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Fugees rapper Pras accuses his lawyer of using AI in closing arguments
Rapper “Pras” Michel says his lawyer from a recent federal criminal case of using AI in his closing arguments. Pras, who faces up to 20 years in prison, was found guilty in April of conspiring and acting as a foreign agent.
Facebook's top lawyer is leaving the company
Facebook's week has taken another turn for the worse. The social network's general counsel Colin Stretch (above) has announced he's leaving the company by year's end, according to The Wall Street Journal. Stretch testified during the hearings in Washington, DC last November and has been with the company since 2010. He made the announcement via his Facebook page, saying that his departure was the result of logistics. A few years ago Stretch moved to Washington DC and apparently the differences in time zones and working with his team shaped the decision.
Attorney leading lawsuit against EA: NCAA 'ducking its responsibilities'
Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman, the law firm alleging that NCAA and EA illegally used college athletes' names and likenesses in its NCAA Football series, said "the NCAA's decision to end its long and hugely profitable relationship with EA is tied directly to the pressure our litigation is bringing [to] bear," in a statement to the media. "This announcement makes plain that the NCAA is attempting to mitigate the damage by ducking its responsibilities," Berman said. The lawsuit in question is one of two from Hagens Berman against EA, the other having been settled in July 2012 by EA for $27 million with the requirement that EA not renew its exclusive license with NCAA for five years. NCAA's announcement this week that NCAA Football 14 would be the last game in the series to use the NCAA branding included a note that "given the current business climate and costs of litigation, we determined participating in this game is not in the best interests of the NCAA," pointing to the ongoing legal battle as reasoning for its departure from the partnership. "Our suit illustrates how the cabal between the NCAA and EA has exploited student athletes for years, using their images in video games without compensation," Berman said. "While we are heartened they've stopped the practice, we believe they owe those student athletes a great deal more than their implied promise to stop stealing their images." EA announced that it will continue development on next-gen college football games without the use of NCAA branding. It will do so under a non-exclusive, three-year agreement with the Collegiate Licensing Company beginning on July 1, 2014.
Novelist suing over Assassin's Creed has his lawyer respond to gamer rage
Author John Beiswenger poked the sleeping dragon that is the Internet when he filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft, claiming the Assassin's Creed franchise infringes on copyrights in his novel, Link. Namely, Beiswenger says Assassin's Creed stole themes such as "assassinations," "spiritual and biblical tones" and a battle between good and evil from Link, which was published five years prior to the first Assassin's Creed title.Beiswenger is seeking up to $5.25 million in damages. The lawsuit could also delay the release of Assassin's Creed 3, a fact that wiped the grins from many a gamer's face and set a few (hundred) to review-bombing Beiswenger's Amazon pages.Beiswenger's lawyer, Kelley Keller, has now responded to Eurogamer on the negative reaction and her client's claims: "We understand that many gamers are upset about the litigation and potential for delay in the release of the next Assassin's Creed video game, and as a result of that anger have been posting negative comments on Amazon - and other forums - about our client and his novel Link. However, copyright laws exist to protect authors and creators from others who copy or create works that are, under the law, substantially similar; failure to enforce copyright laws renders them meaningless. "The Amazon 'bombing,' storm of negative comments and threats to our client have no bearing on the appropriateness, merits or outcome of this suit. They have no material effect on the legal claims."Keller says she believes the similarities in Link and Assassin's Creed are more than coincidence and that despite the five-year delay in filing charges, the lawsuit was brought within an applicable time period.We don't know about you guys, but the only applicable time periods we see here are the American Revolution, and October 2012.
Settlement may have been reached in missing iPhone 4S case
Remember that missing iPhone 4S that was allegedly lost at the Cava 22 lounge and tracked to a residence in San Francisco? The home was possibly searched illegally by Apple security and the home's owner, Sergio Calderon, threatened to sue. It appears the whole debacle may have been settled out of court, says a report in Network World. Information about the case hasn't surface in months which prompted Network World to follow up with Calderon's lawyer David Monroe. Monroe refused to comment on any question, which led Network World to speculate that Apple settled the case. Apple may have paid a settlement and required a nondisclosure agreement that prevented Calderon or Monroe from talking further about those events.
Man gets served on Facebook, literally
Being unceremoniously dumped online isn't the only indignation made easier by social networks. For the first time, lawyers in the UK have been granted permission to serve a legal suit via Facebook. Traditionally, documents must be delivered physically, be it in person, by post or even fax. But, in a pretrial for a commercial dispute, these old-fashioned methods proved fruitless. The prosecuting team then decided to check online, and noticed recent updates on defendant Fabio De Biase's profile. Satisfied it was currently active, they sought permission to send documents via the website, with Justice Nigel Teare duly obliging. Wondering what that noise is? That's the sound of millions of mice clicking on "privacy settings" all at once.
