As part of an ongoing effort to combat online counterfeiting and piracy, federal authorities announced a major crackdown on websites allegedly engaged in selling counterfeit drugs. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, working with other federal agencies and Interpol, seized 686 websites for allegedly selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
Google Inc and a group of publishers have agreed to a settlement over making digital copies of books, capping seven years of litigation involving the search giant's mission to become the world's library. Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) said that U.S. publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project.
The Federal Trade Commission announced a multinational crackdown on so-called tech support scams, in which a caller fools a consumer into believing Microsoft or a computer security company has discovered that a PC is infected with harmful software. In six cases filed in federal district court in Manhattan, the commission named 17 individuals and 14 companies, most in India, as participants in the operations, including many with legitimate-sounding names like Virtual PC Solutions and Zeal IT Solutions.
The company that makes fan websites for such tween favorites as Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Rihanna has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it illegally collected data about more than 100,000 children. The Federal Trade Commission, in a complaint filed in a New York district court, had accused Artist Arena LLC of failing to get parental consent before collecting data like names and email addresses of children.
A judge denied Google Inc. a motion for summary judgment in a patent dispute with Mobile phone software maker Vringo Inc. Google was sued by Innovate/Protect Inc, which was acquired by Vringo. Vringo is seeking an award of at least $696 million from Google, financial website iStockAnalyst reported.
Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google’s information security team, said in an interview that since Google started to alert users to state-sponsored attacks three months ago, it had gathered new intelligence about attack methods and the groups deploying them. He said the company was using that information to warn “tens of thousands of new users” that they may have been targets.
Apple is in the middle of another lawsuit, this one over charges that its Passbook app violates several patents of software developer Ameranth. In the court document, Ameranth, which sells software and services to the hospitality and gaming industry, claims that Passbook violates four of its U.S. patents.
Microsoft reached a settlement in its legal case against a Web site that has been linked to malicious activity, with the Chinese company agreeing to block malware tied to its domain. The software giant, which originally filed the suit about two weeks ago, said that the operator of 3322.org, Peng Yong, has agreed to work with Microsoft and the Chinese Computer Emergency Response Team to block all malicious connections to the 3322.org domain and prevent malware infections associated with the site.
A U.S. judge has imposed a judgment of $163.2 million against a defendant accused by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission of being part of an operation that sold software to people it tricked into thinking their computers were infected with malicious software. Judge Richard Bennett of U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ordered defendant Kristy Ross, vice president of Business Development for Ukraine-based Innovative Marketing, in a ruling.
Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility has dropped a complaint of patent infringement against Apple without explanation. In a brief filing with the International Trade Commission, Motorola Mobility said it was dropping without prejudice a complaint that Apple had infringed on seven Motorola patents.
The hackers behind the cyber attacks on major U.S. banks have repeatedly disrupted online banking by using sophisticated and diverse tools that point to a carefully coordinated campaign, according to security researchers. The hackers, believed to be activists in the Middle East, were highly knowledgeable about the defensive equipment used by the banks and likely spent months on reconnaissance, said several researchers interviewed by Reuters, who viewed the assaults as among the strongest and most complex the world has seen to date.
Samsung Electronics Co. said Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5 infringes its patents, escalating a global fight over mobile devices after winning a court order lifting a ban on U.S. sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer. The world's largest mobile-phone seller, based in Suwon, South Korea, added claims about the iPhone 5, which was released last month, to an existing patent-infringement lawsuit between the two companies in federal court in San Jose, California.
The social networking giant Facebook has told the Obama administration that child privacy laws should not apply to a Web site’s ability to incorporate a “like” button, because that would inhibit free expression. The company sent a 20-page letter to the Federal Trade Commission in which it objected to certain proposed revisions of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.
The White House's computer system was targeted in a cyber attack, a senior administration official said, but no classified systems were breached. There is no evidence that data was taken in the incident, the official said, adding that the attack was identified early and did not spread.
Iranian authorities have restored access to Gmail a week after blocking Google's popular email service. The Islamic Republic blocked Gmail last week in response to video clips posted on YouTube of an anti-Islam film that set off deadly protests across the Muslim world. YouTube is owned by Google.
The Canadian government said it is looking into a cyber-attack on the Canadian arm of a company that designs software for the energy industry and helps other firms protect themselves against cyber-attack. A spokesman for the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre said they are aware that Telvent, which is owned by French firm Schneider Electric SA, had been hacked into.
Federal regulators are about to take the biggest steps in more than a decade to protect children online. The moves come at a time when major corporations, app developers and data miners appear to be collecting information about the online activities of millions of young Internet users without their parents’ awareness, children’s advocates say.
A U.S. appeals court ruled that Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit cannot enforce a patent injunction that it obtained against Microsoft Corp in Germany, diminishing Google's leverage in the ongoing smartphone patent wars. The injunction would have barred Microsoft from "offering, marketing, using or importing or possessing" in Germany some products including the Xbox 360 and certain Windows software.
A U.S. appeals court ruled that a lower court should reconsider a sales ban against Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 won by Apple in a patent dispute with the South Korean electronics maker. The injunction was put in place ahead of a month-long trial that pitted iPhone maker Apple Inc against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in a closely watched legal battle that ended with a resounding victory for Apple last month on many of its patent violation claims.
Two privacy groups are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether a deal Facebook has entered into with a data-mining firm violates the privacy settlement the social networking site reached last year with the agency. In a letter to the FTC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy urged the commission to examine whether the deal Facebook reached with Datalogix to measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads runs counter to the privacy promises Facebook agreed to as part of the consent decree reached last year.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
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.