Apple and Google, fierce rivals in mobile software, agreed to dismiss patent lawsuits related to smartphone technology between the two companies. The companies said that they would work together on patent reform, but clarified that they would not be agreeing to license each other’s technologies.
Nearly one year after Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing the extent of U.S. government electronic surveillance, large tech and telecom firms are telling their users a lot more about the types of data collected by the government, according to a report by an advocacy group. Verizon and AT&T now issue reports offering broad ranges of the number of national security records requests they receive, which are new for the nation’s largest phone companies.
Google will announce by the end of the month a mechanism for consumers to request that links to information about them be removed from the company’s search engine, a leading European regulator said. It was one of the first signs that Google was working through how to operate after a court ruling said consumers could make such requests.
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to open for public debate new rules meant to guarantee an open Internet. Before the plan becomes final, though, the chairman of the commission, Tom Wheeler, will need to convince his colleagues and an array of powerful lobbying groups that the plan follows the principle of net neutrality, the idea that all content running through the Internet’s pipes is treated equally.
Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. were the most frequent targets of U.S. patent-infringement lawsuits last year in an increasingly complex legal climate that Congress and the Supreme Court are being asked to control. Of the 6,092 patent-infringement suits filed, 10 companies -- all patent-licensing firms -- were responsible for almost 13 percent, according to a report from Lex Machina, a Menlo Park, California-based legal analysis company.
In an effort to beef up protections for the personal details about students that schools may share with app developers and other companies, two prominent senators said that they intend to modernize a decades-old federal education privacy law. The law, called the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Right Act of 1974, or FERPA for short, generally requires schools that receive public financing to obtain parents’ permission before sharing intimate details about their children with third parties.
India's antitrust body ordered a new probe into Google Inc. The probe comes after a New Delhi-based company alleged the Internet giant blocked its advertisements because it competed with one of Google's businesses.
The Norwegian Consumer Council has filed a complaint over the terms and conditions of Apple's iCloud service, on the grounds they're in violation of several articles of Norwegian law governing marketing in the country. The background for the complaint, filed with the Norwegian consumer ombudsman, comes from a study of the terms and conditions of seven cloud storage providers operating in the Norwegian market, conducted by the Consumer Council earlier this year.
A U.S. appeals court affirmed a decision by the International Trade Commission that Apple Inc. was innocent of violating three patents owned by Samsung Electronics.
Iranian hackers have become increasingly aggressive and sophisticated, moving from disrupting and defacing U.S. websites to engaging in cyber espionage, security experts say. According to Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity company FireEye Inc., a group called the Ajax Security Team has become the first Iranian hacking group known to use custom-built malicious software to launch espionage campaigns.
The highest court in the European Union decided that Google must grant users of its search engine a right to delete links about themselves in some cases, including links to legal records. The decision by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is a blow for Google, which has sought to avoid the obligation to remove links when requested by European users of its service.
Alibaba is taking a tougher line against counterfeit items sold on its online marketplaces as the Chinese e-commerce giant heads towards a U.S. stock listing that could be the world's biggest technology company IPO. Some security experts say the Chinese group's stricter standards on piracy and fake goods may even surpass those of Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.
Google is violating German rules by compiling customers’ data without asking for their consent, according to Johannes Caspar, who heads the data protection office for the German state of Hamburg. The agency plans to order Google to change its data-handling practices in the coming weeks, he said.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has revised his proposal for net neutrality after receiving considerable backlash on a plan unveiled in April. The revised draft essentially sticks to the original plan, but it stresses that the FCC will highly scrutinize any deals for faster delivery of content to ensure consumers are not hurt by them and that nonpaying companies are not put at a disadvantage.
Vijaya Gadde who was promoted to Twitter's general counsel in August, is in a position to lead Twitter’s free speech battles. As the company expands internationally, she is working in the U.S. and abroad to keep its service uncensored and protect users’ privacy.
One of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that accuses tech firms including Apple Inc and Google Inc of conspiring to hold down salaries has asked the court to reject a $324 million settlement negotiated by his own lawyers. Michael Devine, one of the four named plaintiffs in a class action of 64,000 people, described the tentative settlement as "grossly inadequate" in a letter to the judge in the case.
Link-shortening service Bit.ly is the latest company to suffer a security breach, and the company is warning users to take action immediately. Bit.ly, which lets users shorten links and track readership, said in an "urgent security update" that it believes users' information was compromised.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will hold a vote on his proposal to allow Internet “fast lanes,” despite calls to delay it. Though other commissioners have asked Wheeler to wait, the agency will hold a vote May 15, during its monthly meeting, on Wheeler’s proposal to rewrite the FCC’s net neutrality rules.
One U.S. Supreme Court justice referred to Netflix as "Netflick." Another seemed not to know that HBO is a cable channel. A third appeared to think most software coding could be tossed off in a mere weekend. These and other apparent gaffes by the justices during oral arguments have became a source of bemused derision, as tech aficionados, legal experts and others have taken to social media, blogs, YouTube and other outlets to proclaim the justices black-robed techno-fogeys.
A company called Mediabridge Products has had its Amazon selling privileges revoked after aggressively intimidating and harassing a user for posting a harsh review on one of its routers. Unfortunately for Mediabridge, that Amazon customer also frequents Reddit and chronicled the entire saga there. After discovering the negative review — which quickly rose to become the "most helpful" negative feedback — Mediabridge threatened to sue the customer, claiming he was waging an "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame and libel Mediabridge."
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