French court fines Google France 500,000 euros for gratis Maps
A Parisian commercial court has upheld a lower court's ruling against Google France, ordering the company to pay a fine of €500,000 for giving away its maps services. The plaintiff, Bottin Cartographes, claims that Google leveraged the market share of its Maps platform -- and the fact that it's free -- to undercut and stifle competition attempting to sell their topographical wares to businesses. "We proved the illegality of [Google's] strategy," said Bottin's counsel, noting that this was the first time Google has been convicted of malfeasance for this particular piece of software in the country. A representative from the search giant said it plans to appeal the decision, and reiterated the company's belief that competition exists in the space. Personally, we think the court got it right. Why should people get an awesome product for free when they can pay for an inferior one, right?
Apple accused of selling refurbished iPhones as new in China
Apple may be facing yet another lawsuit, but this one does not involve patents or location-sharing. The Cupertino company is being sued by six Beijing residents who claim Apple sold them a refurbished iPhone as new. These six customers bought their phones at both Apple Stores and at authorized retailers in the Beijing area. Two customers checked their warranty terms and were shocked to discover the warranty was less than the standard year. They returned to the store and were not satisfied when the sales people offered only to replace their phones and not any extra compensation. The disgruntled pair contacted lawyer Wang Hai, a consumer advocate known for fighting against counterfeit goods. They were quickly joined by four other customers who had a similar experience with their iPhones. Wang Hai is inviting other customers with a receipt to join the lawsuit. The affected customers are asking for twice the price they originally paid for the phone, full payment of their legal fees and an apology from Apple. Though it's hard to believe, this practice may be occurring in Beijing and other parts of China. A report from the Guangzhou Daily suggests refurbished iPhones are being sold in stores throughout the region. Presumably against Apple policy, employees are reportedly cleaning up display models and returned phones and re-selling them as new.
Apple's chief patent lawyer Richard Lutton Jr. to leave the company
Apple's Chief Patent lawyer will soon leave the company according to a report from Reuters. The reasons for the departure of Richard "Chip" Lutton Junior during a time of escalated legal battles over patent infringement is not known. B.J. Watrous, former deputy general counsel at Hewlett-Packard, is Lutton's replacement. Apple is also reportedly hiring more lawyers to beef up its intellectual property team as it takes on HTC, Samsung and others in various patent infringement complaints. [Via AppleInsider]
"Fallout belongs to us": Bethesda lays claim to Fallout MMO
We may as well call it The NeverEnding Story 4: The Battle for Fallout. The ongoing legal struggle and corporate posturing between Bethesda and Interplay took a new turn today as Bethesda declared its biggest claim yet to the entire franchise -- including a Fallout MMO. According to Gamesindustry.biz, vg247, and Eurogamer, Bethesda's Pete Hines couldn't make it clearer: "We own the rights to the MMO. We own the rights to everything Fallout. The license is ours. Fallout belongs to us." Earlier this month, Interplay called such claims "absurd." This is troublesome for Interplay, as the studio has been hard at work on a Fallout MMO of its own, scheduled for a 2012 release. Both companies claim that they have the right to develop an online version of the hit franchise: Interplay because it retained the rights to do so when it sold the franchise to Bethesda, and Bethesda because the company claims Interplay failed to live up to the contract and forfeited its claim. While the lawyers continue to plow through this legal morass, this statement by Bethesda shows that the studio has no intention of giving up the rights to a Fallout MMO without a fight. [Update: We've clarified Gamesindustry's sources.]
$1,000 bar exam prep BarMax app now available on iPad
BarMax, the US$1000 iPhone app to help law students pass the bar exam, has made its way to the iPad. The California edition of the popular bar exam prep software is now available on the App Store. BarMax for the iPad is designed to take advantage of the larger screen real estate of the iPad by offering an outline layout of course content, a redesigned multiple choice section and the ability to highlight text, add notes and bookmark pages. The BarMax app may cost a pricey $999.99, but its 1 GB of data softens the financial blow. Customers receive two months of lecture material, thousands of pages of documentation in electronic format, sample MBE questions, sample essay exams, flash cards and a built-in calendar and task list to help them study. Once a student purchases the app, he or she has lifetime access to the course materials and a direct connection with Harvard-educated lawyers who will field any questions. The primary competitor to BarMax is BARBRI, another bar exam preparatory company that lets customers add a $295 iPhone option to its $3,000-$4,000 traditional paper and computer-based course.
