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Judge demands Facebook hand over data privacy records
Facebook will have to hand over emails and records related to how it handled the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In September, shareholders sued the company in order to obtain information pertaining to the leak. Today, a US judge sided with shareholders, ordering Facebook to release the documents.
Investment firm sues Uber's Kalanick to oust him from board
It has been only a couple of days since Uber co-founder Garrett Camp promised that former CEO Travis Kalanick would not be coming back to the company as CEO. Now Benchmark Capital, an early investor with a seat on Uber's board, is suing Kalanick for fraud. The complaint seeks to invalidate an earlier vote to expand the board with three seats, one of which Kalanick assigned himself to after stepping down as CEO. Benchmark claims that it would never have voted for the board expansion in June of last year had it known of Kalanick's "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber."
Ubisoft on offense in novelist lawsuit, files to throw out claims
Ubisoft has filed a complaint to prevent novelist John Beiswenger from renewing his claims that the Assassin's Creed universe stole ideas from his novel, Link. Beiswenger first sued Ubisoft in April, but dropped the lawsuit earlier this week because he couldn't handle the expense of litigation.Beiswenger dismissed the Ubisoft case "without prejudice," meaning he can pick up the charges and pursue litigation at any time, and Ubisoft is looking to have the case found "frivolous and without merit," Gamasutra reports.Ubisoft's complaint argues that Beiswenger's claims of copyright infringement are based on "patently non-copyrightable elements." His claims include "assassins" and "spiritual and biblical tones."
Lawsuit alleging copyright infringement in Assassin's Creed dropped, Gametrailers settles
Novelist John Beiswenger has dropped the lawsuit against Ubisoft, in which he alleged the Assassin's Creed universe stole ideas from one of his books, Link. Gametrailers, whom Beiswenger sued in the same case, settled with the author on May 18 under undisclosed terms.Beiswenger voluntarily dismissed all action against Ubisoft before any formal adjudication on the validity of his claims could begin - the Internet made up its mind about his claims a while ago. Beiswenger has dropped the case, citing the expense of federal litigation:"I filed the Complaint and Motion for Preliminary Injunction in federal court because I believe authors should vigorously defend their rights in their creative works; otherwise, the laws protecting them simply have no purpose," Beiswenger's official statement reads. "Regrettably, the resources required to defend those rights are unavailable to many individual creators. As a result, rampant infringement is occurring with impunity."Beiswenger was seeking $5.25 million in damages and the potential cessation of all Assassin's Creed endeavors, including the third game currently due out in October. Beiswenger filed the dismissal "without prejudice," meaning he can pick up the claims and the case again in the future.If he ever does, we don't think Ubisoft will sweat it too much; the Internet has already done most of the debunking already, unless Beiswenger can somehow prove that he owns the rights to "spiritual and biblical tones" or "assassinations."
Gate Five's lawsuit against Beyonce going to court
Manhattan judge Charles Ramos has ruled that Gate Five's lawsuit against Beyonce Knowles is sufficiently jelly prepared, and as such will be heading to court at some unspecified date in the future. Justice Ramos agreed with Gate Five's assertion that Beyonce did not give proper notice before backing out of the deal: "You continue to negotiate right up until the time you pull the plug," Ramos said as he addressed Beyonce's lawyers, according to the New York Post. "That is not going to work with me."As you'll recall, Gate Five's lawsuit purports that Beyonce was in breach of contract when she backed out of a deal to lend her likeness to Starpower: Beyonce, and that her departure from the project directly resulted in the firings of 70 employees. Beyonce's attorneys attest that Gate Five did not have funding in place for Starpower: Beyonce's development, but Gate Five maintains that Beyonce was aware of an impending agreement with unnamed financiers scheduled to take place on December 6, 2010 – just three days after Beyonce bounced.Gate Five's lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $100 million; $6.7 million in investment capitol and $100 million in hypothetical Starpower: Beyonce profits. Honestly, Gate Five should have known something was up when Beyonce didn't put a ring on it.
