lawsuits

Linux patent lawsuit: follow the money

Mark Radcliffe hints at something that I hope isn't true: that open source's growth might make it a prime candidate for patent trolls. This is one of the primary things that has bothered me about the IP Innovation lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell, two Linux desktop companies:

There is no Linux desktop market, and comparatively little in the bank accounts of both companies. Why sue penny pinchers when you can instead sue the sugar daddy?

Still, Mark writes:… Read more

Red Hat, Novell sued for patent infringement

Suddenly all those discussions about the discordant ways of open-source software and patent law have become a lot less abstract.

Companies called IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation sued Red Hat and Novell on Tuesday, claiming the top Linux sellers' software products infringe U.S. patent 5,072,412, "User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects," and two identically named patents. The suit (PDF), in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, seeks damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting any further infringement.

Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said Friday only that the company is … Read more

ConnectU, Facebook spat resurfaces in San Jose courtroom

The lengthy legal fight between social-networking scion Facebook and onetime rival ConnectU isn't over yet. New developments in the dispute on Wednesday probed deeper into the question of exactly what happened in 2004, when both sites were early-stage start-ups run essentially out of Harvard University dorm rooms.

The best-known component of the court drama has been ConnectU's allegation that Zuckerberg pilfered the former's business plan while he was a student at Harvard with ConnectU founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (they're twins) and Divya Narendra. In a San Jose, Calif., courtroom on Wednesday, however, the conversation turned … Read more

This day's Apple: Lawsuits, 'jailbreaks' and Nanos

From time to time, I'll post a brief summary of some interesting items I come across during the day that I don't have time to call out in more detail. If you see anything interesting out there, drop me a line at tom dot krazit at cnet dot com. Take that, you e-mail harvesters.

LEGAL DEPARTMENT: There's some news about a couple of items that will soon await new Apple General Counsel Daniel Cooperman. Information Week notes that the company has been sued over the iPhone--again--this time by a man claiming that Apple is breaking … Read more

'Old fuddy-duddy' can continue age discrimination suit against Google

A tech industry legend who claims Google fired him because he was too old to fit into the company "culture" has just won another shot at making his case in court.

A California state appeals court in San Jose on Thursday threw out a lower court's decision to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Internet pioneer Brian Reid. He's best known for helping to create the first firewall, the pioneering AltaVista Internet search engine and the alt.* hierarchy of newsgroups in Usenet.

Reid, who was 54 when he filed his lawsuit in 2004, came to Google as … Read more

Kazaa user fined $220,000

The recording industry has won its first victory against a user of a file-sharing network. Late yesterday, a jury in Minnesota determined that Jammie Thomas had in fact used Kazaa to share music files. Finding her guilty of "willful" copyright infringement, he jury ordered her to pay the copyright owners (six labels) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs that were at issue, for a total of $220,000.

Reading the coverage of the closing arguments on Ars Technica and Wired, I can see why the jury reached its decision. Somebody using the screen name "Tereastarr&… Read more

Verizon sued over Fios TV numbers

The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Verizon Communications is being sued by a TV advertiser for overstating the number of customers the company has signed up for its Fios TV service.

Digital Art Services, a media and advertising buying company based in Great River, N.Y., said in its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, that Verizon fraudulently inflated the number of people signed up for the Fios TV service.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Verizon included pending customers when it reported total number of subscribers in the New … Read more

Making sense of the million-dollar iPhone lawsuit

When Apple announced that it was dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, some jumped for joy and immediately headed out to their nearest Apple store. For others--early adopters who had already purchased Apple's gadget--the price drop was nothing short of a slap in the face. Some were satisfied when Steve Jobs said that these loyal customers would be provided a $100 credit toward their next Apple purchase, but many felt the credit didn't suffice. One of these unhappy shoppers has filed a lawsuit against Apple to the tune of $1 million dollars.

It's unclear how the litigant, Dongmei Li, plans to justify a million dollars in damages over a $200 price drop, but Li's argument is that "the price reduction injured early purchasers like herself because they cannot resell the product for the same profit as those who bought the cell phone following the price cut," according to CNN's account. So I guess that comes out to $200 in actual losses and $999,800 in pain and suffering.

… Read more

New York resident files quixotic suit over iPhone price cut

The erratic play of the New York Mets appears to have spurred at least one city resident and iPhone owner on a perplexing quest for justice.

Dongmei Li, a resident of the borough of Queens, sued Apple earlier this week for "price discrimination" brought on by the $200 drop in the price of the iPhone announced earlier this month by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Li names Apple, Jobs and AT&T as defendants in her suit, filed on Monday and spotted by AppleInsider.

The claims in the case make about as much sense to me, a long-suffering … Read more