Tech Law

Setting the stage for what likely will be a lengthy court battle, member states of the European Union have backed a plan to slap a record fine of more than $600 million on Microsoft for alleged antitrust violations in the personal computer market. Microsoft already has responded to word of the fine,...

Last-ditch efforts by high-ranking Microsoft executives to negotiate a settlement with European Union antitrust regulators apparently have fallen short, and the clock is now ticking toward a March 24th decision by regulators about what penalties to slap on the software giant. Microsoft had been in n...

Microsoft's attack against Linux desktop software provider Lindows.com has taken yet another turn, with Lindows' legal counsel filing a motion Monday in U.S. Federal Court seeking to stop the flood of global trademark lawsuits Microsoft has launched in a host of foreign countries over the last sever...

An alliance of leading Internet companies -- including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and EarthLink -- has filed a wave of lawsuits against "hard-core" spammers under the new CAN-SPAM law that took effect at the beginning of 2004. Specifically, the companies said they have filed six lawsuits that name hundre...

The heated battle between The SCO Group and the open-source community took another turn this week as an e-mail became public that seemed to imply Microsoft helped SCO raise millions of dollars for its legal war against open source. The e-mail, between a SCO executive and an outside consultant, appea...

The U.S. Department of Justice has delivered a body blow to Oracle's languishing hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, suing to block the $9.4 billion deal because it reportedly would result in higher prices, less innovation and fewer choices. "We believe this transaction is anticompetitive -- pure a...

Intel has won an appeal of a 2002 patent infringement award based on the technology that powers its Itanium chip line, overturning the earlier decision and possibly saving the company more than $100 million. The U.S. Court of Appeals set aside the October 10, 2002, ruling that found Intel had violat...

In what could be the beginning of the end of the Oracle-PeopleSoft takeover saga, staff attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice have recommended blocking the deal because it raises antitrust concerns. The DoJ informed both companies late Tuesday of the recommendation, which will be used by the a...

The SCO Group has broadened its lawsuit against IBM by adding a copyright infringement claim to the case. Previously, SCO was prevented from formally including copyright infringement in the case because of unresolved issues with Novell, which sold most of its Unix intellectual property rights to SCO...

Microsoft has announced it will hold off on implementing modifications to the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer as a result of an ongoing patent lawsuit filed by Web software firm Eolas. Eolas claims the software that allows IE to use plug-ins infringes on a patent that it holds jointly...

The SCO Group has accused Novell of libel, claiming Novell interfered in bad faith with SCO's Unix copyrights. SCO's lawyers filed the lawsuit in state court in Utah, where both companies' headquarters are located. "SCO is trying this case in the press with masterful precision," Ted Schadler, vice p...

Following the lead of high-profile Linux vendors HP and Novell, Red Hat has announced it will offer legal protection to all existing and future customers of its enterprise installations of the open-source operating system. Novell's decision last week to indemnify customers of its newly acquired SuSE...

Microsoft has lost its bid to have a $512 million patent-infringement award thrown out of court. Instead, a federal judge ruled that a jury acted properly in awarding the payout to Eolas Technologies and the University of California. The award stems from an August 2003 ruling that Microsoft infringe...

Technology heavyweights IBM and Intel have agreed to provide seed funding for a new legal defense fund aimed at thwarting attempts by The SCO Group to target Linux end users and creators, including Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. The Open Source Development Labs said the two companies, along with Mon...

As the opening day of Apple's annual Macworld conference approaches, a growing number of iBook notebook computer users are threatening protests and mulling class-action lawsuits. They say the company has not done enough to address, or even acknowledge, serious flaws in the iBook that have caused som...