Tech Law

Facebook has been blindsided by a lawsuit that could have triggered an upheaval in its ownership structure, or at least a massive legal fight -- if it had been filed a few months ago, that is. Still, the modicum of legal uncertainty created by the case must be giving top executives at the social net...

Comcast's pending acquisition of General Electric's NBC Universal was put under the microscope again Thursday as the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and The Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a field hearing to investigate the proposed d...

The Bilski v. Kappos Supreme Court case was the latest skirmish in the ongoing war over the scope of patents. On the one side are purists who want the patent statute open to new technologies, and on the other are those who wish to see the patent laws more curtailed -- and particularly that the paten...

A few months ago, the Globeandmail.com's Barry McKenna reported that "Canada has earned a dubious distinction as a world hub for illegitimate file-sharing websites and a leader in Internet piracy." In addition, Canada is in the "embarrassing position of harboring five of the top eight remaining unau...

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a patent case that has held the software industry and patent attorneys in suspense for much of the last year. However, the decision, which came down on the last day of the court's term, was worth the wait for advocates in favor of the patentability of business pro...

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a memorandum that proposes the government to provide 500 MHz worth of additional broadband spectrum for auction -- spectrum that is now controlled by the federal government and private companies. The goal of the proposal is to provide more wireless space for th...

Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard users' personal information, the FTC announced Thursday. In what was the agency's first such case against a social networking service, the FTC charged that s...

A judge has ruled in YouTube's favor regarding the video-sharing site's three-year battle with Viacom over alleged copyright infringement. On Wednesday, the U.S. District Court in New York ruled that YouTube had complied with the take-down provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in its ha...

The White House on Tuesday released its plan to fight intellectual property theft, including more than 30 recommendations designed to encourage all branches of government to take a more aggressive stand against piracy. The Joint Strategic Plan, which was required by the 2008 PRO-IP Act, creates a ju...

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposed a new three-track system to expedite filings rather than maintain the standard first-come, first-served basis. This move comes in response to the average review time soaring to nearly 35 months last year from an average of 27 months as recent...

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and Motorola have settled their two-year-long patent dispute over smartphone technology. Under the terms of the agreement, RIM has agreed to make a one-time payment and ongoing royalties to put an end to the litigation. The two companies have also settled on a cro...

There has been a lot of activity related to the issue of Net neutrality in recent weeks, but none of it seems to be leading to a resolution of the central question of who -- if anybody -- ultimately will regulate broadband ISPs. The latest developments in this ongoing saga occurred Wednesday, when F...

Google will turn over data it collected from unsecured WiFi networks to authorities in Germany, France and Spain. This is the latest development in a controversy that began last month with Google's admission that cars gathering images for its Street View service were equipped with devices that captu...

Four out of five consumers don't know the speed of their broadband connections. Do they care? Apparently not -- but the Federal Communications Commission does, and it's starting two projects to clarify how fast U.S. broadband speeds are. In a survey released Tuesday on consumer broadband experience,...

Last August, Douglas Rennick, a Canadian citizen, was charged with various offenses by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Specifically, Rennick was charged with several criminal indictments, including bank fraud, money laundering conspiracy, gambling conspiracy,...