RIM gets kicked while down, sued over BBM trademark (update: RIM comments)
It's been a long December for RIM, and there's reason to believe this year won't be any better than the last. This month, the company was sued for its use of the BBX trademark and was forced to change its name to BlackBerry 10; then, it all hit the fan when co-CEO Mike Lazaridis broke the news that phones running the aforementioned OS won't arrive until late in 2012. And let's not even get started on the quarterly earnings report. Sadly, it's not over: BBM Canada, a Toronto-based broadcast industry group that has used the BBM moniker in one way or another for six decades, wants to reclaim its name -- used and made popular by RIM's BlackBerry Messenger service -- and has filed a lawsuit against the phone maker for trademark infringement. BBM Canada CEO Jim MacLeod says he's made several attempts to resolve the matter with them in hopes of avoiding the courtroom -- even to the extent of offering to rebrand his own company as long as RIM footed the bill -- to no success. MacLeod told The Globe and Mail that "I find it kind of amazing that this wouldn't have been thought about before they decided to use the name -- the same thing goes for BBX." And according to court documents, it actually was: in February 2010, RIM attempted to apply for the BBM trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, was told that it wasn't registerable, and still went ahead and used it for its BlackBerry Messenger service anyway. We'll see what kind of explanation the company has for going ahead and using the three-letter acronym in a couple weeks, since a hearing has been scheduled for January 11th. Update: RIM just sent us an email with an official statement regarding the matter: Since its launch in July 2005, BlackBerry Messenger has become a tremendously popular social networking service. In 2010, RIM started to formally adopt the BBM acronym, which had, at that point, already been organically coined and widely used by BlackBerry Messenger customers as a natural abbreviation of the BlackBerry Messenger name. The services associated with RIM's BBM offering clearly do not overlap with BBM Canada's services and the two marks are therefore eligible to co-exist under Canadian trademark law. The two companies are in different industries and have never been competitors in any area. We believe that BBM Canada is attempting to obtain trademark protection for the BBM acronym that is well beyond the narrow range of the services it provides and well beyond the scope of rights afforded by Canadian trademark law. RIM has therefore asked the Court to dismiss the application and award costs to RIM. Further, for clarity, RIM's application to register BBM as a trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) is pending and we are confident that a registration will eventually issue. The inference by BBM Canada that CIPO has refused RIM's BBM trademark application is quite frankly very misleading.
iCloud Communications sues Apple for obvious reasons
You probably know the drill by now -- Cupertino introduces a new product with a name that ostensibly belongs to someone else, and for better or worse that someone decides to take Apple to court. Today, it's iCloud Communications charging out of the left corner to sock Apple's iCloud square in the wallet. Arizona-based iCloud Communications appears to be a VoIP equipment and service provider, though in court documents it claims to be a cloud computing company as well, and says that it's been using the term iCloud (and the above logo) to sell such services since 2005. It's asking the court to destroy all of Apple's iCloud marketing materials, pay damages and even invalidate the iCloud trademark that Apple bought from Xcerion -- the only registered iCloud trademark so far -- but what's probably going to actually happen here is a nice little settlement out of court. We'll let you know if there's any reason to break out the popcorn. [Thanks, Tamaine M.]
ChaCha sues HTC for Facebook phone trademark infringement
Facebook phone rumors were swirling for quite awhile, then HTC answered a question that seemingly nobody asked by delivering unto the world a phone with a dedicated Facebook button... the ChaCha. In what can only be considered a stroke of luck for all of humanity, the Taiwanese handset maker has been granted the opportunity to rectify its naming gaffe courtesy of a trademark infringement suit brought by ChaCha Inc. That company trademarked its name and logo in 2007 for its text and voice internet search engine services and is (rightfully) displeased with the HTC's choice of names for its Facebook-focused handset. ChaCha doesn't want mobile users thinking that it's endorsed the phone, and given that the company's bread and butter is providing mobile search, such confusion seems likely. ChaCha is asking for money damages and a permanent injunction to prevent the phone from going to market with its name. That's just fine with us -- if only the courts could grant an injunction to remove that Facebook button.
