Tech Law

Citing First Amendment protections, a U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has ruled in favor of Amazon.com in its battle with North Carolina over potentially sensitive customer data the state claims it needs to calculate taxes. Judge Marsha J. Pechman ruled Monday that Amazon is not obligated to pr...

On October 14, 2010, the Federal Court of Canada handed down its much-anticipated decision regarding Amazon's patent application for an invention entitled "Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communication Network," or what has more colloquially been referred to as the "Amazon 1-Cli...

The Federal Communications Commission is expected to propose rules Thursday that will require wireless phone carriers to alert customers by voice or text message when they have reached their monthly usage limits. The FCC wants carriers to send this alert before customers incur extra charges. At the ...

Research In Motion on Friday reportedly came to an agreement of sorts with the United Arab Emirates, narrowly averting a ban on its services that was due to kick in next Monday. Neither side will disclose details of just what transpired. Meanwhile, RIM faces bans or clampdowns in several other count...

In a set of coordinated investigations, federal, state and local officials filed charges this week against more than 70 defendants who allegedly used cybercrime techniques to defraud both individuals and corporations out of millions of dollars. New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., ...

The Indian government has been unable to intercept communications carried over BlackBerry devices despite an interim agreement on data sharing that kept Research In Motion's service alive after a threatened August outage, according to a report published Friday in the Economic Times, an Indian news s...

In the past few months, Research In Motion, the creator of the BlackBerry, has been under pressure by authorities in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries to provide greater access to the encrypted information sent by its devices. Each country threatened to ban BlackBerr...

Congress is unlikely to pass legislation regulating the activities of broadband Internet service providers this year. And it's not clear when -- or if -- such rules will be enacted. Democratic California Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, pulled a bill...

Six major high-tech firms have agreed to toss out the no-solicitation agreements they had reached concerning competitors' employees. The secret anti-trolling agreements came to a voluntary end on Friday as the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and ...

The private settlement of HP's lawsuit against Oracle over its hiring of Mark Hurd as co-president after weeks of public wrangling is welcome news to everyone but the corporate attorneys. Still, don't expect the two vendors to just pick up and resume their former close partnership. Their quarrel got...

The dream of streaming video and audio on the go, without boundaries, is one step closer to reality. The FCC has ruled in favor of releasing "white spaces" -- broadcast frequencies between television channels -- for wireless broadband use. The result could be the emergence of "super WiFi" networks.

Blockbuster, the company that once reigned atop the video rental business, announced Thursday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This may be its last chance at surviving in an industry in which consumers increasingly are gravitating toward services that enable instant access to ...

The Texas Comptroller's Office recently made revisions to its sales tax rules that could ensnare many companies that merely use computer servers located in Texas, requiring them to collect the state's sales tax on sales to customers there. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state can only ...

Monday's announcement that Oracle and HP have settled the lawsuit triggered by Oracle's hiring of former HP CEO Mark Hurd may seem surprising, given that the suit was filed just two weeks ago. However, there are many reasons both companies would want to end this battle now. HP filed the suit the day...

After resisting pressure from advocacy groups and attorneys general for more than a year, Craigslist has decided to permanently remove its adult services section from its online classified ads in the United States. Elsewhere around the world, the section will remain live. The site closed the section...