Tech Law

Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas has issued an injunction against the sale of Microsoft Word after a jury found that Microsoft had infringed on a patent held by a Toronto-based company. The plantiff, i4i, sued Microsoft in 2007, alleging that Microsoft Word unlawfully...

If Apple and Google executives thought that Google CEO Eric Schmidt's Monday resignation from Apple's board of directors would end any governmental interest in their business practices, they may have to reboot their plans. The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it had already been looking i...

The numbers in two recent copyright infringement lawsuits involving downloaded music are enough to get tongues wagging. Is a song really worth $22,500? Or even $80,000? Juries in Massachusetts and Minnesota, respectively, ordered those awards to the recording industry this year in cases involving de...

Joel Tenenbaum's fate was probably already sealed before he went to trial for the copyright infringement of 30 songs by Nirvana, Green Day and the Smashing Pumpkins, but the 25-year-old college student made sure of it on Thursday when he admitted on the stand that he did in fact download and share t...

Now that Microsoft and Yahoo have finally come to terms on how they will work together to gain turf in the search advertising market, they must convince antitrust regulatory authorities both in the U.S. and in Europe that their union will create more competition -- not less. That will be no easy tas...

There have been three significant developments affecting the tax battles online travel companies have been fighting around the U.S. in recent weeks, and none are positive for the OTC industry. The issue at the heart of these tax controversies is whether the OTCs should be collecting and remitting ho...

Since its conception in 2006, Twitter has gained considerable notoriety and publicity worldwide. Recently, Twitter played a major role in capturing the political developments following the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, as well as the social zeitgeist surrounding the passing and subsequent mem...

It is the dream for consumers who are tired of lusting after shiny new smartphones that belong to somebody else's carrier; the ability to buy any feature-rich phone from any device maker and tie it to any wireless provider they choose -- exclusivity be damned. Frustrated consumers in some rural area...

A hack into Twitter's back-end productivity applications earlier this month is raising some serious questions -- not only about password system security itself, but also about some consequences of network intrusion that may have been unforeseen. About a month ago, a hacker was able to access a Twitt...

An unhappy Kindle customer is taking his grievance to court. Seattle resident Matthew Geise bought the second-generation model of Amazon.com's popular e-reader device, the Kindle 2 -- along with the $29.99 Kindle Cover -- only to find that this protective covering was anything but. Geise made the pu...

Despite strong opposition from business groups and a lawsuit, the Obama administration is making E-Verify, an online verification program, mandatory for businesses working with the federal government. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday announced support for the p...

Microsoft reportedly is in preliminary talks to settle two pending antitrust investigations now before the European Commission. Microsoft wants to end these probes before the Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes leaves office at the end of the year, according to the scuttlebutt. Both of the antitru...

The final day of reckoning in the four-year battle between TiVo and EchoStar has been pushed out a little further. Late Wednesday evening, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted EchoStar's request to stay a contempt order imposed by the U.S. District Court the day before, until it...

In a dramatic repudiation of Bush administration policies, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice withdrew its recent report setting standards for the prosecution of monopolization offenses. Announcing the change of policy, Christine A. Varney, the new assistant attorney general in...

More companies are joining in the fight over Internet taxation begun by Amazon.com. Blue Nile and Overstock.com have joined the Web's largest retailer in dropping affiliate programs in North Carolina and Rhode Island, according to numerous press reports. Amazon also reportedly dropped its affiliate ...