lawsuits

Episode 590: What's your brain's bandwidth?

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Sun plans to countersue NetApp

Updated at 2:31 p.m. PDT: Sun Microsystems plans to countersue Network Appliance later this week, Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz said Wednesday, a suit that will include a request to remove the company's products from the market.

Schwartz said on his blog that he has "no interest whatever in suing them" and therefore "reached out" to Chief Executive Dan Warmenhoven. But, he said, NetApp's demands--that Sun "retract" its ZFS file system from open-source community and restrict its use to computing and not storage devices--can't be met.

Consequently, "Later this … Read more

Comcast to face lawsuits over BitTorrent filtering

The blogosphere is abuzz over an Associated Press investigative article this past Friday on the subject of Comcast's BitTorrent filtering. Briefly, there were a number of articles in early September which alleged that Comcast was using some fairly sneaky techniques to throttle BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast, of course, denied any such behavior. It took a month and a half, but both a mainstream media news organization as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have tested and confirmed the previously reported claims. It turns out that Comcast is not only throttling BitTorrent, but Gnutella and, strangely, Lotus Notes … Read more

IP Innovation: 'We are equal opportunity patent trolls'

Acacia/IP Innovation has gone on the record as saying that it's not trying to kill open source: it just wants to suck anyone and everyone dry of cash, regardless of license. I don't know about you, but I feel strangely comforted. :-)

Acacia says:

IP Innovation is not attempting to inject itself in the ongoing philosophical debate of whether products or services which utilize open source are subject to the same intellectual property laws/behaviors as non-open source offerings. Acacia and its subsidiaries do not philosophically differentiate any company, but rather seek to consistently and fairly monetize … Read more

Supreme Court dumps Microsoft, Best Buy appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take on a case that accuses Microsoft and Best Buy of deliberately tricking customers into signing up for MSN Internet service and improperly charging them when a trial period expires.

Microsoft and Best Buy had asked the high court to review the matter after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opted in May to let a class action suit against the companies proceed. The Supreme Court's decision not to review the case, which arrived without comment, means the class action can theoretically move forward.

The case began in 2003, when … Read more

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