Tech Law

The standards for setting charges -- and later sentences -- for hackers differs dramatically on a state by state basis. But one thing is increasingly clear -- authorities are stepping up action against hackers of mobile phones, PDAs and conventional computer systems. New developments in mobile phone...

The office of U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman initiated a special process under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules today to obtain information on China's intellectual property (IP) enforcement efforts. The United States is exercising a process established under WTO Agreement provisions on Tr...

Research in Motion suffered a potentially damaging setback when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt lower court proceedings that could result in the BlackBerry maker being barred from selling its hugely popular hand-held e-mail device in the U.S. NTP, a firm that first accused RIM of patent infri...

The Internet's governing body has agreed to settle several outstanding lawsuits involving domain registrar VeriSign, an agreement that will keep that company in charge of the key dot-com domain until 2012. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said the settlement is still s...

Microsoft has abandoned a plan that would have excluded rival media players from being included on devices that were outfitted with the Windows Media Player. Microsoft had proposed that device makers that included a CD with the Windows Media Player with their devices not be allowed to include any co...

The former chief executive officer of online marketing firm Intermix has agreed to give up profits allegedly made through the distribution of spyware as part of a settlement with the state of New York. New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Brad Greenspan, the founder and former CEO of I...

Just days after Nortel Networks said it hired a former top-ranking executive at Motorola as its new CEO, hoping new blood at the top will help complete a lengthy turnaround, Motorola has sued to block the hiring and protect potential company secrets. Nortel announced Monday that CEO Bill Owens, wh...

Google has begun to digitize books in eight European countries, pushing forward on a global scale with a project that has been the subject of fierce criticism and now faces a second lawsuit from publishing interests in the U.S. Google said that the scanning of books was under way in Austria, Belgium...

A California law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under 17 is being challenged by two industry trade groups 10 days after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill. The Entertainment Software Association and Video Software Dealers Association have filed a lawsuit in U.S.

Federal authorities have broken up a massive piracy ring that they say was capable of producing millions of counterfeit music and software CDs. Three California men face a range of charges after being indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on counterfeiting charges. The charges resulted f...

RealNetworks and Microsoft have reached a set of agreements to end one of the most bitter private antitrust matters in the technology sector, with RealNetworks receiving as much as US$761 million in cash and marketing considerations for its music and games services from the software giant and the tw...

In a case seen boosting the credibility and profile of blogs as sources of news and opinion, the Delaware Supreme Court this week found that four bloggers accused of defamation had the right to remain anonymous. The court ruled that a lower court was wrong in ordering an Internet service provider to...

Pressing forward on its private anti-trust lawsuit against leading chipmaker Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has subpoenaed records from several Intel customers, including major PC makers and smaller vendors. AMD hopes the records will help bolster its argument that Intel used its market share ...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission took action against spyware this week by asking a U.S. District Court Judge to halt an operation that allegedly plagued users who clicked for free file-sharing software with performance-slowing, private-information-gathering software that also altered search results...

Dell computer has officially opened what it calls its largest, most advanced manufacturing plant in North Carolina, a move meant to underscore the company's commitment to operating in the United States but one that has already created its share of controversy. Dell opened the 750,000-square-foot fac...