Apple's lawyers finally going after Meizu, or so it seems
C'mon, let's all color ourselves shocked at once. It'll be fun. We promise. If you've been calling the underside of a rock home for the past decade or so, you may have missed out on a Chinese outfit by the name of Meizu. For all intents and purposes, the company has done its darnedest to copy Apple in every respect, particularly with the software on its M8 and M9 smartphones. Strangely, we've never actually heard confirmation that Cupertino's best lawyers were breathing down Meizu's neck... until now. As the story goes, Meizu CEO Jack Wong's forum postings have been rather tense of late, and one in particular seems to explain why: Apple's all up in his grille. The details are hidden beneath a good bit of pent-up rage, but what is clear is a mention of Apple's lawyers and their "unreasonable negotiation tactics." In essence, Jack finds it absurd that Apple could claim rights to the touchscreen smartphone form factor, and while Apple could only serve a relative few in China, he (obviously) expects Meizu to serve far more. We won't pretend to be sad on Jack's behalf -- we mean, the guy had it coming -- but we can't shake the looming depression when thinking of a world with no future Meizu devices to chuckle at.
BarMax offers bar prep on the iPhone for $1000
News is going around about yet another expensive app bucking the trend on the App Store, but here's the twist: this one actually has a good reason for such a high price. BarMax CA [iTunes link] is an app currently out that costs $999.99 -- that's right, while most developers are haggling with customers over 99 cents, this one's selling for a full $1000. But there's actually a good reason for that. It's a bar prep app, designed to help would-be lawyers pass their bar exams. Comparable services cost up to three or four times the price of this one, so if you have an iPhone and are planning to take the bar, this could actually be a "bar"gain (sorry, please don't sue us). The app is over a gig in size and brags about squeezing 50 lbs of books into the palm of your hand -- there are test questions, reference guides, audio lectures, and practice cards all included in the app's purchase. Of course, if you really do want to buy something like this, just getting it for your iPhone probably isn't the best way to do it -- you should probably do the research and see what other bar prep programs are out there before you jump into this one. And the app description in iTunes even says they'll ship you an iPod touch just to use the program, so even if you go with BarMax, you might as well see how you can get an iPod touch with it, right? But an app like this may show that there is a market for super-expensive apps, even if they have to fit very strongly into a specialty niche. Of course, to learn whether anyone actually buys it, we'll probably have to wait and see.
Psystar's lawyer: Psystar not done yet
Last night on the Talkcast, we talked about the big news last week that Psystar seemed to be down for the count, and the consensus was that we'd heard the last of them. But not so fast: their lawyer now says that they're not calling it quits just yet. The company that has gotten pummeled by Apple for selling Mac clones apparently "does not intend to shut down permanently," according to K. A. D. Camera of legal firm Camera & Sibley. According to him, they're still working on selling their Rebel EFI product (also currently entangled in legal problems), and they're planning on pushing forward on their antitrust case against Apple (which has already been thrown out once). We're not sure where they'll get the money for all of this legal action after already being ordered to give a couple million dollars to Apple, but maybe those 768 computers they sold made more than we thought. There is one bright point in all of this: while Rebel EFI is still listed as out of stock on their website, they are selling official Psystar t-shirts for $15 which they say will also include a Rebel EFI authorization code later on and now those appear to be gone too! I don't know about you (and I don't really want to give these guys any credit card information), but one of those shirts would look great sitting under my tree later this week. If this whole installing-OS X-on-unauthorized-hardware-in-violation-of-Apple's-EULA thing doesn't work out for Psystar, maybe they can have a second life as a merch vendor.
5 Apps for the lawyer
It's official. The iPhone has come into its own in the legal world. It took a little time, and lawyers are notorious Luddites (you can pry the WordPerfect out of their cold, dead hands) but they do like Bright Shiny Objects, and nothing fills the lapel pocket like an iPhone. The iPhone finally cracked the law-firm standards stranglehold by virtue of its compatibility with Microsoft Exchange, which freed lawyers from the non-choice of "would you like a Blackberry, or a Blackberry?" Granted, the Blackberry still seems to have a better handle on business needs, but for some, the iPhone is worth getting to know. It should go without saying -- I will say it, though -- many of the productivity apps that are useful to everybody are useful to lawyers, so two of these apps are not strictly law-related. (See if you can spot them! It's a brain teaser and a post!) Also, certain obvious apps don't exist yet, such as a standalone LexisNexis or WestLaw legal research app. That said, the web will suffice for now. In fact, though I've artificially constrained myself to only standalone applications, the iPhone really shines for accessing web research sites given that Mobile Safari is (mostly) a full-featured browser. So, without further ado, here are five apps that give a glimpse into what the iPhone can do for attorneys. 1) DataViz's DocumentsToGo. Nobody expects to write a brief or a memorandum from start to finish on an iPhone (though I am waiting for a good enough voice-recognition app so that getting a draft started is feasible), but any legal writing usually goes through more revisions than your average pre-1.0 beta software. Often this happens right as you were planning on leaving for the day. DocumentsToGo allows you to edit and change documents, as well as email them over Exchange (requires $9.99US Exchange version) to other team members. Of course, iPhone OS 3.0's cut/copy/paste was a prerequisite to making any word processing application workable, but now document editing has become at least moderately feasible. Nothing replaces your desk, covered in open books or a large monitor with LexisNexis or WestLaw opened to 18 different searches, but this gives you just a bit more flexibility and just may save you a panicky trip back to the office at 11:30pm on Saturday night.
