How much Amazon.com Inc. charges its customers is more important to U.S. antitrust authorities than how it strong-arms book publishers and movie studios. Typically it’s seen as a good thing for a retailer to pressure suppliers to trim prices as that can lead to better deals for shoppers, David Balto, a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission, said in an interview.
The Federal Communications Commission has established a task force to study reported misuse of surveillance technology that can intercept cellular signals to locate people, monitor their calls and send malicious software to their phones. The powerful technology -- called an IMSI catcher, though also referred to by the trade name “Stingray” — is produced by several major surveillance companies and widely used by police and intelligence services around the world.
A California bill that would require cellphone makers to install a “kill switch” to render stolen devices inoperable has passed the state legislature, and now moves to the governor’s office for consideration. Several device manufacturers and wireless carriers withdrew their opposition once the bill was amended to exclude tablets and exempt smartphone models introduced before Jan. 1, 2015, that could not “reasonably be re-engineered” to incorporate the anti-theft technology.
Xiaomi Inc. said it had upgraded its operating system to ensure users knew it was collecting data from their address books after a report by a computer security firm said the Chinese budget smartphone maker was taking personal data without permission. The privately held company said it had fixed a loophole in its cloud messaging system that had triggered the unauthorized data transfer and that the operating system upgrade had been rolled out.
London’s financial district is aiming to become a global hub for innovative technology in cyber security and intelligence, and it couldn’t have come any sooner. Financial News reports that Canary Wharf Group is launching a series of initiatives to foster innovation in cyber security technology, which will be run out of its fintech accelerator space Level39 and will include accelerator programs for start-ups in the sector.
Google has agreed to create a $250 million internal program to disrupt rogue online pharmacies as part of a deal to end shareholder litigation over accusations the search company improperly allowed ads from non-U.S. drug sellers. Google said it would make content about prescription drug abuse more visible and work with legitimate pharmacies to counter marketing by rogue sellers, documents filed in an Oakland, Calif. federal court showed.
Four Silicon Valley companies including Apple and Google failed to persuade a U.S. judge to sign off on a $324.5 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit by tech workers, who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's employees. In a ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, said the class action settlement was too low, given the strength of the case against the companies.
John McAfee, a pioneer of antivirus software, made a surprise appearance at a hacker conference here to warn that smartphone apps spy on consumers. He also mentioned death threats from people in Belize, smoking marijuana while listening to a Bible recording, the age of consent and the popular computer program that, until recently, bore his name.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected several claims of one of the patents Apple wielded against Samsung in the most recent patent-infringement trial, saying in a preliminary ruling that certain aspects aren't valid. The patent, No. 8,074,172, covers "autocomplete" features that automatically generate word suggestions based on what the user is typing.
China’s government issued rules that restrict the dissemination of politically related news on instant-messaging applications to only authorized media outlets, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Rules tightening management of message applications in the world’s biggest Internet market, such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat, are meant to safeguard national security, according to the report.
Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab said they have uncovered a cyber espionage operation that successfully penetrated two spy agencies and hundreds of government and military targets in Europe and the Middle East since the beginning of this year. The hackers, according to Kaspersky, were likely backed by a nation state and used techniques and tools similar to ones employed in two other high-profile cyber espionage operations that Western intelligence sources have linked to the Russian government.
At a news conference in London, Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and similar sites like Wiktionary, released a list of its links that Google has removed from its search engine in accordance with Europe’s “right to be forgotten” law. “We will put the notices up as they come in, in order to be sure that people can find out what information is not being made available to them,” said Katherine Maher, a spokeswoman for Wikimedia.
A major U.S. contractor that conducts background checks for the Department of Homeland Security has suffered a computer breach that probably resulted in the theft of employees’ personal information, officials said. The company, USIS, said in a statement that the intrusion “has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack.”
A tip-off from Microsoft has led to the arrest of a man in Pennsylvania who has been charged with receiving and sharing child abuse images. It flagged the matter after discovering that an image involving a young girl had been allegedly saved to the man's OneDrive cloud storage account.
President Obama said at the U.S. Africa Business Forum that he’s uncomfortable with the idea of allowing Internet providers to sell fast-lane access to content companies, an idea that puts him squarely at odds with his own FCC Chairman.
The UK government will look into how virtual and digital currencies could or should be regulated, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer said at the launch of a fintech industry body in London. Speaking at the launch event of Innovate Finance in Level39, Canary Wharf’s Group accelerator for fintech startups, George Osborne said the government will look at the potential virtual and digital currencies have for encouraging innovation in the UK’s financial sector, as well as the potential risks.
China’s government excluded Apple Inc. iPads and MacBook laptops from the list of products that can be bought with public money because of security concerns, according to government officials familiar with the matter. Ten Apple products -- including the iPad, iPad Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro -- were omitted from a final government procurement list distributed in July, according to officials who read it and asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
A Chinese anti-trust regulator conducted new raids on Microsoft Corp. and partner in China Accenture PLC, the agency said on its website, after saying last week Microsoft is under investigation for anti-trust violations. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) raided offices in Beijing, Liaoning, Fujian and Hubei, it said.
Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. said in a joint statement that they have agreed to drop all suits against each other in countries outside the U.S. Claims are being abandoned in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, the U.K., France and Italy.
Security researchers say a Russian crime ring has pulled off the largest known theft of confidential Internet information including 1.2 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses. The cyber gang injected malicious code to steal databases from at least 420,000 websites, says Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer for Hold Security in Milwaukee, Wisc.
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.