Tech Law

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, stripping out a key provision that provided legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with secret wiretapping programs. The move sets up a showdown with the White House, as Pr...

GPS-enabled device makers Garmin and TomTom have reached an agreement to settle a slew of intellectual property lawsuits between the two companies. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The agreement settles suits pending in the UK and the Netherlands -- where TomTom is based -- and U.S. cases i...

Google's search technology may infringe on a patent that was awarded in 1997, a year before the Internet giant's founding, according to a lawsuit filed last week. Northeastern University and Jarg, a Massachusetts startup, which brought the action, say that Kenneth Baclawski, a Northeastern professor...

More than two years after the filing of the first complaint, Take-Two Interactive Software announced Friday the proposed settlement of all U.S. consumer class action lawsuits over the "Hot Coffee" modification that could be used to enable sexual content in its "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" video g...

At a hearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan were forced to defend Yahoo's testimony last year regarding its role in the Chinese government's arrest and jailing of journalist Shi Tao. The executives were called on ...

Considering putting an e-mail disclaimer at the end of the e-mail that says, in effect, "Hey, don't read this!" is every bit as effective as a park flasher telling you not to look -- how much protection does that overly verbose threat actually carry? "The e-mail disclaimer is more of a back-up plan ...

Ottawa, Canada-based Wi-Lan has filed two separate infringement suits against 22 chip suppliers, equipment vendors and electronics retailers. The targeted companies include Acer, Apple, Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Broadcom, Buffalo Technology, Circuit City, Dell, D-Link, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Inf...

As the Federal Trade Commission geared up for its Town Hall meeting at the end of this week focusing on electronic behavioral marketing techniques, privacy advocates banded together to urge the agency to give consumers a way to opt out. Specifically, nine privacy organizations have requested that th...

Fifty years ago, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote of a society that hindered innovation and stifled the creative spirit. Atlas Shrugged told of a society where individual effort went unrewarded, where technological advancement was thwarted by short-term greed, and where the governments failed...

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 402 to 0 Tuesday to extend the ban on Internet service taxes another seven years, adopting the same time frame passed by the Senate Friday. The House previously voted to extend the moratorium for only four years. The original ban was first imposed in 1998 -- t...

In a move that could create millions of potential new customers for telecommunications companies now hawking video service and deal a blow to cable companies, the Federal Communications Commission appears poised to ban deals that give cable carriers exclusive access to residents of large apartment c...

Vonage has settled the financial details of a lawsuit it lost to Verizon for patent infringement, capping its penalty at $120 million -- a possible $32 million in addition to the $88 million already accrued and held in escrow. The final amount will depend on how the Court of Appeals decides Vonage's...

The U.S. Senate, echoing a similar bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last week, has approved an extension to a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access for another seven years. The House's version, however, calls for a four-year ban. The original ban, first imposed in 19...

SanDisk filed three patent infringement actions against 25 companies that manufacture, sell and import USB flash drives, CompactFlash cards, multimedia cards, MP3/media players and other removable flash storage products, the company announced Wednesday. The actions -- two filed in the United States ...

The Poker Players' Association took its fight to reform online gambling laws to lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week when more than 100 poker players took to the capitol. Professional poker players including Vanessa Rousso, Howard Lederer and Victor Ramdin joined PPA executives in Washington, D.C., t...