The Supreme Court agreed to resolve a dispute between television broadcasters and Aereo, an Internet start-up that the broadcasters say threatens the economic viability of their businesses. Aereo uses an array of small antennas to stream over-the-air television signals to subscribers, allowing them to watch programs on their smartphones and computers.
Travel startup Pintrips has filed a motion to dismiss a trademark infringement suit filed by Pinterest. Pintrips says that the term “pin” is too generic and that Pinterest has made a claim on insufficient grounds as a result.
Apple Inc does not use patented technology owned by Google unit Motorola Mobility in making its iPhones, an appeals court said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a decision by the International Trade Commission in April that Apple did not violate a Google patent to make the popular iPhone. Read the article: Reuters
Target said that its recent security breach affected significantly more customers than originally reported, adding that earlier news of the data theft badly hurt sales during the all-important holiday shopping season. The latest disclosure, made as part of an ongoing investigation by the company, indicated that up to 70 million shoppers had been affected by the theft.
A new feature in Google Inc's Gmail will result in some users receiving messages from people with whom they have not shared their email addresses, raising concerns among some privacy advocates. The change broadens the list of contacts available to Gmail users so it includes both the email addresses of their existing contacts, as well as the names of people on the Google+ social network.
More lending companies are mining Facebook, Twitter and other social-media data to help determine a borrower's creditworthiness or identity, a trend that is raising concerns among consumer groups and regulators. Consumer advocates say the trend increases the chance borrowers, including small businesses, will be unfairly denied credit or saddled with higher interest rates based purely on their social-media presence.
A contentious European Union privacy law that would've drastically changed data protection laws for a generation is "dead," according to Google's chief privacy counsel. Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer wrote on his personal blog, "Europe's much-ballyhooed, and much-flawed, proposal to rewrite its privacy laws for the next twenty years [has] collapsed." Read the article: CNET News
As many as two million European users of Yahoo may have received PC malware from virus-laden ads served by its homepage over a four-day period last week. Some of the malware would turn PCs into bitcoin miners -- a huge drain on its computing resources -- without users' knowledge.
Snapchat rolled out the security fix it promised last week, which lets users opt out of the app's "Find Friends" feature. The feature, which let users plug in their phone number to find friends using the app, was the root of the leaking of 4.6 million phone numbers and usernames on New Year's Day.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service should give taxpayers clear rules on how it will handle transactions involving Bitcoin and other digital currencies, Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, said. Spending Bitcoins to purchase goods may trigger capital gains and losses or ordinary income and losses, which have different tax rates, Olson said in her annual report to Congress.
Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. agreed to a mediator in an effort to resolve their patent disputes over smartphone technology before their next trial in San Jose, California, scheduled to begin in March. The agreement, filed in federal court in San Jose, was in response to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s request in November that both sides submit a settlement discussion proposal before trial.
Apple Inc. asked a federal judge to remove the lawyer she appointed to monitor the company's e-book pricing reform, escalating an already contentious feud between the company and the lawyer. Attorneys for Apple asked the court to remove Michael Bromwich, the lawyer picked as Apple's monitor, citing a "wholly inappropriate" statement he filed with the court last month.
France's data protection watchdog has fined Google 150,000 euros after the U.S. search engine ignored a three-month ultimatum to bring its practices on tracking and storing user information in line with local law. The privacy watchdog, known as CNIL, has also ordered Google to post the decision on its google.fr homepage for 48 hours within eight days of being officially notified of the ruling.
The world’s biggest Web companies are lining up at the courtroom of a California federal judge whose rulings could further inflame the widening debate over online privacy and how the Internet giants use personal data. Google Inc., LinkedIn Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. are all being sued by customers who say the companies unfairly appropriated their personal information for profit.
Professional network LinkedIn is fighting off shady competitors that are using bots to vacuum up hundreds of thousands of its user profiles in order to compete with LinkedIn’s own recruiter products, according to a new lawsuit. In a complaint filed this week in San Francisco, LinkedIn asked a court to grant orders that will allow it to stop a group of “John Does” from scraping its servers, and to make the unknown defendants pay for allegedly breaching federal and state hacking statutes as well as a variety of other laws.
Lawyers for Kanye West filed cease-and-desist papers against the seven anonymous coders behind Coinye West, a virtual currency that went from chatroom joke to Internet sensation last week. The legal document, dated Jan. 6, includes an image of Coinye – a cartoon representation of West on a gold medallion. West’s lawyer argues trademark infringement.
According to Torrent Freak, a website that monitors BitTorrent and online copyright, The Pirate Bay will try to sidestep authorities by building a peer-to-peer network (rather than a centralized network) that will allow anyone to download and share files simultaneously using a Pirate Bay-specific program. “The goal is to create a browser-like client to circumvent censorship, including domain blocking, domain confiscation, IP-blocking,” someone who works with The Pirate Bay told Torrent Freak.
Lawmakers have introduced at least three different bills that would reshape the consumer video market, including online video, similar to efforts used to boost the satellite industry in the 1990s. A bill unveiled by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) would help online video providers gain access to broadcast and other desirable content, and prevent cable and broadband providers from discriminating against online competitors.
China has temporarily lifted a 14-year-old ban on selling video game consoles, paving the way for Sony Corp, Microsoft Corp and Nintendo Co Ltd to enter the world's third largest video game market in terms of revenue. China saw video game revenues grow by more than a third in 2012 to nearly $14 billion last year, but console makers are likely to face an uphill battle for market share in a country where a whole generation has grown up without a PlayStation, Xbox or Wii and where free PC and mobile games dominate.
Apple Inc., facing behind-the-scenes pressure from some shareholders to add more female directors and executives, has taken a step to address the criticism and diversify its board. The world’s most valuable company recently added language to a board committee charter vowing to diversify its board.
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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.