Wal-Mart may be denying that its not-so-secret 2005 pact with Netflix was a way to illegally divide up the DVD market, but someone should tell the retailer that agreeing to pay anywhere between $29 million and $40 million to make the accusations go away isn’t the best way to convince people of innocence.
Wal-Mart will offer either …
Publishing something on Twitter is not the same as relinquishing ownership, the US District Court has ruled to the relief of millions of Twitter users worldwide. District Court Judge William Pauley has disallowed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that photographer Daniel Morel has brought against Agence France-Presse for using his work …
Skype is really not having the best holiday season. With no reason as yet revealed for the service outage that lasted more than a day last week (Although CEO Tony Bates blogged that technicians “now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack”; a post-mortem has been promised in the near …
2011 might be the year when Twitter stops being nice and starts being real… Or real litigious, at least. Following September’s request from the company that social community “Twitter Moms” change their name so as to avoid any trademark infringement, Ad Age checked in to find out whether this was the start of a new pro-active regime, …
Alcatel-Lucent has declared war on Apple, Canon, LG and TiVo with a new lawsuit alleging that each of the companies is knowingly using Alcatel-Lucent patented technology without appropriate royalty payment. The lawsuit, filed earlier this week through Multimedia Patent Trust, a holding company set up by Alcatel-Lucent, says that …
Viacom just can’t catch a break legally. Not only are they embroiled in an ongoing legal battle over whether YouTube is infringing on their copyright, but now they’re being sued themselves by the former owners of Rock Band over hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of royalties – twice. Even as a lawsuit over money owed to former …
There’s almost something inspirational about the determination of FilmOn.com founder Aiki David and his determination not to give up in the face of either the law or common sense when it comes to defending his company. Having been blocked from streaming content from ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox by a temporary restraining order last month, …
It’s the legal battle that sounds as if it’s been planned by children: Eastman Kodak is suing Shutterfly, alleging that the site is infringing on Kodak patents in its manufacture and sale of photo-based products. In response, Shutterfly is countersuing, arguing that not only is the company not infringing on any patents, but that Kodak is …
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act may have been created to combat internet piracy, but does it unfairly penalize those with reading difficulties? That’s the question at the heart of a lawsuit filed against Viacom, News Corp., MTV Corporation and Google (amongst others) by Montana-based investigative reporter Todd Ouellette. Ouellette, …
Against all odds, the government has managed to make the issue of online privacy even more boring. It’s true! Several news outlets (including this one now) are referring to a recent proposal from the Commerce Department as “the privacy bill of rights,” to try to spice things up a bit.
In reality, it’s a 70-page document called the …
Is YouTube to blame for copyright infringement by its users? Not according to the courts, which ruled in June that Viacom could not go after the site for what its users had posted, but as Viacom files an appeal to that decision, it’s bringing plenty of friends along to back up its case. The Hollywood Reporter has a list of organizations …
A hacking group simply identifying itself as “Anonymous” has taken credit for a recent string of high-profile cyber attacks against the websites of businesses, banks and politicians that have either spoken out against or stopped doing business with whistleblowing site, WikiLeaks.
Since Monday of this week, targets have included Swiss …
