Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. staked out opposing positions in testimonies before U.S. lawmakers on the issue of collecting sales tax from online purchases. The two largest e-commerce firms differ primarily on whether small businesses should be exempt from pending legislation that would require online retailers to collect taxes in states were they have no physical presence.
A U.S. judge has ordered Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook, among others, to delist domain names linked to websites selling counterfeit goods. The case was brought by luxury goods maker Chanel against 600 sites which it had identified as trading in counterfeits.
The U.N. Development Program says that the user names and passwords of more than 100 email accounts posted online by a hackers group are no longer active and were extracted from an old server. Sausan Ghosheh, UNDP chief of external communications, said that the organization's current server has not been compromised, and no active passwords were on the list posted by the "Team Poison" hackers group.
Samsung Electronics Co is set to resume selling its Galaxy tablet computer in Australia as early as Friday, after the South Korean technology firm won a rare legal victory in a long-running global patent war with Apple Inc. An Australian federal court unanimously decided to lift a preliminary injunction, imposed by a lower court, on sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- but granted Apple a stay on lifting the sales ban until Friday afternoon.
Mobile applications and games on popular smartphones and tablets — including Apple's iPhone and iPad and Android-based devices — will soon carry age-based ratings. The ratings that AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless plan to use starting next year may look familiar to many. That's because they are based on those created for video games by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in 1994.
Facebook has settled charges with the Federal Trade Commission that it deceived users by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private and then repeatedly making it public, according to the agency. The settlement of an eight-count complaint requires Facebook to warn users about privacy changes and to get their permission before sharing their information more broadly, according to the FTC.
Could a hacker from half-way around the planet control your printer and give it instructions so frantic that it could eventually catch fire? Or use a hijacked printer as a copy machine for criminals, making it easy to commit identity theft or even take control of entire networks that would otherwise be secure? It’s not only possible, but likely, say researchers at Columbia University, who claim they've discovered a new class of computer security flaws that could impact millions of businesses, consumers, and even government agencies.
Facebook Inc. took responsibility for what it said was a mistake that caused an address for the Facebook page of the German drug maker Merck KgaA to be used by its U.S.-based rival Merck & Co. The social-networking website blamed an "administrative error" for the problem.
French anti-racism groups dropped a lawsuit against Apple Inc. over an iPhone app called "Jew or not Jew?" after it was removed from circulation worldwide. Lawyer Stephane Lilti, representing four anti-racism associations, said the decision was "motivated by the removal of the application in all countries of the world."
Google’s deal to buy ad tech start-up Admeld, announced in June, looks like it is finally ready to close. Industry sources expect the Department of Justice, who had been reviewing the $400 million transaction for antitrust violations, to approve the deal in the next couple weeks.
The European Union wants to replace a mishmash of national laws on data protection with one bloc-wide reform, updating laws put in place long before Facebook and other social networking sites even existed. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that social networks must become more open about how they operate.
An Australian appeals court judge questioned the fairness of a ruling that granted Apple Inc.’s request to ban the sale of the iPad2’s biggest rival in a legal dispute with Samsung Electronics Co. over patent infringement. “The result looks terribly fair to Apple and not terribly fair to Samsung,” Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster said at a hearing in Sydney on Samsung’s appeal for the ban to be overturned.
German patent firm IPCom plans to halt as quickly as possible the sale of all HTC smartphones in Germany, another blow to the Taiwanese firm just two days after it shocked markets by cutting its fourth-quarter outlook. IPCom said it would enforce an injunction based on a Mannheim court decision from February 2009 after HTC, the fourth largest smartphone vendor globally, withdrew its appeal.
German drug maker Merck KGaA has asked a New York City court to force Facebook Inc. to explain how the German company lost its page on the social-networking site to U.S.-based rival Merck & Co. According to a filing in New York State Supreme Court, the German Merck intends to "initiate action based on the apparent takeover of its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/merck" by Merck & Co., the similarly named but separate competitor.
South Korea's communications regulator said that personal information of more than 13 million subscribers of a popular online game of Nexon Korea Corp, a leading game developer in the country, had been leaked in a hacking attack. The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said in a statement Nexon reported to the commission that the company discovered the leakage of personal data of its online game Maple Story's 13.2 million subscribers.
Philippine police and the FBI have arrested four people over a hacking operation that targeted customers of U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T to funnel money to a Saudi-based militant group. Those arrested in Manila were paid by the same group the Federal Bureau of Investigation accuses of having funded the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, the Philippines' Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) said.
The U.S. government has seized 131 domains allegedly associated with counterfeiting- and piracy-related websites, reports TorrentFreak. The action signals that U.S. authorities have resumed “Operation In Our Sites”, a joint initiative between the Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that aims to stop online piracy and counterfeit item sales by assuming control of a site’s domain name.
The highest court in the European Union said that Internet service providers could not be required to monitor their customers’ online activity to filter out the illegal sharing of music and other copyrighted material. The ruling, by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, is a setback for a Belgian group representing music copyright owners, which had sought tougher measures to crack down on online file sharing.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said there is nothing to suggest that a recent pump failure at a Springfield, Ill. water utility was caused by a cyberattack as previously reported by an industrial control systems security expert. In a statement, DHS spokesman Chris Ortman said his agency and the FBI have completed a detailed analysis of the pump failure at the Curran-Gardner Public Water District in Springfield.
Apple has won its dispute with a domain name squatter and now is in control of iphonesex4s.com and six other names that contain the term "iPhone." Apple filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, aiming to gain control of the names.
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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.