Couldn't fit those last two Oingo Boingo albums on your Zen when you thought you had enough space? Get ready for payback, because if you own a Creative Labs MP3 player made between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008, you could be entitled to a class-action settlement over this very issue. The proposed settlement -- not the first of its kind -- will force Creative to "make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its hard disc drive MP3 players" and give a 50% discount on a new 1GB player or 20% off any item purchased at Creative's online store, if it's approved by the court. For its part, Creative denies any wrongdoing, but it looks like it's offering up the settlement to smooth thing over with consumers -- but you know it's going to fight the $900,000 requested by plaintiffs' attorneys in fees. Applications are due by August 7, 2008, so start digging up those serial numbers.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

It looks like that little lawsuit over "Vista Capable" stickers on PCs could now be about to get quite a bit bigger, as a federal judge has now bestowed class-action status on the suit, which accuses Microsoft of misleading marketing. More specifically, as the AP reports, the suit alleges that the "Vista Capable" stickers slapped on PCs during the 2006 holiday season created an "artificial demand" for the computers, and "inflated prices for computers that couldn't be upgraded to the full-featured version of Vista." As we've seen, those stickers even took in at least one higher-up at Microsoft itself, who has made his thoughts on the program quite well known. While things are still obviously in the early stages, the law firm that filed the suit is now looking for others that feel they've been burned by the stickers, and ComputerWorld has the details on you can get involved at the link below.

[Via ComputerWorld]

It looks like those that bought a Seagate hard drive in the past few years could possibly be in store for a few freebies or a bit of cash, at least if a proposed class action settlement goes ahead. According to a recently-launched website for the settlement, the suit centers on alleged misleading sales and marketing by Seagate, which stated that "purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received." To make up for that allegedly egregious offense, the settlement proposes that anyone who purchased a drive between March 22nd, 2001 and September 26, 2007 (which wasn't pre-installed in a system) receive either some free backup and recovery software or a cash payment equivalent to five percent of the price paid for the hard drive. To get in on that potential windfall, however, you'll have to sign yourself up as part of the class action on the website linked below, where you can also opt out of the suit if you so choose.

[Thanks, Joey]

It goes without saying that if you sell enough of pretty much anything, you're going to eventually get someone riled up over a missing feature, a broken feature, or in this case, an unwanted feature -- and that someone might just happen to know a lawyer (or worse yet, be one). The latest class action suit against Apple and AT&T over the iPhone, filed in California, reads like a what's-what of complaints we've heard since before the phone was even released: the carrier shouldn't be charging an early termination fee for a phone that isn't subsidized, its international roaming plan is a total ripoff compared to a prepaid SIM that you'd normally buy to use with an unlocked handset, and most notably, that neither AT&T nor Apple have the right to purposefully damage (via firmware update) or void the warranty of a "lawfully" unlocked iPhone. All told, the suit rocks the two companies with a grand total of six counts -- alleging violations of a garden variety of state and federal laws -- each asking for between $200 and $600 million in cold, hard cash. Anyone who's bought an iPhone and "sustained damages" from it is entitled to participate, so put on your lawyerin' pants and enjoy the courtroom action.

[Thanks, Mark]

Apple has obviously made some enemies over this whole iPhone firmware situation, and clearly not everyone wants to follow the straight-and-narrow when it comes to the company's factory-limited and locked device. Now, at least one California resident named Timothy Smith has decided to bring the fight to the Cupertino monolith's doorstep -- and he showed up with lawyers. According to papers filed last week, the angry iPhone owner is suing Apple in hopes of barring the company from selling locked phones, and forcing the Mac-maker to provide warranty service for customers even if they've bricked their phones via third-party software -- though there seems to be no definitive evidence that Apple's update is the source of the brickings. The suit claims that, "Apple forced plaintiff and the class members to pay substantially more for the iPhone and cell phone service than they would have paid in a competitive marketplace either for the iPhone or for AT&T's cell phone service," and that the company, "Acted in defiance and without sufficient consideration of consumers' rights to unlock their iPhones because it knew that the probable result of its update would be to render unlocked iPhones inoperable." The lawyers in the case have set up a website where owners can join in on the suit -- so if you're feeling slighted, maybe they can help.

Apple, despite (or because of) all its successes and odds-beating triumphs, still can't shake the occasional class-action suit being thrown its way. This week is no different, as the company sees not one, but two separate claims laid on its doorstep. The first hails from Florida, where two righteous citizens have filed suit against Apple alleging the company has "recklessly disregarded" consumers' rights. According to the suit, a law which prevents credit card information from being displayed on receipts has been ignored by the company, and if Apple is found to be in the wrong, it could be responsible for compensation to any buyer affected by its practices (that means you). The second suit comes from a man in Michigan, who claims that the Cupertino computer-maker has violated patents he owns for the inclusion of status lights on rechargeable laptop batteries. If his claim proves successful, Apple could find themselves accounting for lost profits and paying triple the awarded amount for the patent infringement. Of course, Steve Jobs loses money like that in-between his sofa cushions... right?

