might be threatened by a dispute with that government's law enforcement agency over user data. Brazil's public attorney has filed suit against Google demanding information on users of its social networking site, Orkut, who are suspected of engaging in child pornography an...

Microsoft on Tuesday launched a legal campaign against parties that register Web addresses designed to attract visitors by using trademarked terms and common misspellings of more popular domains. The software giant filed three lawsuits this week against alleged "cybersquatters" and "typosquatters." ...

The debate over net neutrality is getting a bit belligerent online. A senior executive at cable company Comcast is challenging the CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman, to a debate on the topic. A copy of a recent e-mail between David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, and Whitman has surfaced on the ...

In separate filings, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the World Privacy Forum have asked the FTC to investigate AOL's release earlier this month of search term queries that had been made by 650,000 of its users over a three-month period. "This release was a violation of section 5 of The FTC Ac...

BetOnSports.com, the UK-based online gaming site whose CEO faces accusations of fraud, has shut down its U.S. operations. The site has become a flashpoint in the online gambling debate since the charges were initially filed almost a month ago. A note on the company's Web site says the firm made the...

On July 27, by a vote of 410 to 15, the House of Representatives passed the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which will restrict access to social networking sites such as MySpace.com and other interactive services at schools and libraries that receive federal funding. The rationale behind the D...

Regulators from the European Union are examining the licensing strategies behind the two competing next-generation DVD formats in an attempt to determine whether antitrust issues need to be addressed. The European Commission reportedly has requested information from manufacturers of players that sup...

Allies have begun taking sides in a court case that has far-reaching implications for the Internet. At stake is a practice at the heart of the Net: linking information between Web sites. The case pits search Goliath Google against adult entertainment publisher Perfect 10, and is currently before a f...

As an Arkansas judge considers whether to give his final approval for a settlement in a high-profile suit against Google alleging widespread click fraud, a group of plaintiffs is trying to block the deal, saying the search engine has not done enough to stop the deception. Attorneys for some plaintif...

With debate over the regulation of online gambling continuing in Congress, law enforcement sent a clear message that existing laws would be aggressively enforced Monday by seeking the arrest of both the CEO and the founder of a leading online sports betting site. David Carruthers, CEO of BetOnSports...

Several memory chip makers continue to be penalized for alleged price fixing efforts that did nothing to stem the falling price of their products from the late 1990s to 2002. The chip makers, which include Samsung, Micron, Infineon, Elpida, Hynix, Mosel-Vitelic, Nanya Technology and NEC, are being s...

The European Union's second-highest court has struck down the regulatory approval of the merger of Sony Music and the music business of Bertelsmann nearly two years after the deal was completed. While the decision could force the undoing of the earlier merger, which created Sony BMG, it may also und...

Antitrust regulators from the European Union levied a US$357 million fine against Microsoft for failing to comply with an earlier order to reduce the impact of its Windows monopoly. The latest fines bring the total financial penalties assessed by the EU against the software giant to close to $1 bill...