lawsuits

Facebook has been awarded $873 million in damages against a Canadian man accused of sending spam messages to its members.

The default judgment was issued in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Friday against Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital. The ruling also forbids Guerbuez from using Facebook or interacting with its members ever again.

Facebook doesn't expect to necessarily collect the money because "it's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them," Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security, wrote in a blog posting … Read more

Apple has been hit with a patent-infringement suit from an inventor who claims to have patented iPhone-like mobile Web surfing.

EMG Technology, which appears to be a holding company for the interests of inventor Elliot Gottfurcht, filed suit against Apple on Monday in the 21st century rocket docket, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the Tyler Division. EMG was awarded U.S. Patent number 7,441,196 in October after filing its patent application in March 2006, and thinks Apple's iPhone has run afoul of the claims in the patent.

In a basic … Read more

A judge on Friday ruled that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will have to testify in a class action suit over the "Vista Capable" logo program that Microsoft ran ahead of the launch of Windows Vista.

Microsoft had sought to limit depositions in the case to former Windows executives Jim Allchin and Will Poole, both of whom have since left the company. However, the judge ruled against the software maker.

"The court appreciates that there are severe demands on Mr. Ballmer's time; however, a busy schedule cannot 'shield' an executive from discovery," Judge Marsha J. Pechman … Read more

I'm sick of patent lawsuits.

Earlier this week Spansion filed suit against Samsung for alleged patent violations in the latter's flash chips. On Thursday, Leader Technologies actually issued a press release announcing a lawsuit before it had even bothered to serve notice on Facebook, as Techdirt points out.

Is Leader playing to the judge or to the media?

From the press release:

Leader was founded by Michael McKibben in 1997 and is a pioneer in Web-based collaboration platforms. Leader has filed several patent applications, dating back to 2002, that cover its technology. "We have spent a great … Read more

The number of lawsuits that have been brought against Apple is one higher, with a plaintiff alleging that Apple failed to recognize a common problem with the iPhone 3G wherein hairline cracks appear in the iPhones casing.

The suit was filed in the New York district court by Nassau County resident, Avi Koschitski. Like other suits filed earlier in the year, this one alleges that 3G network problems put the iPhone and the AT&T network in stark contrast to advertising indicating that the iPhone is "twice as fast" as the previous version. The lawsuit also names … Read more

WebXchange is suing Microsoft--or, rather, three of its customers--for allegedly infringing its patents in Microsoft Visual Studio, as CNET reports. Just desserts? Nah. Microsoft rarely sues anyone, preferring instead to threaten to sue.

Regardless, WebXchange's suit against Dell, FedEx, and Allstate for using Visual Studio is nuclear waste: by suing customers, WebXchange just made software licensing even uglier than it already was, making its own future business as difficult as it will become for Microsoft and every other vendor. Nice one, bozo. Suing customers--in this case--is always bad form and serves to hurt all players in the industry.

One … Read more

Aiming to head off further legal action against its customers, Microsoft is asking a federal court to declare that its Visual Studio product doesn't violate patents from WebXchange.

In a suit filed last week in San Francisco, Microsoft seeks a declaration that WebXchange's patents are invalid, unenforceable, or that Microsoft does not infringe on the patents. The move comes after WebXchange sued three Microsoft customers earlier this year in Delaware.

In its suit, Microsoft said that WebXchange's lawsuit has "placed a cloud over Visual Studio software, Web services, and the SOAP protocol."

"Microsoft filed … Read more

Spansion and Kodak slammed Samsung with two separate patent infringement lawsuits Monday.

Spansion, one of the world's largest suppliers of flash memory chips, on Monday announced it has filed two patent infringement complaints against Samsung with the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Spansion is seeking the exclusion from the U.S. market of more than 100 million MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and other consumer electronics devices containing Samsung's allegedly infringing flash memory components.

The complaint also seeks an injunction and treble damages for alleged patent violations relating to Samsung … Read more

You know an e-mail is going to be juicy when its subject line is "CONFIDENTIAL" and it starts out: "I would prefer not to have this discussion on email."

That's how Intel's Renee James started an e-mail to Microsoft's Will Poole, discussing the company's concerns over Microsoft's "Vista Capable" program. Intel was particularly upset over Microsoft's plan to require Vista Capable machines to have graphics cards that would support Vista's new driver model, as its 915 chipset was not planned to have that support.

Microsoft eventually did … Read more