Tech Law

A consortium of six major tech players calling themselves "Rockstar Bidco" won a $4.5 billion bid for 6,000 Nortel patents in June. The deal closed last week, but all may not be said and done. The Department of Justice reportedly intends to ask the consortium members just what they plan to do with t...

In Microsoft v. i4i, The U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed that the presumption of validity is high for an issued patent and that invalidating it requires an extremely strong case. In particular, the court affirmed that proving invalidity and unenforceability requires "clear and convincing eviden...

Opponents of the pending $39 billion merger between wireless carriers AT&T and T-Mobile are taking legal action with New York-based law firm Bursor & Fisher in a bid to block the deal. Eleven arbitration cases have been filed on behalf of AT&T customers, and the law firm hopes more angry...

Opponents of the pending $39 billion merger between wireless carriers AT&T and T-Mobile are taking legal action with New York-based law firm Bursor & Fisher in a bid to block the deal. Eleven arbitration cases have been filed on behalf of AT&T customers, and the law firm hopes more angry...

In 2010, Google admitted that when collecting Street View photos around the world it also collected data from unsecured wireless networks. That led to a bunch of lawsuits. Recently, U.S. Federal Judge James Ware refused to dismiss a class action lawsuit based on allegations that Google violated th...

Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable have promised to be more proactive in alerting possible copyright violators using their networks in a voluntary agreement with the music and film industries. The antipiracy model they've adopted has been pushed for some time by the Record...

I recently heard a couple of very interesting interviews on the radio -- both with Bernie Marcus, one of the original founders of The Home Depot. They turned out to be two of the most interesting and important interviews I have heard. Marcus said that government regulation has grown so out of contro...

Nortel awarded its 6,000 patents to the winning bidder, and it wasn't Google -- it was a consortium of six mobile technology leaders: Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony. The group paid $4.5 billion in auction that took place over several days. Google set the starting figure...

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law Wednesday that will require Amazon.com and other Internet retailers to collect sales tax on goods sold to California residents. Mail order laws have long held that state sales tax doesn't have to be paid by companies that do not have a presence in the sta...

French search company 1plusV has stepped up its battle with Google over how its algorithms rank sites, filing suit against the search engine giant in the French Commercial Court. It is seeking $423 million in damages from business it claims it lost due to alleged antitrust practices by Google. At $4...

Competing for federal contracts is tough -- and protesting the award of a federal contract may be even tougher. But a ruling by a federal agency appears to have improved the ability of all vendors -- not just IT firms -- to utilize key legal channels for protesting the award of federal contracts. On...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the video game industry on Monday, striking down the California law forbidding the sale of violent games to minors. In its decision on Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the court says that the act does not comport with the First Amendment of the U...

Google was notified by the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday that a broad formal investigation will be launched. Google respects the FTC's process, it said in a blog post, and will be working with the agency over the coming months. The FTC's Bureau of Competition reportedly will issue subpoenas t...

The Federal Communications Commission has declared war on the practice of telecom carriers surreptitiously nickel-and-diming their customers through a practice called "cramming." This refers to those nagging mystery charges that pop up on many consumers' telephone bills -- some 20 million people all...

For obvious reasons, this author hopes that a hyperlink, on its own, cannot be defamatory. Yet this is precisely the question before Canada's Supreme Court in Crookes v. Newton. The defendant, who operates P2PNet.net, authored an article entitled "Free Speech in Canada," including hyperlinks to fu...