Yahoo’s new owner Oath — which, in turn, is owned by telecom giant Verizon — is now in a legal battle with browser company Mozilla over a search deal that was struck by former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Yahoo Holdings and Oath filed a complaint against Mozilla, alleging that it improperly terminated an agreement between Mozilla and Yahoo. Now, Mozilla just filed a cross-complaint, claiming breach of contract.
Six months after it went into force, China’s tough new cybersecurity law is still troubling U.S. technology executives who fear that it will put the intellectual property of their companies and the data they collect in jeopardy. The cybersecurity law was the focus of a two-hour, closed-door session on the sidelines of the state-sponsored World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, according to people familiar with the situation.
The Internet Association, whose more than 40 members include companies like Google and Amazon, urged the Federal Communications Commission to delay a vote to repeal a 2015 order banning internet providers from blocking or throttling online content. In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Internet Association President Michael Beckerman asked for the vote to be delayed, or for the five commissioners to vote down the measure.
Apple Inc. succeeded in preventing Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Inc. from registering its “Mi Pad” tablet computer as an EU trademark because the name was too similar to Apple’s “iPad”. The European Union’s second-highest court, the General Court, ruled that Mi Pad should not be registered as a trademark because consumers were likely to be confused by the similarity of the signs.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to go ahead with a vote on Dec. 14 to repeal the net neutrality rules despite calls from Democrats and advocacy groups to delay the proceeding. The decision comes after 28 Democratic senators pressed the agency to postpone the vote, citing fake comments that were filed during the open comment period on the repeal proposal.
More than a half-dozen technology experts and former national security officials filed an amicus brief urging a federal court to halt the collection of voter information for a planned government database. Former national intelligence director James R. Clapper Jr., one of the co-signatories of the brief, warned that a White House plan to create a centralized database containing sensitive information on millions of American voters will become an attractive target for nation states and criminal hackers.
Ireland will begin collecting €13 billion ($15.46 billion) in back taxes from Apple Inc. as soon as early next year after both sides agreed to the terms of an escrow fund for the money, Ireland’s finance chief said. The European Union in 2016 ordered Dublin to retrieve the billions of euros from Apple in uncollected taxes, which the EU said Apple avoided paying with the help of sweetheart tax deals from Ireland.
Google is hiring thousands of new moderators after facing widespread backlash for allowing child abuse videos and other violent and offensive content to flourish on YouTube. Google, which owns YouTube, announced that next year it would expand its total workforce to more than 10,000 people responsible for reviewing content that could violate its policies.
New York’s attorney general urged the Federal Communications Commission to delay a vote rolling back net neutrality rules because of the large number of fake comments submitted to the agency on the issue. The FCC is expected to vote on Feb. 14 on Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to scrap the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.
A new division of the Securities and Exchange Commission dedicated to so-called “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) filed its first charges, targeting a scam that reportedly raised $15 million from thousands of investors by promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month. In a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the new SEC division, known as the Cyber Unit, describes how Dominic Lacroix sold digital tokens known as “PlexCoins” as part of a purported plan “to increase access to cryptocurrency services” across the world.
Australia’s competition regulator said it would investigate whether U.S. online giants Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have disrupted the news media market to the detriment of publishers and consumers. Like their rivals globally, Australia’s traditional media companies have been squeezed by online rivals, as advertising dollars have followed eyeballs to digital distributors such as Google, Facebook and Netflix Inc.
Twitter Inc. said it allowed anti-Muslim videos that were retweeted by President Donald Trump because they didn’t break rules on forbidden content, backtracking from an earlier rationale that newsworthiness justified the posts. A Twitter spokesperson said "there may be the rare occasion when we allow controversial content or behavior which may otherwise violate our rules to remain on our service because we believe there is a legitimate public interest in its availability."
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia overturned the Department of Homeland Security's delay of President Obama's International Entrepreneur Rule (IER). The Obama-era rule would allow foreign-born entrepreneurs two-and-a-half years in the U.S. to grow their companies, and possibly an additional two-and-a-half year extension.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country will not close its door to the global Internet, but that cyber sovereignty is key in its vision of Internet development. Xi’s comments were read by Huang Kunming, head of the Chinese Communist Party’s publicity department at the country’s largest public cyber policy forum in the town of Wuzhen in eastern China.
Walt Disney Co. sued Redbox in an attempt to stop the DVD rental company from selling digital copies of its movies. Privately held Redbox last month began offering consumers codes they can use to download a digital copy of a Disney movie.
Britain's National Cyber Security Center has advised all UK government departments to avoid using Russia-based anti-virus software, warning that it could be exploited by the Russian government. NCSC chief executive Ciaran Martin cautioned in the letter that in cases where access to the information by Russia "would be a risk to national security, a Russia-based (anti-virus) company should not be chosen."
An arbitration court ordered smartphone pioneer BlackBerry Ltd to pay $137 million to Nokia to settle a payment dispute and the Canadian company said it would pursue a separate patent infringement case against the Finnish firm. The International Court of Arbitration ruled that BlackBerry had failed to make certain payments to Nokia under a patent licence contract, BlackBerry said.
Qualcomm Inc. said it filed three new patent infringement complaints against Apple Inc., saying there were 16 more of its patents that Apple was using in its iPhones. The new complaints represent the latest development in a long-standing dispute and follows Apple’s countersuit a day earlier against Qualcomm, which alleged that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile phone chips infringed on Apple patents.
Facebook Inc. faced a skeptical judge over its second request to get out of a lawsuit alleging its photo scanning technology flouts users’ privacy rights. “The right to say no is a valuable commodity,” U.S. District Judge James Donato said during a hearing in San Francisco. The case concerns the “most personal aspects of your life: your face, your fingers, who you are to the world.”
More than 5 million people in the UK could be entitled to compensation from Google if a class action against the Internet giant for allegedly harvesting personal data is successful. A group led by the former executive director of consumer body Which?, Richard Lloyd, and advised by City law firm Mischon de Reya claims Google unlawfully collected personal information by bypassing the default privacy settings on the iPhone between June 2011 and February 2012.
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