Here in lawsuit-crazy America there's only one thing to do if you don't like a lawsuit: file another suit, claiming that the basis for the original claim was illegitimate. That's the case with a recent filed class action lawsuit against Netflix, which argues that the company's lawsuit against Blockbuster violates antitrust law because the company fraudulently concealed prior art related to patents used to sue Blockbuster. Techdirt points out that this new lawsuit highlights prior art that Netflix knew about, but failed to include in its original patent applications, something it was required to do. Yeah, that's right, the whole affair hinges around the ineffective patenting system, which is the background for dozens of other technology related lawsuits. If this class action is successful, then Netflix will be left regretting ever filing against Blockbuster; if it's not, then the company's still got a whole lot of paperwork to do in its case against Blockbuster. As always, there's one group left lovin' the whole situation: the lawyers.

You know, major manufacturers should just start handing out class action lawsuit form letters and business reply mail envelopes with their various electronics, just to make these things easier for everyone involved. A mere year after Microsoft got hit with its first major class action lawsuit regarding the Xbox 360 -- one which was quickly and thoroughly trounced by Microsoft legal -- a certain Kevin Ray of California is drumming up his own, this time in regards to that Xbox-destroying Fall 2006 Update. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Kevin has a bit more traction with his lawsuit, given the fact that the update has bricked his own Xbox 360 (last time around it was unclear if the accuser had even encountered any of the problems listed in his suit), and that Microsoft is refusing to replace his console. So instead of forking over $140 for the repair, Kevin is seeking $5 million in damages -- pain and suffering if we ever heard it -- along with free repairs for all 360s damaged by the update. Some of the wording of the suit is a little shaky, such as a claim by Ray's lawyer that "a Google search of the terms 'xbox 360' and 'brick' or 'bricking' shows over 15,000 results," but there does seem to be a lot of corroborating evidence for the basic claim of the Fall Updating damaging Xbox 360s, so if Microsoft doesn't come up with a fix quick, or start replacing affected boxes on the double, they could be facing a decent bit of hurt from Kevin and co.

Things weren't looking so great already for those skeezy SRAM price-fixers, but now it looks like they'll have a class action lawsuit to worry about on top of all that DOJ heat they're currently facing. A certain Kenneth Bagwell of Michigan started up the class action suit, claiming the defendants conspired to "fix, maintain or stabilize prices and to allocate markets for the sale of SRAM." And Kenneth isn't screwing around. He's managed to name just about every SRAM manufacturer under the sun as in cahoots: Alliance, Cypress, Etron, GSI, Hitachi, Hynix, Integrated Silicon Solution, Micron, Crucial, Mitsubishi, NEC, Renesas, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Winbond, Fujitsu, IBM, Seiko Epson, Epson, Sharp and ST Microelectronics are all named as defendants of his own personal cash-in on this debacle. Mr. Bagwell already brought his suit to a Michigan district court, so now we just watch and wait for it all to hit the fan -- as if it hadn't already.

Wireless carriers in this country are no strangers to all manner of legal action, so it comes as little surprise to us to hear that we have a couple fresh lawsuits brewing of the class-action variety. In Cingular's case, it seems a group of former AT&T Wireless customers are worked up over the degredation of AT&T's legacy network following the merger, forcing many of them to either deal with the inferior reception, buy so-called "orange" phones and get on Cingular's network proper -- often incurring a transfer fee in addition to the cost of the phone, or leave Cingular entirely and pay the early-termination fee of $175. Verizon meanwhile is taking heat for covertly slapping some of its customers with their roadside assistance option starting in January 2004 at $2 / month, then later refusing refunds when folks got wise to the charge. We dream of one day achieving world peace between human- and carrier-kind -- but in the meantime, good luck sticking it to the Man, folks.

In an open letter to the Mac community, Jason Tomczak, the so-called lead-plaintiff in the iPod nano "Scratch" class-action lawsuit, says he never wanted anything to do with the case. The fact that he was named lead-plantiff was a mistake according to Jason, as he never sought out, nor hired the firms of David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro to represent him. Sure, he did respond to their request for information after Jason complained about scratches on his personal blog and within other Mac-related forums. However, Jason claims that the lawyers prepared the paperwork and filed the iPod Nano Class Action suit in California using Jason's name as Lead Plaintiff "without his knowledge or consent," even after Jason requested not to be involved, and without Jason signing an attorney-client agreement. On top of this, the poor kid's name has become synonymous with the class action resulting in threats, hate mail, and other forms of harassment from the more fanatical-types amongst the Mac zealotry. Jason is currently suing the two firms -- a move being met by the type of aggressive and staunch defense you'd expect from a couple of powerful and scheming law firms. If true, well, you just gotta feel sorry for the guy. So let's cut him some slack as this thing unfolds, aight?

[Via TechDirt]

Listen up anyone who "purchased, received, came into possession of or otherwise used" music CDs containing Sony's flawed DRM software anytime after August 1, 2003. Under the terms of the class action settlement approved Monday, you are entitled to file a claim for a replacement CD, free downloads of music from that CD (with Apple's iTunes named as one of the three download services, ironically), and even "additional cash payments" which we presume are likely to amount to a stack of Abes, not Benjamins, folks. Pretty much what Sony BMG was already offering to their customers when this whole fiasco hit back in November. Additionally, Sony BMG definitively agreed to halt manufacture or distribution of that XCP and MediaMax nastiness masked by the rootkit. Now be sure to get your claim in now consumers, so that Sony BMG hears loud and clear that you do know what a rootkit is, and yes, you care. Afterall, the settlement only lasts until the end of 2007 at which point Sony BMG is free to introduce copy protection software once again. Click the read link for a PDF copy of the settlement.

[Via c|net News]