Tech Law

Virtually no one objects to the concept of adopting laws and policies to stem the tide of child pornography proliferating on the Internet. So, the announcement on Tuesday that Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel have agreed to block access to Web sites that harbor such content was uniformly...

Microsoft has fired off a slew of federal lawsuits -- 21, to be exact -- against resellers in 14 states. In the suits, Microsoft claimed the resellers are engaging in the sale of pirated software. Some of the lawsuits include eight possible repeat offenders that may not have learned their lessons th...

Three Internet service providers have agreed to be more proactive in policing the dissemination of child pornography across their networks. In response to some prodding by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel have agreed to block access to Web sites, b...

The Supreme Court on Monday continued its trend toward restricting patent rights with its ruling in the Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics case. In a unanimous opinion, the Court addressed a seemingly simple principle called "patent exhaustion." In other words, what restrictions can patent holders pl...

T-Mobile has filed a lawsuit against Starbucks, saying the chain is causing the carrier financial harm by giving away WiFi access on its networking infrastructure. T-Mobile is claiming that Starbucks engaged in "willful breach of contract and unfair competition" by launching a free WiFi promotion wi...

The Federal Trade Commission has started a formal inquiry into the pricing practices of leading chipmaker Intel, a move that rival Advanced Micro Devices has long requested. The FTC recently opened the formal investigation by issuing subpoenas to Intel and AMD, as well as other parties, including th...

India has historically been regarded as a favorable country to outsource skilled services such as manufacturing, IT, programming, research and development, distribution and call centers. The declining strength of the dollar, rising wages and bottlenecks in urban infrastructure no doubt will aggravat...

A coalition of 14 privacy and consumer organizations have charged that Google is violating California law by failing to post a prominent link on its home page to its privacy policy. "Google's reluctance to post a link to its privacy policy on its homepage is alarming," wrote the groups in a letter t...

A Delaware judge ruled Monday that Yahoo could not keep secret the details of an investors' lawsuit over its spurning of Microsoft's acquisition efforts. The complaint alleges that Yahoo turned away a $40 per share offer to be acquired by Microsoft in 2007 -- months before the software company went ...

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic has accused Facebook of violating the country's privacy laws. In a 36-page complaint submitted to the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, the group outlines 22 separate alleged violations. Facebook failed to disclose to members how their personal in...

The patchwork system of digital commerce laws adopted in recent years is showing signs of wear as Viacom's $1 billion suit against Google moves forward. Last year, Viacom filed its complaint in a U.S. District Court, alleging that Google owed it damages for purloined content that had made its way on...

A group of Belgian newspapers that won a court ruling against Google last year over its practice of linking to their content is now asking a court to award up to $77 million in damages. Copiepresse reportedly asked a Brussels court to force Google to pay between $51.5 million and $77 million in dama...

For years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents covering e-commerce business methods, and companies have exploited such patents to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In one famous example, Amazon.com sued Barnes & Noble just before the 1999 holiday season, alleg...

Law enforcement authorities in two countries on Monday charged 38 people in the U.S. and Romania with taking part in two different phishing-related fraud schemes that authorities say were tied to organized crime worldwide. The United States Department of Justice and the Prosecutor General of Romania...

For the past five years, the Recording Industry Association of America has been prosecuting people -- and threatening to prosecute many more -- for sharing copyrighted content online without authorization. Last year, in the first file-sharing lawsuit ever to go to trial, Jammie Thomas was found liab...