Spotlight Features

So you're thinking of starting an e-commerce business. It's an exciting prospect, but it also can be daunting. How do you even begin? How can you ensure that your startup gets past being a startup? It's important, first of all, to understand one thing about e-commerce: Just because it's online doesn...

It passes through the channels of federal laws, spills across state lines and even bleeds into the protected realm of college sports. The multibillion-dollar industry that is fantasy sports has stood up to legal challenges so far, but the surging sector still battles problems with perception and fac...

The field of fantasy sports is faced with a fresh set of legal questions, following this week's allegations of insider trading on DraftKings and FanDuel. Having been validated by their skill component, fantasy sports have spilled across state lines and even into the world of collegiate athletics, a ...

Americans are expected to spend $4.6 billion on fantasy sports this year, while vying for a payout of around $107 -- the average prize for winning the biggest fantasy league games, according to American Express. Driving that spending and risk taking are a passion for sports, the promise of purses, t...

Someone perhaps even more flamboyant than Donald Trump may be getting involved in the U.S. presidential race -- and not on the Republican side. Notorious Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom is not running for office, but as his extradition case heats up in New Zealand, a possible Democratic candidate f...

Google is putting a new spin on the news. Instead of relying on journalists to gather facts and report events the old-fashioned way, the company's News Lab, launched earlier this year, aims to deliver news stories through data. Case in point: Who needs polls to reveal that Donald Trump is the most p...

It's one thing to ship books and electronics across the U.S. -- but it's quite another to get fresh fruit, baked goods, meat, fish, prepared meals, raw meal ingredients, and other perishables to consumers' front doors in prime condition. Once perishables are delivered to a customer's door, they ofte...

"The chief business of the American people is business," President Calvin Coolidge said. Although that has become the country's rubric, lawmakers in the United States aren't inclined to give business free rein. The Department of Justice last month trumpeted its first online marketing prosecution: th...

Google Wallet, bitcoin and other payment systems have spent years trying to oust the credit card as the be-all and end-all of payment methods. Publications and pundits everywhere have been quick to hail new technologies as "credit card-killers," and they're not without justification. As a payment me...

The global access and entertainment services marketplace continues its pace of dramatic change, as broadband services have achieved new levels of penetration and speed worldwide. Emerging markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia are experiencing rapid growth, as many homes obtain high-speed...

The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is widely believed to have mandated high-tech vendors build backdoors into their hardware and software. Reactions from foreign governments to the news are harming American businesses and, some contend, may result in the breakup of the Internet. For ex...

It's well known that certain second-rate media outlets use provocatively misleading headlines to attract viewers and parlay those figures into increased ad revenue, but some better known outlets appear to be resorting to clickbait as well. For example, a host of online headlines recently implied tha...

The U.S. Trade International Trade Commission has broad investigative powers on matters of trade, gathering and analyzing trade data, and providing it to the White House and Congress to help formulate U.S. international trade policies. Its statutory authority is based on legislation that is 20 or mo...

The United States International Trade Commission in May issued its final ruling in what has come to be known colloquially as "the Invisalign case." It held that under Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the digital files could be considered an article. That sparked a discussion in the legal commu...

Semiconductor company Marvell recently launched its Kinoma Create construction kit for consumer electronics on Indiegogo. Should a $6.5 billion company turn to crowdfunding to raise money? Are large companies drying up a source of funding that otherwise would be available to startups? Is that morall...