Motorola dragged into court for Xoom trademark infringement
To Xoom or not to Xoom, that is the question -- and Xoom Corporation says Motorola needs to ditch the name of its new Honeycomb-laden slate. That's right, Xoom has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit asking for monetary damages, a temporary restraining order, and / or a preliminary injunction to spoil Moto's release party for its new tablet. In case you're curious, Xoom (the company) does seem to predate the slate by a good bit: it's been operating its online payments business under that name and has owned the www.xoom.com domain since 2003. Xoom got a registered service mark for its money transfer and e-payment services in 2004. But what about that Xoom trademark Motorola filed last year for mobile computers and related accessories? Traditionally, courts give priority to the first user to register a mark, so Xoom Corp. certainly has a case here, but we're not so sure they'll be able to prove that consumers are likely to be confused. To find out, the court will look at multiple factors to determine the likelihood of confusion: the strength of Xoom's mark, the similarities between the two marks, the proximity of Xoom's services and software to Moto's tablet in the consumer marketplace, evidence of actual customer confusion, and the similarity of the marketing channels used by Moto and Xoom. Honestly, we can't see Moto marketing the Xoom tablet to anyone looking for online payment services (aside from the occasional Android Market purchase) so Xoom Corp. has a tough road to hoe, but stranger things have happened -- we'll see how it goes.
Monster sues Fanny Wang, purveyor of fine knockoff headphones
Monster Cable's reign of legal terror has resulted in several things over the years -- a tiff with the Chicago Bears over the "Monsters of the Midway" nickname, a lawsuit against a minigolf company, and eventually even a hard ban on the pages of Engadget -- but we can't say we ever expected the target of a Monster lawsuit to try and use the case for cheap free publicity. Well, surprises come in all forms: the delightfully-named Fanny Wang is now proudly proclaiming that it's being sued for copying Monster's Beats headphones and trying to score some free good press -- even though it appears that Fanny's headphones are indeed a fairly close copy of Beats. (Just check the image above.)To give you an idea of the ridiculousness at work, Fanny's presently hosting a copy of the Beats design patent and Monster's complaint on its own website, right next to a rebuttal of the charges. Fanny claims its headphones have different packaging and minor design differences such that "no reasonable consumer would likely confuse the two," which we suppose is arguably true -- but we'd also point out that Fanny's original press release proudly proclaims that "the same sound engineer who designed the Beats by Dr. Dre acoustics tackled the Fanny Wang collection." Copy, coincidence, or crafty PR strategy? You be the judge... for now.
Apple sues Motorola right back over six patents
What, you didn't think Apple was just going to sit around and take it after Motorola first sued for patent infringement and then asked to court to declare some 20 of Cupertino's patents weren't applicable to its products, did you? Apple's fired back with two lawsuits claiming that Motorola's Android phones, including but not limited to the Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1, and Charm, infringe a total of six multitouch and OS patents. That would be pretty much par for the course -- you sue me, I sue you -- but there are a couple interesting strategic wrinkles to note: We've only seen Apple litigate one of these patents before: #7,479,949, Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics. You should remember it well -- it's the patent covering scroll behavior on multitouch screens that was hyped as "the iPhone patent" and triggered a press frenzy over a possible Apple / Palm lawsuit. As we predicted at the time, that hasn't yet materialized, but old '949's gotten pretty popular: Apple's asserting it against Nokia and HTC as well. Apple might be suing over six patents in these two cases, but ultimately Apple will claiming Motorola's devices infringe a total of 26 patents -- part of Apple's defense to Motorola's 20-patent lawsuit will be to claim that Moto's in fact infringing each of those patents. That's a lot of patents across a lot of devices, and it'll just take one finding of infringement to cause a lot of pain. Apple's filed its two cases in the Western District of Wisconsin, a patent "rocket docket" that tries cases quickly and are often perceived as being plaintiff-friendly. (Part of the Apple / Nokia lawsuit is happening in this same court.) Moto's obvious next move will be to try and consolidate all these cases into a single proceeding at one court, a procedural tactic that will take likely take months. And that's just the first step. Don't expect these cases to be decided for at least a year -- probably many years -- unless Apple and Motorola decide to settle, which is always possible. Apple's now seriously engaged in litigation with the two largest Android handset makers (HTC and Motorola), largely over OS-level patents. At some point Google has to get involved, if only to indemnify its partners against further liability for using Android, and we can't help but think Apple and Google are eventually bound to face off directly. Or perhaps not -- by suing Android handset makers, Apple's essentially putting a tax on Android without having to further muddy up its complex competitor / partner relationship with Google by adding in a major lawsuit. We've added in a list of the patents after the break, if you're interested -- and we know you're interested, right? It's not like it's a beautiful Saturday afternoon or anything.
