Tech Law

California Sen. Mark Leno on Friday introduced a bill in the legislature that would require all smartphones and devices sold in the state to have a kill switch starting Jan. 1, 2015. Senate Bill 962 comes against a backdrop of rising smartphone theft. It is now the leading property crime in the U.S....

Criminal and civil allegations of insider trading recently were filed against Brian Jorgenson, a senior portfolio manager at Microsoft. This news amazed me, because over the last few years there has been an abundance of published information about the hazards of insider trading, especially the crimi...

The European Commission has accepted Google's latest proposal to settle a probe of its practices pending agreement with the 125 companies and organizations that filed complaints against the Internet giant. Google last week made its third settlement offer, following a warning from the Commission on J...

Democratic members of Congress this week moved to replace by legislative means the Net neutrality rules that a court decision last month suddenly rendered defunct. Lawmakers introduced the Open Internet Preservation Act in both chambers. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last month changed the telec...

The Pirate Bay is once again wide open, thanks a ruling by an appeals court in the Netherlands that decreed Internet providers no longer have to block IP addresses associated with the site. The Hague Appeals Court reasoned that the required blocking was impossible to implement or enforce because use...

Google reportedly is close to settling the antitrust case the European Commission brought against it more than three years ago. This is its third offer to the EC so far, and it reportedly includes commitments from Google on how it will treat rivals and how it will use content from other providers. "...

The widespread problems in implementing the Affordable Care Act have provided some momentum to the efforts by the Obama administration and Congress to ratchet up reforms in the management and procurement of information technology. President Obama conceded the need to put more emphasis on such reform...

Samsung and Google on Monday solidified their business relationship, announcing a far-reaching, global cross-licensing agreement that will cover not only existing patents, but also intellectual property developed by the sprawling companies over the next 10 years. Under the agreement, the companies w...

The United States Department of Justice on Monday announced two new options for tech companies to report on government requests for information about their customers. In response, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn and Yahoo withdrew their lawsuits against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Co...

Software developers have long been able to protect their innovations by virtue of a favorable provision of U.S. patent law that gives them almost monopoly power to maximize financial returns. The law also enables developers to take action against any other party that comes close to duplicating or im...

A federal appeals court's Tuesday ruling on Net neutrality has sparked dire predictions: Streaming video will cost more; Internet-based multiplayer games could get expensive; and innovation might be stifled. Credo Mobile is gathering names for a petition to Federal Communications Commission chair To...

Net Neutrality received a body slam from a federal appeals court Tuesday, but the door was left open for resuscitating the policy. In a case brought by Verizon against the Federal Communications Commission, the judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found the agency...

With all the headlines about Internet cybersecurity breaches, there seem to be few headlines about the consequences for cybercriminals. That is because not all cybercriminals are caught, and when they are it often takes months, if not years, before trials. Even when the cybercriminals plead guilty,...

Apple and Samsung have set a date on which they'll attempt to iron out their differences in a patent dispute that's headed to trial in March. The companies have agreed to meet before a mediator on Feb. 19, according to a document filed with a federal district court in California, to discuss a settle...

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to jump into a software patent case that could resolve the muddled situation that has been vexing IT companies, legal experts and federal judges for years. Specifically, the Supreme Court said earlier this month that it would rule on Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank In...