Tag: COURT

Microsoft struck out on two previous attempts in court, but it's not prepared to give up on Word just yet. Today, the Redmond company received a bit of welcome news: the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Microsoft's appeal in the case to decide who owns the patent for XML, the markup language that powers Word. That takes Microsoft off the hook for the $290 million in damages previously awarded to ...

The New York District Court, at the request of the RIAA, has forced LimeWire to shut down its network and cease distributing its software. TorrentFreak has the full story, and updates will surely follow as more data becomes available. That a U.S. federal judge would finally grant RIAA's request comes as a numbing shock to the system. Perhaps the RIAA simply drew the right judge -- this is the ...

Seasoned Download Squad readers are probably already aware that you don't really own some of the software on your computer. You have a license to install and use it, but that's not quite the same as that software actually belonging to you. It's a bit confusing to the average user, to be sure. Thankfully, we have the court system to help us sort out all kinds of confusing matters of legality, ...

An appeals court in Tampa, Florida has found porn produced in California to be illegal. In other words, because (legal) porn made in California was available for download in Florida, the producer broke the law. If you're like me, you're probably a little worried about what you've uploaded to the Internet over the years -- can I be extradited to Florida for a home video of my girlfriend and I? ...

Nevermind 2012, according to Micorosoft there's a good chance that a Texas district court judge's recent decision could very well cause civilization as we know it to crumble in a few short weeks. It all starts with Microsoft's need to redesign Word to remove the code which violates i4i's XML patent. "The money! The beautiful, beautiful money!" an entirely fictitious spokesperson stated. "There's ...

If you like yourself some BitTorrent downloading action, we recommend you help Azureus fight BitTorrent throttling ISPs like Comcast, Adelphia, SusCom, and others by installing the Network Status Monitor plug-in for Azureus / Vuze. The plug-in monitors your network traffic for anything that might prohibit your computer from utilizing its broadband connection to the fullest. Lately, some ISPs ...

Due to another company trademarking "G-Mail" in Germany, similar to Google's "Gmail" in the US, the search engine giant lost an appeal to use "Gmail" in the European Union. G-Mail stands for "Giersch Mail" in Germany, where Daniel Giersch runs an electronic postal delivery service -- if that's not email, we couldn't say what it is. As a result, Gmail is now known as Google Mail in Europe. ...

Well, you got to hand it to them for trying. On Wednesday Vonage requested a new trial in their patent infringement case. Verizon claims that Vonage's internet telephony technology is based on patents held by the phone company. But Thursday, the appeals court denied the request for a retrial. Vonage had hoped that a recent Supreme Court ruling would give reason for a new trial. The Supreme Court ...

Getting a $20 Million paycheck for having your photo used on a Yahoo sign in page is not a bad deal, if you're a celebrity that is. That's what one Ohio woman and her legal team are hoping for. It seems like "Mary" discovered her photo being used without her permission on a sign up confirmation page for Yahoo's email system and nabbed up three law firms to fight her battle. Whats in it for the law ...

Google is reportedly telling major entertainment companies that they have allocated over $100 million as special licensing deals if the companies promise they won't sue them for the next three years. Time Warner, News Corp., NBC and Universal, would agree not to sue Google over any YouTube copyright infringements and the payments in question would be some kind of holdover until Google can figure ...

The beloved, and sometimes hated, browser cookie has been entered into evidence in a Texas court. A Texas man actually used the cookies on his computer as a trail of time stamped data of his web activities to try and prove his innocence and where he was at the time prosecutors say he was somewhere else. Mr. Texas had a court restraining order in place from his ex-wife, and Mrs. Ex-Texas claimed to ...

Another one bites the dust folks, well not yet. Morpheus, the p2p file sharing network owned by StreamCast, lost its case in court. The network, like many others is now in danger of being shut down because of copyright infringement charges. LimeWire was similarly sued by the RIAA in August, as well as Grokster, Napster, Kazaa, and many others. Some of these networks have been shut-down, had to ...

It's been a long time coming, but Google has finally handed over Orkut data to Brazilian authorities. Google is complying by surrendering data on users with the requests that were requested by Brazilian courts. Brazilian prosecutors are investing illegal activity that might be going on inside of Orkut, Google's social network, and sued Google for the requested information. Google has been ...

Farid Essebar and Achraf Bahloul were jailed after a court ruling in Morocco for creating and spreading the Zotob worm last year which did a lot of damage in the United States. They were convicted of conspiracy, theft, using forged credit cards and illegal access to computer systems. Along with Nathan Peterson of iBackup.net, these guys are the latest we've heard on computer criminal rulings in ...

Playing Solitaire while reading Download Squad seems like an acceptable form of multitasking. As does playing Solitaire while, say, doing phone support. But playing Solitaire while presiding over the federal trial of John Gotti? That might be pushing it. But it's what Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin has been accused of by radio host Curtis Silwa, who was nearly killed in a 1992 ...