lawsuit

In what may shape up to be one of New York media's most colorful feuds of 2008, IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller and one of its most high-profile stockholders, Liberty Media head John Malone, are at each other's throats Mean Girls-style. And they've brought both their legal and PR teams along for backup.

A vicious press release from IAC on Tuesday morning said that Liberty "has gone off the deep end" in its attempt to control the company's board and oust Diller from his role, and that Malone's cable giant "will … Read more

Palm has decided to close its retail stores as it faces the effects of a class-action lawsuit filed by Treo owners.

Palm announced on Wednesday that Treo 600 and 650 owners who have had their units replaced or repaired at least twice are eligible for cash rebates on new Palm smartphones, as part of a settlement of a class-action suit filed in 2005. The company will also repair any Treo 600 or 650 that hasn't failed twice, but is outside of the original warranty.

Thursday brought news that the company's 34 stores--eight Palm-branded locations and 26 stores that … Read more

Lawyers for about 90 current and former residents of New York state filed suit against IBM on Thursday alleging that chemicals from an IBM plant have caused congenital heart defects in infants and kidney cancers in adults, and continue to cause problems.

The tort lawsuit claims that the plant released hundreds of thousands of pounds of toxic and hazardous chemicals, including trichloroethylene (TCE), into the air, soil, and groundwater of Endicott, the birthplace of IBM, and the nearby town of Union over several decades.

A "toxic plume" continues to expose residents to hazardous vapors, according to the lawsuit … Read more

Remember that Nigerian company headed by a convicted felon that sued the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project for patent infringement?

Well, the suit has finally been brought...in a Nigerian court...with $20 million in damages on the table.

The cheekiness is breathtaking.

As Groklaw reports, there is also:… Read more

Eastman Kodak will receive royalties from Matsushita Electric Industrial through a settlement of a July patent infringement suit, according to a regulatory filing Thursday.

On December 21, Kodak settled suits with Matsushita, better known in the United States by its Panasonic brand, and with a Matsushita subsidiary, Victor Company of Japan (JVC).

Under terms of the settlements, the companies signed cross-licensing agreements granting each company access to the others' patents, Kodak said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Both settlements are "royalty-bearing to Kodak," the company said.

An appeals court has reinstated a patent lawsuit filed against Google over a toolbar feature called AutoLink that provides links to online maps or books on Amazon.com, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Wisconsin-based HyperPhrase Technologies sued Google in 2006 for patent infringement. The case was thrown out a year ago by a district court judge, but this week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit in Washington said the lower court judge had erred in interpreting some of the patents and sent the case back.

However, the appeals court agreed with the lower court ruling … Read more

Yahoo China lost another round in a legal battle as a court in Beijing upheld a ruling that the company is infringing on copyright laws by allowing pirated music to be downloaded, according to the industry group suing Yahoo China.

"The ruling against Yahoo China is extremely significant in clarifying copyright rules for Internet music services in China," John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, or IFPI, said in a statement Thursday. "By confirming that Yahoo China's service violates copyright under new Chinese laws, the Beijing court has effectively set the … Read more

Think Secret, the Apple rumor Web site, will no longer be published, under the terms of an undisclosed settlelment with Apple Inc. The site issued a small press release on the matter late last night, with Think Secret's publisher Nick Ciarelli noting, "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."

The site was sued by Apple in 2005 regarding leaks about upcoming hardware and software products that later came to fruition, including an updated iLife software suite and the Mac … Read more

Programmers behind Busybox, a collection of utilities governed by the General Public License (GPL), have settled a second lawsuit that argued a company violated the widely used free and open-source license.

This time the company that settled is Xterasys, which makes networking products, said the Software Freedom Law Center, which represented the Busybox coders.

"As a result of the settlement, Xterasys has agreed to cease all binary distribution of BusyBox until SFLC confirms it has published complete corresponding source code on its Web site. Once SFLC verifies that the complete source code is available, Xterasys' full rights to distribute … Read more