Tech Law

Viacom's billion-dollar copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google's YouTube took a nasty turn Thursday as a series of documents were released to the public. "Fostering and countenancing piracy were central to YouTube's economic business model," Viacom's filings charge. Viacom "overtly and covert...

Google's proposed $750 million acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob may be subjected to a protracted period of regulatory scrutiny. The FTC reportedly is seeking sworn declarations from at least two of Google's competitors. Google announced its intent to buy AdMob in November 2009, in a stock ...

Legislation signed into law on February 24 will have a profound effect on e-commerce and catalog companies that sell to customers in Colorado. Companies that do not collect Colorado sales tax must notify their Colorado customers that they are obligated to file a use tax return to pay the sales and u...

Newegg, a well-established online Web site that sells electronic products, apparently had counterfeit -- or perhaps demo products -- make their way into its inventory that were then sold to customers. The site reportedly shipped several fake Intel Core i7 processors to customers. At least one of tho...

TiVo stock skyrocketed Thursday following news that it had won its long-running court case against sister companies Dish Network and EchoStar. Specifically, a federal appeals court affirmed a previous contempt finding against Dish and EchoStar for violating a court-ordered permanent injunction to st...

While patent practitioners are well familiar with and accepting of the phrase that patentable subject matter may include "anything under the sun that is made by man," the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently heard arguments that may call the rationale behind that famous...

RealNetworks has ended its legal battle with Hollywood over its RealDVD software. The Motion Picture Association of America and Viacom filed suit against RealNetworks in 2008, alleging that RealDVD infringed on content producers' copyrights. RealDVD allowed users to save copies of DVDs to their comp...

There's a common thread running throughout Google's latest legal worries: antitrust accusations, most notably several complaints filed with the European Commission. Last week, the EC opened an inquiry into Google's search ranking algorithm, based on claims of unfair practices made by three companies...

The European Commission has notified Google that it received complaints from three companies about its search ranking practices. The companies are a UK price comparison site, Foundem, a French legal search engine, ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing. Foundem also filed a complaint with the ...

Once again, Americans are hearing that the United States is a cybersecurity wimp, vulnerable to major damage should it ever suffer a large, organized cyberattack. The latest testimony underscoring that notion came from Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, who spoke to the...

The latest blast of indignation against Google's much maligned social networking tool, Buzz, has arrived in the form of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a Florida resident, in a San Jose federal court. The complaint alleges privacy violations and seeks class action status. Buzz violated sev...

Just a week after the launch of Google Buzz, the Electronic Privacy Information Center on Tuesday filed a complaint with the FTC charging that the new service violates federal consumer protection law. "This is a significant breach of consumers' expectations of privacy," said Marc Rotenberg, the grou...

Google has opted not to attempt further renegotiations of its Digital Books settlement agreement with the Authors Guild despite objections the DoJ lodged earlier this month. Instead, it is gambling that the judge will see its view of the matter. In a court filing, Google asked Judge Denny Chin to ac...

Two Monday technology stories, both involving China: Call them the yin and yang of that country's attempts to repair its image following Google's recent hacking allegations and the search giant's subsequent threats to end its business dealings in the country. Chinese police are trumpeting their shut...

The Department of Justice has advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that "significant" copyright and antitrust issues remain in the proposed amended settlement agreement between Google and the Authors Guild. "The amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core...