Tech Law

Verizon has filed a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable, claiming that company's advertising gives a false impression about the telecom firm's new fiber optic-based TV service. Verizon filed the suit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In it, the company claims ...

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," said Sir Isaac Newton. While he made that observation centuries before the dot-com boom and bust, his words remain quite relevant today. After large corporation executives took advantage of their positions and wreaked financial havoc, the federal go...

The European Commission introduced new rules Monday for mobile communications on aircrafts during flights. The new regulations give the airlines a green light to let their passengers talk on their mobile phones midair -- with a few caveats, of course. The Commission, however, did not create protecti...

Over the past five years, 42 of the technology companies that Mercury Ventures has invested in have made the transition from publicly traded to private firms. That is part of a larger trend among smaller publicly traded companies, for whom the benefits of being public no longer clearly outweigh the ...

Last Halloween, the intellectual property community was mesmerized by the preliminary injunction hearing on the motion filed by GlaxoSmithKline and others to enjoin the Patent Office on the very eve of enactment of new rules. As Judge James C. Cacheris granted the preliminary injunction, a quiet che...

Last year, when Viacom visited YouTube and spotted shows from MTV, Comedy Central and other content producers it owns, it decided to act quickly -- and the only quick reaction a company of Viacom's size is capable of in that sort of situation is to sue. Only after many months did other giant TV netw...

Rambus has won a patent-related trial against three semiconductor companies. The long legal battle may not be entirely finished for the technology developer, however. Put in basketball terms, Wednesday's victory was more a three-point shot with a minute remaining than a last-minute slam dunk. A jury...

Most organizations are under the misimpression that by simply maintaining a generic legal hold policy, they will avoid any adverse consequences in litigation. Those organizations are wrong. In fact, one could have a brilliant legal hold plan and still face sanctions if it fails to address the down...

Opening a new front in his yearlong push to prompt major changes at the top U.S. mobile phone maker, activist investor Carl Icahn is suing Motorola, asking a court to force the company to give him access to strategic plans and other documents. Icahn, who fell short in his effort to strong-arm his wa...

Only weeks after having won a digital format battle against HD DVD, Sony finds itself entangled in a legal fight over the technology behind Blu-ray. The ITC will hear a case filed by a retired university professor with a 50-year engineering career against Sony, Motorola and more than 25 other compan...

The Software and Information Industry Association filed eight more lawsuits against eBay sellers the group says are hawking pirated versions of software from Adobe, bringing to 17 the number of suits filed so far this year. The SIIA said it filed suits against sellers based in Arizona, California, C...

Feeling nostalgic about the early Clinton years? The dawn of the dot-com heyday? The Seattle grunge music scene? If so, you're in luck. The U.S. Supreme Court is giving the go-ahead for two tech companies to finish a battle that began more than 10 years ago but became bogged down in the legal syste...

About eight months after former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted of selling stock based on inside information he was also shielding from the public, a federal appeals panel overturned the conviction Monday, clearing the way for Nacchio to be tried again before a new judge. A three-judge panel ...

The Recording Industry Association of America has been filing and threatening lawsuits all across America in its war to stop illegal file sharing and piracy of music owned by its partner record labels. Many individuals that have faced litigation from the RIAA in the last several years have settled b...

Sweden, long the home of Internet pirates, may not be a safe haven for them any more. The Swedish government is working on legislation that will force Internet service providers to disclose IP addresses used for illegal file-sharing to the legal owners of those rights. However, the owners of the rig...