Posts Tagged ‘legal’
Here's a superficially curious, but fundamentally quite important, bit of legal wrangling for you.
Reuters is reporting that the
District of Columbia has filed suit against
AT&T Corp for the recovery of unused balances on calling cards purchased from the telecom giant. Estimated at somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the overall value of the cards, the so-called breakage -- leftover credit that customers neglect to use -- has typically remained with the carrier as a sort of predictable bonus. The DC Attorney General, however, is seeking to have breakages treated as unclaimed property, which under district law means that after three years they must be returned to the state. Whichever side of the fence you sit on, the decision on this case will set a significant precedent for the future of such prepaid services.
AT&T sued by Washington DC for unused balances on calling cards originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sure, this ain't the first time that Seagate's allegedly
run afoul of the law, but this tale will definitely have you breathlessly demanding more (you know, if patent infringement is exciting to you -- which would actually be pretty weird). Way back in July 2000, Convolve (an
M.I.T. spin-off formed to market the school's hard drive noise reduction research) sued Seagate for using patented tech in its Sound Barrier Technology -- with the end result being that Seagate drives no longer support automatic acoustic management. But
that isn't the exciting part. In a dramatic turn reported by
The New York Times, a former Seagate employee named Paul A. Galloway has apparently provided "an eyewitness account" of what went down, including the theft of info obtained in a meeting between the two companies held in 1998 and 1999 and the destruction of blueprints relating to Convolve's technology. As for the whistleblower, he claims that he was kept in the dark about the nature of the research he was working on, with Seagate even going so far as to take his computer with notes pertinent to the trial. All of this (and more) are detailed in an affidavit that is available (in PDF form) by hitting that source link -- and, man, is it a page-turner!
Ex-Seagate employee claims the company stole MIT research, tried to cover up its tracks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It's definitely shaping up to be the year of e-book readers: the Amazon Kindle is
flying off (virtual) shelves, and we'd expect the Barnes & Noble
Nook to start moving at a decent clip once the
kinks get worked out. But any device with an always-on 3G connection to a central server raises some privacy questions, especially when it can broadcast granular, specific data about what you're reading -- data that's subject to a wide spectrum of privacy laws and regulations when it comes to real books and libraries, but much less so in the digital realm. We'd say it's going to take a while for all the privacy implications of e-books to be dealt with by formal policy, but in the meantime the best solution is to be informed -- which is where this handy chart from our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation comes in. As you'd expect, the more reading you do online, the more you can be tracked -- and Google Books, the Kindle, and the Nook all log a ton of data that can be shared with law enforcement and various other third parties if required. Of course, we doubt the cops are too interested in your
Twilight reading habits, but honestly, we'd rather users weren't tracked at all. Check the full chart and more at the read link.
[Thanks, Tom]
E-reader privacy policies compared: Big Kindle is watching you originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It's getting closer and closer to check-writing time for Steve Ballmer, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just upheld a decision that would see Microsoft Word and Office banned from sale starting January 11. If you'll recall, Microsoft
lost a patent infringement suit against XML specialists i4i back in May when it was found that Word's handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files infringed upon i4i's patented XML handling algorithms, but the
injunction against further Word sales was
put on hold pending the results of this appeal. Now that Microsoft has lost once again, we'd expect either another appeal and request for the injunction to be stayed, this time to the Supreme Court, or for a settlement between these two that would end this whole mess right now. We'll see what happens -- stay tuned.
P.S.- Just to be clear on this, i4i isn't a patent troll -- it's a a 30 person database design company that shipped one of the first XML plugins for Office and was actually responsible for
revamping the entire USPTO database around XML to make it compatible with Word back in 2000. What's more, the patents involved here don't cover XML itself, but rather the specific algorithms used to read and write custom XML -- so OpenOffice users can breathe easy, as i4i has said the suite
doesn't infringe. Existing Office users should also be fine, as only future sales of Word are affected by the ruling, not any already-sold products.
Engadget: Helping you flame with accuracy.Microsoft loses patent appeal; Word and Office to be barred from sale starting January 11 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It would seem that the Fusion Garage lawyers have become so embroiled in the
Michael Arrington litigation that they've neglected to read the PayPal User Agreement. There in section II, subsection 4, dubbed "Prohibited Transactions," it states that the seller agrees "not to use [his] PayPal account to sell goods with delivery dates delayed more than 20 days from the date of payment." Why does that matter -- well, because the sole means to purchase
the Joojoo at present is by placing an 8 to 10 week pre-order, payable exclusively through PayPal. We shouldn't jump to conclusions though -- maybe Fusion Garage freed itself from the pesky rules by offering to sell a few special edition
PayPads?