The Queue: You ain't nothin' but a Core Hound
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.There's a few good questions today of various voluptuous varieties: raiding, legal ToS (TNG > ToS, by the way), and new gaming hardware. Yummy.Start me off, Delks...Edit: Please be sure to listen to Fly Me To The Moon by Ol' Blue Eyes during today's Queue, or you can listen to the title's name sake song. Delks asked..."What's the point of running old world raids and instances?"
Blizzard legal targets private servers
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Blizzard_legal_targets_private_servers'; Privately run WoW servers have been dropping like flies in the last day or so after receiving letters from Blizzard's lawyers under the DMCA. They've been shut down so quickly and rapidly that it's being heralded as "the end of private servers" by quite a few people. The biggest and most well known servers such as Toxic WoW and Ani-WoW are more or less all gone already, and it seems that it's only a matter of time before the smaller ones go down as well. Supposedly, this letter has a pretty long list of sites and servers that are to be taken down.Some of these sites have just called it a day, shut down their servers and will move on with their lives, but a few others are already talking about starting them back up elsewhere, 'underground.' It's the internet, and at this point, that just seems silly. Blizzard is watching, and it seems this issue has moved up a notch on their priority list. My advice? Don't tempt fate.
Defender of Law raises slight objections
It's a testament to just how good the Ace Attorney series is when we're considering playing something that looks -- well, meh, to put it bluntly -- in the hopes that we'll be able to experience something even somewhat similar. Yet, without the charm of characters like Phoenix Wright, not to mention a much cheesier-looking objection screen, is there really a point? In case you're wondering what we're rambling on about, Portuguese developer GAMEINVEST is releasing an attorney adventure game this summer titled Defenders of Law, Inc: Crime in Willburg. Like the Ace Attorney games, you'll be finding clues and gathering evidence to help you solve a murder mystery, just to prove your client innocent.What intrigues us is that there will be 25 different scenarios, and you can choose from five different attorneys to play as, too. If this game does turn out to be good, at least it will be a lot of good. On the other hand, if it turns out to be bad ... well, we're sure you get the gist. %Gallery-28336%
Jack Thompson: "I guess my "mistake" was not killing 3000 people to make my point"
He fought the law and the law is winning. Jack Thompson, hot off the heels of a Florida Bar recommendation that he be disbarred for ten years for 27 violations of professional misconduct, is again testing if the pen is mightier than the sword. In a letter written to Chief Judge Federico Moreno, Thompson claimed his recent trial was a mockery of the system and demanded a fair trial."We find yesterday that enemy combatants at Guantanamo are to get more due process from federal judges than what I am to have. I guess my "mistake" was not killing 3000 people to make my point ... I demand a hearing," Thompson wrote in the letter to Moreno.Judge Moreno responded to the shocking letter by dispatching two U.S. Marshals to the home of Mr. Thompson. "The purpose of that visit was to intimidate and harass me," Thomson wrote to Moreno following the incident.As the Florida Bar continues to seek disbarment for the controversial lawyer, Thompson is now seeking a meeting with the House Judiciary Committee in Washington to complain that the Justice Department is harassing him.Jack Thompson is famously known in the gaming community for his stance against violent videogames, particularly titles from Take Two Interactive; publisher of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto franchise.[via Game Politics]
Lawyer might be link between Cryptic and STO
We've got on more tiny little piece of evidence to add to the mountain that already says Cryptic has been chosen as the developer for the new Star Trek Online game. Apparently a lawyer representing the unknown developers of the game sent a C&D to the folks at the Star Trek Games board saying that there is a developer with rights to the property, and that they should stop posting the IP of said developers. But those wacky forumites then connected that lawyer, one Timothy J. Harris of Morrison and Foerster LLP, with none other than Cryptic themselves, by way of Champions Online's privacy policy (he's down there in Part VI -- the first one, since there's two).So. Nothing is still officially confirmed, and to be fair, Morrison and Foerster LLP (or "MoFo" as their webpage designates them) is a huge worldwide firm, and it could be that Timothy J. Harris is their guy for a number of videogame clients. But considering all the other evidence, it's a pretty good bet that Cryptic is working up concept art for an MMO featuring Klingons and the Borg.[Via WarCry]
