lawsuit

MySpace profile cited in court dispute over citizenship

Details in a MySpace user profile of a 31-year-old woman have been cited in a court case that centers on whether she lives in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Kristin Galonsky claims she tripped and fell in March 2005 when leaving a comedy club in New Jersey owned by the Tropicana Casino and Resort and sued the casino in federal court in Philadelphia. She claims in legal documents to be a "citizen and resident" of Southampton, Penn., which is just across the Delaware River from New Jersey.

Tropicana has asked U.S. District Judge J. Curtis Joyner to transfer … Read more

Microsoft wins reversal of MP3 patent decision

Microsoft has won a reversal of a $1.5 billion jury verdict against it for infringing on a patent for MP3 technology held by Alcatel-Lucent.

Judge Rudi Brewster of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California tossed out the damages after finding that a jury improperly ruled that Microsoft infringed on one of two patents at issue for MP3 sound technology. The new ruling holds that one of the patents in the case was not actually owned outright by Lucent, and since Microsoft had a license to that particular patent through its co-owner, it's off … Read more

Apple sued over iPhone keyboard

The first iPhone lawsuit might have been somewhat laughable, but the second one may be a little more serious.

An outfit called SP Technologies has sued Apple over the touch-screen keyboard at the heart of the iPhone, claiming Apple is infringing on a patent held by SP Technologies for a similar keyboard. AppleInsider dug up the SP patent filing from 2000, which claims the company developed a "method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area."

Patent suits, of course, are a dime a … Read more

Kodak sues Panasonic for patent infringement

Eastman Kodak has sued Panasonic, claiming the Japanese company infringed four patents relating to digital cameras.

The suit, filed July 25 in U.S. Federal Court in the Eastern District of Texas, targets Panasonic, its Japanese parent company, Matsushita Electric Industrial (MEI), and two Matsushita subsidiaries, Victor Company of Japan (JVC) and JVC Americas.

"Kodak has attempted to resolve the matter with MEI for a number of years. The discussions between the companies have not led to a suitable license agreement, so we have decided to file a complaint in order to protect the investment in technology that we … Read more

Worst lawsuit ever

You'd think that lawyers would be trained in the art of correctly interpreting the fine print.

Larry Drury, an Illinois lawyer, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of iPhone owner Jose Trujillo that claims Apple defrauded his client by failing to reveal that the iPhone battery was not user-replaceable, and that it would die after 300 charges. (Thanks, Gizmodo.)

"This case arises out of Defendants' purposeful and fraudulent concealment to purchasers of its iPhone cellular telephone that they will be required to incur an annual fee of $85.95 as part of Defendants' battery replacement program," Drury … Read more

CNET News.com feature: Judge unimpressed by case against Facebook

BOSTON--The judge's message Wednesday to ConnectU over its intellectual property lawsuit against fellow social-networking site Facebook was clear: show us the evidence.

ConnectU, which accuses Facebook of stealing its ideas, has been in legal pursuit of its rival, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and early employees Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes for nearly three years, and there still isn't an end in sight.

Massachusetts Federal Judge Douglas P. Woodlock repeatedly stressed that there was simply not enough evidence to back up allegations that Zuckerberg, who had performed programming work for ConnectU while it … Read more

Google sued over North Carolina tax exemptions

It's pretty common for large companies to get tax breaks and other incentives to expand their operations in U.S. cities and states. Apparently, things aren't going so well for Google in North Carolina though.

First, there was the charge that the search giant tried to silence North Carolina politicians as the parties negotiated the deal. Under the agreement, Google will invest around $600 million and employ more than 200 people in a data center in Lenoir in exchange for tax breaks worth at least $89 million over 30 years.

Now, a libertarian advocacy group is challenging those … Read more

Judge gives ConnectU founders two weeks to revise Facebook complaint

BOSTON--A federal judge in a Massachusetts district court gave the founders of college-based social networking site ConnectU two weeks to revise the complaint that they have filed against Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and four other early employees of the fast-growing social network. The ConnectU founders, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their fellow 2004 Harvard graduating classmate Divya Narendra, have accused Zuckerberg and his company of stealing their code and business plan when Zuckerberg was casually employed as a programmer for ConnectU in the 2003-2004 academic year.

Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, during the case's dismissal hearing on Wednesday … Read more

EFF sues Universal over 'fair use' of song in YouTube video

We all heard the stories about the Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits and the mostly college students who found themselves in the crosshairs several years ago.

Many people are opposed to music piracy, but far fewer actually agreed with the RIAA's heavy-handed legal approach.

Among dissenters is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against RIAA member Universal Music Publishing Group after the company asked that a home video be removed from YouTube due to copyright infringement. The video features 18-month-old Holden Lenz dancing to Prince's "Let's Get Crazy" and runs for a total of 29 seconds. Following Universal's complaint, the video was removed by YouTube and remained offline until recently.

The EFF points out that, "Under federal copyright law, a mere allegation of copyright infringement can result in the removal of content from the Internet." This legal framework mandates that services take down material that may actually be completely lawful or protected under fair use, and this situation is the impetus for the suit.

CNET News.com feature: Opening credits roll for Facebook's colorful court hearing

If indie cinema hero Wes Anderson--of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums fame--directed a quirky courtroom drama, there's a chance that it might bear some resemblance to what could unfold at Wednesday's impending showdown between social-networking sites Facebook and ConnectU.

The backstory of the legal squabble, after all, in which the three founders of college-centric start-up ConnectU have accused Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their business plan and code, reads like classic Anderson.

It's a melange of gossip about upper-crust Silicon Valley, allegations of old-school Ivy League skulduggery and an oddball cast of characters that ranges from … Read more