Man Charged with Posting Stolen AT&T Documents

A New Mexico man has been charged with stealing confidential business documents from AT&T Inc.'s servers, documents which were later posted on the Internet by a computer hacking group, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors in Newark, N.J., alleged that Lance Moore, while working for a company that contracts with AT&T, improperly accessed AT&T's servers in April and downloaded "thousands of spreadsheets" and other confidential AT&T documents, including details for AT&T's plans for its 4G data network and its Long Term Evolution mobile broadband network.

Google, Publishers Keep Negotiating Book Deal

Google Inc. and a group of publishers and authors got more time to negotiate a possible settlement of a lawsuit over the search-engine company’s digital reproduction of books. “We are not there yet,” Michael Boni, a lawyer for the authors, told U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan. “They are very complicated, complex issues, requiring us to delve into them in the dog days of summer.”

Baidu Strikes Deals with Music Companies

Baidu, the dominant Chinese Internet search engine, announced a major licensing deal with three of the world’s largest music companies that would allow Chinese Web users to legally download and stream hundreds of thousands of songs free. The agreement between Baidu and One-Stop China, a joint venture between the Universal Music Group, the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG, will shut down access to a vast amount of pirated music and promises to broadly reshape the way China’s 450 million Web users gain access to online music.

Conn. Attorney General Investigating Groupon

Connecticut law-enforcement officials are looking into whether online deals site Groupon Inc. is breaking consumer-protection laws that prohibit gift cards from expiring. According to Jeremy Pearlman, one of two assistant attorneys general handling the investigation for George Jepsen, attorney general for the state of Connecticut, the state is looking into whether Groupon's deals -- known as groupons -- should be considered in the same light as gift certificates, for which Connecticut law bans expiration dates altogether.

French "Three Strikes" Law Yields No Prosecutions

France's High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet (Hadopi) has prosecuted no one for illegal file sharing in the nine months since it began operating under a so-called "three strikes" copyright enforcement law. In that time, the authority has received over 18 million reports from rights holders of unauthorized file-sharing of copyright works, each one identifying the copyright work downloaded and the IP address alleged to have downloaded it, it announced.

Apple Ordered to Pay in Korea for Collecting Location Data

Apple Inc's Korean unit has paid compensation to a user of its popular iPhone after collecting location data without consent, lawyers and court officials said, the first payout by the company over these complaints. In May, Apple Korea was ordered by the court to pay 1 million won ($946) in compensation to Kim Hyung-suk, a lawyer, two officials at Changwon District Court said.

Proposal Would Limit Net Neutrality Rules

A proposal by U.S. House of Representatives Republicans to free up spectrum for mobile broadband use would remove Net neutrality rules on new spectrum auctions and would make it difficult for innovators to use unlicensed spectrum going forward, a digital rights group said. Public Knowledge blasted the draft of the Spectrum Innovation Act, released prior to a spectrum hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's communications subcommittee.

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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.