Tech Law

AT&T threw in the towel on its planned $39 billion T-Mobile merger over the holiday weekend. On Thursday, it posted a blog entry saying the deal was off. The announcement came two days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said he would oppose the deal. This is the ...

AT&T threw in the towel on its planned $39 billion T-Mobile merger over the holiday weekend. On Thursday, it posted a blog entry saying the deal was off. The announcement came two days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said he would oppose the deal. This is the ...

EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia has done what few in the global patent community are willing to do: He has acknowledged the elephant in the room by questioning the motives of two multinationals -- Samsung and Apple -- as they bloody each other with patent lawsuits. "Standardization and IP rights ...

The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger hit another obstacle Tuesday when the chairman of the FCC called the deal harmful to consumers. AT&T will have to prove otherwise if FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gets his way. He's asked that the other commissioners approve an administrative hearing on th...

The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger hit another obstacle Tuesday when the chairman of the FCC called the deal harmful to consumers. AT&T will have to prove otherwise if FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gets his way. He's asked that the other commissioners approve an administrative hearing on th...

Microsoft's star witness, the company's chairman and former CEO Bill Gates, took the stand in a long-brewing antitrust civil lawsuit that pits Redmond against software maker Novell. The suit is based on an oft-repeated accusation against Microsoft: that it abused its dominant position in the market ...

Tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are lining up in opposition to a copyright enforcement bill that will be the subject of a hearing in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The companies sent a letter to key me...

The Senate defeated a Republican bid to overturn Net neutrality rules on Thursday, thus paving the way for the regulations to take effect on Nov. 20. In a 52-to-46 vote along party lines, senators rejected S.J. Res. 6, the resolution proposed earlier this year by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison under the ...

Seven members of a massive alleged Internet fraud ring have been charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The ring infected more than 4 million computers worldwide with malware and rerouted online searches fraudulently to websites and ads, which then paid the ring's member...

Rumblefish and APM Music are teaming up to offer an online catalog of popular music and soundtracks to consumers looking to legally add sound to personal video content such as YouTube videos, slideshows or presentations. The partnership, announced Thursday, combines Rumblefish's experience with soci...

A bipartisan trio of Senators has introduced a bill that gives states the authority to collect online sales taxes. The measure, cosponsored by Senators Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Dick Durbin, (D-Ill., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., carves out an exception for small businesses, one of the main objections to t...

As an observer of the IT and Internet industries for several decades, I watch with great amusement as new buzzwords surface for old concepts. Not too long ago, the term "cloud computing" appeared on the scene. The technology concept behind cloud computing has been around for more than 50 years, and ...

A coalition of film studios, record labels and media entities led by the UK record industry lobby group BPI recently sent a letter to British Internet service provider BT demanding that the company block access to The Pirate Bay website. The group said that if BT doesn't act within two weeks, the ma...

The FCC has voted unanimously to reform the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system. It is creating a new Connect America Fund, with a budget of $4.5 billion to meet the end-goal of this policy shift: extending broadband infrastructure to rural Americans, as opposed to subsidizi...

Research In Motion has not heard the last of the days-long outage of its network earlier this month. Lawsuits seeking class action status have been filed against the company in both the United States and Canada, seeking damages for the loss of service. One suit was filed in federal court in Santa An...