Motorola asks court to invalidate Apple patents, preempt another lawsuit
The smartphone intellectual property wars are seriously heating up, as Motorola sided with HTC this week in an effort to cover its own rear. Remember those twenty patents Apple aimed at the Taiwanese OEM? Motorola says they're no good, and is trying to get them thrown out of court -- an important tactic, because if the patents do hold water and are successfully used against HTC, Apple might turn around and sue Motorola with them too. That's because there's more at stake here than OEM phones, but Android as a whole, and as such other manufacturers that implement Android might potentially be targets as well. Oh, and don't think this is Motorola's first salvo in the arena, either -- it's also suing Apple outright to get the point across, and is similarly being targeted by Microsoft for smartphone patents of its own. We're just two guns shy of a Mexican standoff, folks.
European Union closes Apple investigation
I think we can call this one "saved by a policy change." Earlier this month, Apple changed its rules and is now allowing developers to use third-party tools for creating apps for iOS devices. In a statement released this weekend, the EU said it welcomed Apple's changed policies, and that the investigation would be closed. Apple also loosened policies on cross-border warranty repair of computers and iOS products. Previously, people who bought a product in one EU country and tried to have it fixed under warranty in another EU country encountered red tape or a refusal to fix the product, but apparently that issue's been fixed as well. This recent change is on top of Apple settling a case with the US Department of Justice that dealt with agreements between major tech firms about not poaching employees. The settlement involved other companies including Pixar, Google, and Intel. Apple is clearly getting a bit more liberal in the way it runs the business. There's nothing like a little competition and litigation to get things moving.
Worlds.com vs. NCSoft moves from Texas to California
Intellectual Property lawyer Ross A. Dannenberg has reported on his website, Patent Arcade, that the patent dispute between Worlds.com and NCSoft will be moved from the Eastern Texas district to the Northern California district as of 4th May 2009. Worlds.com is persuing NCSoft over alleged infringements of patents that it owns.The eastern Texas district has acquired a reputation for being the ideal court for this kind of patent due to favorable attitudes to plaintiffs, resulting in a practice known as forum shopping being used to maximize the chance of a successful outcome. On December 5th 2008 the Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling that severely limits the discretion available to a trial court to determine if a case should be dismissed if an adequate alternate forum exists. This should result in cases that have little or no ties to that particular area of Texas being forced to be heard in a more appropriate court, which is likely to be the case in this instance.You can catch up with all of our coverage on this action here.