Joojoo terms of sale violate PayPal rules originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Psystar's attorneys have had some truly
bumbling moments in the past year or so, and the hits keep coming: now they're disagreeing over whether or not the would-be Mac cloner is out of business. Lead law firm Camara & Sibley is now denying
yesterday's Dow Jones report, which quoted Psystar's California counsel Eugene Action as saying the company would be shutting down "immediately," and insists that the company is still is business selling Rebel EFI. That would be the end of the story for now... except it's not true. Although Psystar's site still offers the software for download, it's listed as "out of stock," and you can't buy a license. What's more, Psystar was just
ordered by the California court to stop helping anyone install OS X and warned that it continued to sell Rebel EFI "at its peril," so it'd be pretty ballsy to offer it for sale once again. Camara & Sibley also says it's going to appeal the California decision while it presses forward with the second lawsuit in Florida, but we've seriously got to wonder who's going to pay all these bills -- Psystar is already
on the hook for $2.67 million in fines to Apple, and appeals and a second round of litigation don't come cheap. We'll see what happens next, but we can't say we're too surprised that the end of Psystar's story is as shady as its start
P.S.- Eugene Action might be the single best thing to come out of this whole mess -- his website, located at (seriously)
myharvardlawyer.us, is a treasure trove of embarrassing hilarity. Choice unedited quote:
I Graduated from Harvard Law School in Cambridge Massachusetts. If you have not heard of Harvard Law school, welcome to planet earth and enjoy your visit.
Well, we're certainly impressed -- too bad that fancy degree didn't help Psystar win its case, though.
Psystar still in business, or not in business, or... something originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Good old December, the busiest time of the year for elves, reindeer, jolly old fat guys... and
lawyers,
apparently. Joining the rush to make
momentous decisions before Santa arrives, the
International Trade Commission has made a preliminary ruling in favor of Kodak in
its dispute over digital camera patents with Samsung. Though the original lawsuit included LG, an out of court settlement has left only Sammy in the firing line, and this early decision has affirmed that two of Kodak's patents were infringed in the production of its cameraphones. It's still necessary for the full commission to look at and approve the judgment, but considering Samsung's vast range of camera-equipped phones, we'd throw legal caution to the wind and start bombarding the ITC with
"holiday cheer" pronto.
Kodak wins preliminary ruling in patent squabble with Samsung originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Has the saga finally come to an end? Dow Jones is reporting that Psystar will be firing its eight employees and then "shutting things down immediately," in the words of the company's attorney with the bad-ass name, Eugene Action. Besides, after the
latest round of
losses at the hands of Apple, this should come as a shock to nobody. Now that we've put all that behind us, can we concentrate on something of importance -- like Tweeting swears from the
Zune HD Twitter app?
Psystar to shut down 'immediately,' world shrugs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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And it's all over, folks: The US District Court for the Northern District of California has just permanently forbidden wannbe Mac cloner Psystar from selling modified versions of OS X, providing any tools that enable users to bypass the OS X kernel encryption, and / or intentionally aiding anyone else from infringing Apple's OS X copyrights in any way. We knew this was coming following
Apple's decisive victory against Psystar last month -- the only
open questions were whether the court would include Snow Leopard and Psytar's Rebel EFI software in the ban, since the lawsuit was specifically about Leopard and Rebel EFI wasn't the subject of any proceedings. Both issues were predictably resolved in favor of Apple: the court specifically included Snow Leopard and any future versions of OS X in the scope of the injunction, and while Judge Alsup couldn't address Rebel EFI directly, he did expressly forbid Psystar from "manufacturing, importing, offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking" in anything that circumvents Apple's OS X hardware locks -- which we'd say covers Rebel EFI's functionality pretty thoroughly. Psystar has until December 31 to comply, and the Judge Alsup isn't kidding around: "Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance; thus, if compliance can be achieved within one hour after this order is filed, defendant shall reasonably see it done." Psystar can still appeal, obviously, but it's already got it's own hefty legal bills and a
$2.67m fine to pay to Apple, so we've got a feeling this one might have reached the end of the line.
P.S.- Amusingly, Judge Alsup appears to be pretty sick of Apple's shenanigans as well: in the section discussing Snow Leopard, he says Apple first tried to block any discovery of Snow Leopard before the OS was released, and then pushed to include the software in the case after it launched. That's why the Florida case over Snow Leopard wasn't merged into this case -- Alsup thought it was a "slick tactic" that "smacked of trying to 'have it both ways,' and offended [his] sense of fair play." Ouch.
Psystar banned from copying any version of OS X, helping others install it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Comcast, the largest ISP in the US, settled their $16m data discrimination lawsuit Wednesday. They didn't admit wrongdoing and customers are only eligible for a $16 award. But, importantly, they set a precedent for other ISPs: Throttle at peril! [Yahoo]
