Tech Law

Oracle has prevailed in a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice seeking to block its proposed acquisition of PeopleSoft. The decision, even though it can be appealed, removes a significant roadblock to the acquisition. "This decision puts the onus squarely on the board of PeopleSoft to meet wit...

One of the areas that is increasingly becoming of concern to online retailers is a state's power to regulate e-commerce through enforcing that particular state's regulation of certain offline business activities. A recent case in point is Powers v. Harris, where the Court of Appeals upheld the const...

The state of California has dropped a criminal investigation into the company that sold it electronic voting machines but instead will join an existing lawsuit charging that the company made false claims about the reliability of the machines. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he would si...

Is there copyright protection in compiled data published online? As with most things of a legal nature related to the Internet, it all depends on the factual context. A number of recent U.S. court decisions have shed some light on this issue. In Assessment Technologies of WI LLC v. WIREdata Inc., Ju...

The Federal Communications Commission has asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal that could determine whether cable broadband providers can be forced to open their networks to other Internet providers. The request, which FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced Monday, was hailed by some industry gr...

Just a month after finalizing a billion-dollar settlement with California consumers, Microsoft was sued again, this time by several cities and counties that believe the software giant used its market dominance to charge artificially high prices. The suit, filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court...

A federal judge has tossed out an antitrust claim filed by VeriSign against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), saying that the domain registrar failed to prove antitrust activity has taken place. The decision came after VeriSign was ordered to file additional informatio...

File-sharing applications Morpheus and Grokster were claiming legal victory after a U.S. court said it was not responsible for protecting the copyrights of material swapped on its person-to-person network. The ruling deals a blow to some 28 entertainment companies, including giants such as Disney, M...

Compuware announced that it has filed an emergency motion in its software piracy case against IBM. Compuware asked the court to levy severe sanctions and provide other relief against IBM for introducing critical evidence after the close of discovery.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the trade group for the US movie industry, said Tuesday it has settled lawsuits with 321 Studios, a now defunct company which once made software which allowed consumers to make back up copies of DVDs and video games.

A company driven out of business by Hollywood and the video game industry over its DVD-copying software has reached a settlement with the motion picture industry. In the settlement, suburban St. Louis-based 321 Studios and its owners agreed to stop selling DVD copying software worldwide, said Matthe...

An attorney has sued Yahoo, charging the portal didn't do enough to help him stop personal attacks against him on its message boards. He hopes to make the suit a class action. Stephen Galton, a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, filed suit on Wednesday. Galton claims the Internet company has protected...

In a decision that could have a broad impact on how entertainment is distributed across the Internet, the FCC has given the nominal go-ahead to a TiVo technology that lets users send content over the Internet.

TiVo, one of the initial creators of television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), announced today that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has certified TiVo's technology protection of digital broadcast television. The FCC determined that digital broadcast television content shoul...

Halliburton announced today that it has reached a settlement in the investigation by the SEC involving Halliburton's 1998 and 1999 disclosure of and accounting for the recognition of revenue from unapproved claims on long-term construction projects. "We are pleased to bring closure to this matter," ...