Best Buy sued for violating its Price Match policy on purpose
Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court, Southern District approved a motion for a class-action suit filed by plaintiff Thomas Jermyn in New York State against Best Buy. Essentially, this suit will claim that Best Buy is in "extreme" violation of its own Price Match policy, and that it uses the advertised policy as a way to scam consumers into the stores and purchase gear. Best Buy's Price Match policy is "undisclosed," meaning that we don't know how it actually operates -- and the suit claims that the company routinely denies the Price Match policy -- as a matter of a lesser known, less cooler policy. The law offices charged with filing the suit are asking that consumers who have been affected by the policy get on the bandwagon. Next up: we file suit against them for using the name "Best Buy" when they are totally not.[Via IGN]
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Worlds.com files suit against NCsoft for patent infringement
You might remember earlier in the month we reported on Worlds.com placing down patents on two technologies that we commonly use in the MMO industry -- scalable chat and system and method of enabling users of interacting in a virtual space -- and how much havoc this could play with our favorite games. We also made the assumption that lawyers were going to begin marching from Worlds.com with suits in hand, beginning their demands of money.It turns out our assumption was right. Worlds.com has filed the necessary paper work to bring a suit against one of the big names in our industry: NCsoft. The suit was filed on Christmas Eve, December 24th, and charged NCsoft with infringement of patent 7,181,690, the system and method of enabling users of interacting in a virtual space, which was granted in early 2007. The suit cites all NCsoft titles, from Lineage to Aion, as the grounds for the patent infringement.As a small side note, patent 7,181,690 was filed in 2000 -- over a year after EverQuest launched and dominated the fledgling industry with somewhere around 300,000 subscribers.We contacted Worlds.com for comment on the 14th of December in connection with our first story, but they have not returned our requests for comment.We'll keep our ears to the ground as more developments appear in this story.Update: We have additional commentary on this patent suit.
Nintendo sued over touch-screen technology
Another day, another lawsuit for Nintendo. Their wacky ideas have probably been done in some form or another over the years, and now everyone wants a profitable piece of the action. The latest candidate for a chunk of Nintendo's payroll is John R. Martin, who claims to have patented touch-screen and pointing gaming technology in 2005. One year after the DS was released. Despite being a bit late, the origins of the patent date back to 1995, so it's fair game for the courts now.This image was submitted with the patent filing, apparently showing a device "switchable between an amusement mode and a gaming or gambling mode." The whole touching thing can be found under "operating a touch screen on a CRT or ICD." But gambling? Looks like that diagram is for someone who hides stuff under the table to cheat at blackjack or roulette.Nintendo has denied the infringement, while Martin is pursuing another suit against Apple.
Los Angeles to sue Time Warner Cable over shoddy service
Far from being the first time Time Warner Cable has upset its subscriber base, the Los Angeles city attorney's office is pulling a Dee Snider and refusing to take the carrier's lackluster service anymore. In a 25-page lawsuit, the city is alleging that the operator "caused major havoc and distress" two years ago when it "failed to live up to its part of the franchise cable agreement requiring that a company answer subscribers' calls within 30 seconds and begin repairs of service interruptions within 24 hours of notification in 90% of its calls for service." The suit claims that no more than 60% of customer calls were answered in time, and cable / internet service was said to be "so intermittent and inferior in quality that it was not much better than no service at all." Not surprisingly, TWC representatives chose not to comment on the whole ordeal, but the outfit could face civil penalties of tens of millions of crisp US dollars in the case. Should've picked up the phone, TWC -- it would've been easier than picking up this tab. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family][Image courtesy of Web 2 Concepts, thanks Scott]
Supreme Court rejects T-Mobile appeal over contracts
Just a day after hearing that T-Mobile lost its magenta suit against Telia, more bad news on the legal front has been handed down to the carrier. Just this week, the Supreme Court decided to reject T-Mob's appeal in a trifecta of cases "involving the legal remedies available in millions of cellphone contracts." Each case centered around the same issue: "whether state laws that limit the ability of companies to prohibit consumers from banding together to pursue class action lawsuits are preempted by federal law." In layman's terms, T-Mobile had attempted to ban class actions and require its customers to resolve any gripes via arbitration, which clearly didn't pan out so well. Hit the read link to read the rest, Mr. 1L.[Via PhoneScoop]
Toshiba sued for cloning Fujitsu's RakuRaku handset
It's fairly commonplace for Chinese manufacturers to crank out clones of other popular wares, but apparently, things aren't brushed off as easily when the cloning gets done by a mega-corp like Toshiba. Granted, quite a bit is lost in translation here, but the long and short of it is that NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu are suing Tosh for creating and selling its 821T -- which, as you can see above, looks an awful lot like Fujitsu's RakuRaku handset. Reportedly, the plaintiffs have demanded that Softbank Mobile withdraw the 821T from the market, but it seems there's quite a bit more back-and-forth left to go down before the dust settles on this one. [Via GearFuse]
