Tech Law

A recent ruling by the Supreme Court, reversing a nearly 100 year old statute outlawing price setting, is in the spotlight for retailers, lobbyists and economic theorists. For the past 96 years, retailers have been protected under an umbrella of antitrust laws prohibiting the collusion of manufactur...

It was supposed to be a legal showdown between the people who bring you The New York Times and the people who bring you community news; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists at the Gray Lady covering wars, presidential campaigns and Wall Street corporate meltdowns vs. low-paid reporters telling you abo...

A competitor of computing giant IBM has accused Big Blue of violating antitrust laws in the European Union. In a complaint to the European Commission, mainframe computer maker T3 Technologies has accused IBM of using its dominance of the mainframe market to shut out competitors. T3 claims that IBM k...

The European Union is taking aim at Microsoft again, with its antitrust regulatory arm alleging on Friday that the U.S.-based software giant is breaking European anticompetitive rules by tying Internet Explorer to Windows. Such a link harms competition, undermines product innovation and reduces cons...

A small networking company is suing three tech titans for patent infringement. Cygnus Systems has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Arizona, alleging that Microsoft, Google and Apple have all violated a patent Cygnus received in March 2008 on the use of document preview icon, or so-called thu...

It is no secret that "retail therapy" -- whether in the form of shopping at a designer boutique, visiting a favorite online retailer, or even purchasing a preferred brand of shampoo from the grocery store -- can evoke feelings of happiness and well-being. A fascinating new study by marketing guru M...

GateHouse Media, a chain of local newspapers, has sued the New York Times Co. for copyright and trademark infringement. Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse, which owns 125 local newspapers, alleged that Boston.com, the Web site for The Boston Globe, violated copyright law by linking to GateHouse stories...

Lorrie Thomas does not "sell, share or whore out" the personal information of any visitor who comes to her Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing site -- and she backs up this no-share promise in her privacy statement. Indeed, the entire document is a straightforward description of what the company will and wi...

Five years and 35,000 people later, the Recording Industry Association of America has apparently conceded a major battle over music file-sharing. The music industry trade group has decided to stop suing individuals it suspects of illegally downloading music via peer-to-peer Web sites. However, that ...

Until recently, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- covering a myriad of activities related to hacking and intellectual property theft -- was just one of many questionable federal laws on the books. Then came the case of Lori Drew. Drew was widely vilified for provoking a young girl into committing ...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has challenged the constitutionality of a federal law providing immunity to telecom companies that allegedly shared information about U.S. citizens with security agencies. In a hearing in San Francisco on Tuesday, the advocacy group argued before Judge Vaughn R. Wa...

As technology has advanced, the federal courts have routinely been tasked with interpreting what types of inventions are eligible for patent protection under the Patent Act. For example, in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that human-made microorganisms were eligible for patent protection. As the Inf...

Regular viewers of "60 Minutes" may not have been aware of a major scandal in the online gambling industry before Sunday night's broadcast, but Internet poker enthusiasts already knew the score and were waiting for reporters to show their cards. The report, a joint effort involving CBS's Steve Kroft...

Court documents in a class action lawsuit over Microsoft's "Windows Vista Capable" logo show intense dissatisfaction by top executives at HP, one of the software giant's largest PC partners. "You have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money ...

The Bush Administration pushed through new rules last week that seek to end Internet gambling. The new regulations, issued by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve system, require banks, credit card companies and wire transfer companies to establish a process to stop payments for settling ...