Tech Law

Qwest Communications announced today that it has agreed to a $US250 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The deal concludes a two-and-a-half year investigation of the company for alleged fraudulent accounting practices by former executives that resulted in the imprope...

Governments at both the state and federal level in the U.S. are getting serious about addressing the void in the legal framework for fighting "spyware." To begin with, we need to define the term "spyware," due to the fact that this term has been used to describe everything from keystroke loggers, to...

The European Union today expanded its investigation into Intel's alleged anticompetitive practices, filing formal charges that demand explanations from four countries that require purchased computers to contain chips that only Intel can offer. The European Commission said such requirements might vio...

Moving to shut down alleged purveyors of spyware before a slew of legislation aimed at curbing the practice can become law, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has targeted a New Hampshire man it says ran a spyware and pop-up advertising ring. The FTC filed a complaint in federal court in New Hampshi...

For the second time this week, U.S. lawmakers have approved a bill aimed at stamping out the spread of spyware, malicious software that is installed onto the computers of unsuspecting users and can track their online activities. However, the flurry of activity might actually have a downside for thos...

Following the lead of their American counterparts, the leading music industry groups in the UK and Europe have launched scores of private lawsuits against dozens of individuals they say illegally swapped copyrighted music. The British Phonographic Industry filed 28 lawsuits in Great Britain and the ...

Nowadays, e-mail and intranet are the most common methods of internal group communication for most companies. Specifically, many companies use mass e-mails and/or posting to their intranet to inform employees of a host of things, including changes to their employee benefit plans. An example would be...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has ruled against Microsoft in its attempts to patent and license a technology that forms the basis of several of its software programs. Though Microsoft was granted a patent for file allocation tables, or FAT, in 1996, that patent was challenged earlier this yea...

Microsoft formally asked a European court to toss out a requirement that it share expanded portions of the Windows source code, the opening salvo in what analysts say is shaping up to be another epic battle with antitrust regulators. In the first of what is slated to be a two-day hearing before the ...

The U.S. government decided recently to negotiate with, rather than litigate against, the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda (both referred to as Antigua) over the issue of online gaming. This decision came about after the U.S. lost an arbitration proceeding under the trade dispute resolution ...

Amazon.com and Microsoft have joined forces for what they described as a "wake-up call" to spammers, filing lawsuits seeking damages from defendants they say sent millions of pieces of spam and attempted phishing and spoofing against the two companies' customers. The companies together sued a Canada...

Microsoft announced today that it has filed nine new lawsuits against alleged spammers, including a Web-hosting company that offered services specifically for people who send unsolicited mail. The suits are part of a larger effort by Microsoft to target the perpetrators of spam. With this batch, fil...

Last Sunday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed a bill that strengthens California's antispam laws. Senate Bill 1457 amends the current laws by making it an offense to send advertising in a spam e-mail either from California or to a California e-mail under specified circumstances. The new...

Does the operation of a Web site mean that your company can be dragged into court in any jurisdiction? This is a question that has been the subject of numerous lawsuits in both the U.S. and other countries. Here are summaries of a few recent U.S. decisions that provide some guidance on this issue. I...

Infineon Technologies AG announced today that it has reached an agreement with the United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division. Infineon will plead guilty to a charge related to the violation of U.S. antitrust laws in connection with the pricing in its Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)...