Tech Law

Samsung Electronics was dealt a legal blow on Tuesday, as a judge ordered it to halt sales of the Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer while it considers whether the device's design is so similar to Apple's iPad that it constitutes patent infringement. Samsung has already filed an appeal of the California fe...

Facebook's initial public offering in May was a disaster. The question now is how much of the fiasco can be laid at the feet of Nasdaq and how much, if at all, on the IPO process itself? Or for that matter, on Facebook. Those questions were points of debate at a Tuesday hearing of the U.S. House Ove...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested dozens of alleged cybercriminals in an international sting to crack down on Internet fraudsters. The arrests were the result of a two-year global sting operation conducted by the FBI and designed to nab hackers in "carding" crimes, in which perpe...

Facebook is shelling out $10 million in a settlement that will allow it to keep its Sponsored Stories advertising program on the site but will saddle it with new restrictions. The Sponsored Stories system on Facebook is meant to help ads get more exposure. When a user checks into a location or "like...

A brewing patent dispute between Yahoo and Facebook may wind up being settled outside of the courtroom, according to court filings made this week by Yahoo's attorneys in the U.S. court for the Northern District of California, in which they also sought extensions to other filing deadlines. The two co...

With the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics, London will be the first city to have hosted the modern games of three Olympics. It will also be the first Olympics to embrace social media, as well as being the first to actually step in and place limitations on how said media can be used. The IOC has no prob...

YouTube's attorneys have sent a cease-and-desist letter to YouTube-mp3 demanding that it stop allowing users to extract audio clips from YouTube videos in order to copy them onto personal devices. YouTube-mp3 is a highly user-friendly service. All a user must do is enter a video's URL, and the audio...

Well, he did say it was a tentative decision. One week after telling the court that he was leaning toward dismissing the patent suit between Apple and Motorola because neither side had established a right to relief, Judge Richard Posner reversed course and decided to allow Apple and Motorola to purs...

The Department of Justice reportedly is investigating whether cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner are violating antitrust rules through practices that limit their broadband customers' access to online video. The Justice Department apparently has questioned these companies, as well as oth...

A European telecommunications agency in December proposed that the United Nations collect a tax on some of the largest websites and network providers in the U.S. for their overseas activities, according to documents that recently surfaced. ETNO, the main telecommunications operators association in E...

The Apple v. Motorola trial scheduled to begin next week in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has been cancelled, with the judge presiding over the case deciding it should be dismissed because neither side has established a right to relief. However, Judge Richard Posner w...

Social media is a powerful tool that nonprofit organizations can use to quickly, cheaply and personally engage with funders, volunteers and clients. But while the benefits of using social media are vast, challenges and legal risks exist. Here are some tips and traps to keep in mind and discuss with...

Tech companies, particularly those just starting to take off, need to consider a myriad of business and legal issues in their vision for the future. Especially in light of the dot-com bubble burst, startup tech companies need to pay particular concern to how shareholders can best protect their inter...

Google has updated its Transparency Report to include requests to take down URLs that contain copyrighted material. Such requests, made by content owners or their representatives, are at the heart of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Until now, Google has only publicized government requests to r...

The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty is running up against what seems to be a chronic problem with Google: difficulty in getting all of the information it requested. The CNIL was tapped by Europe's Article 29 Working Party to take the lead in analyzing Google's new privacy policy,...