Legal

Craigslist has won the first round in its federal lawsuit against PadMapper and two other companies, which extracted and used real estate listings from the world's most popular classifieds site.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco on Tuesday rejected attempts by the defendants to dismiss Craigslist's lawsuit, which alleged a slew of unlawful acts -- including terms of use violations, copyright violations, trespass, and civil violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

"Defendants' continued use of Craigslist after the clear statements regarding authorization in the cease and desist letters and the technological … Read more

Judge Lucy Koh, who has presided over the Apple v. Samsung patent spat, has given a management order that a new trial will focus on recalculation of the $450.5 million award given to Apple in August.

Due to begin November 12, the new trial will decide whether the damage award was incorrectly given by the jury in the original patent dispute, according to a court filing. Koh has previously stated that the jury's damage award was incorrectly calculated in part, and only a new trial will determine the final amount to be awarded to the iPad and iPhone … Read more

Apple is challenging a verdict from a Texas court last November that left it on the hook to pay security software company VirnetX $368.2 million in damages.

The news came tucked inside Apple's quarterly report, which was filed earlier this week, Computerworld notes.

"The Company is challenging the verdict, believes it has valid defenses and has not recorded a loss accrual at this time," Apple said in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The original complaint, which was filed in August 2010, accused Apple of infringing on four of VirnetX's patents … Read more

The Senate will almost certainly kill a controversial cybersecurity bill, recently passed by the House, according to a U.S. Senate Committee member.

The comments were first reported by U.S. News on Thursday.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement on April 18 that CISPA's privacy protections are "insufficient."

A committee aide told CNET on Thursday that Rockefeller believes the Senate will not take up CISPA. The White House has also said the president won't sign the House bill.

Staff … Read more

Motorola phones will continue to face a ban on their sales in Germany.

On Thursday, the Munich Higher Regional Court rejected an appeal by Google-Motorola to lift the injunction of its Android phones. In May 2012, a German court ruled that the company had violated a Microsoft patent over SMS, ordering a sales ban against its phones in Germany. Google appealed the ruling, but the court was unswayed.

Dubbed "Communicating multi-part messages between cellular devices using a standardized interface," the patent in question relates to text messaging.

"We are gratified the court has affirmed the District Court'… Read more

Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

"The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," said … Read more

The U.S. International Trade Commission today ended Motorola's case against Apple, which accused the iPhone and Mac maker of patent infringement.

In a ruling (PDF), the ITC said that Apple was not violating Motorola's U.S. patent covering proximity sensors, which the commission called "obvious." It was the last of six patents Motorola aimed at Apple as part of an October 2010 complaint.

That complaint was part of a larger legal effort by Motorola against Apple that also involved patent lawsuits in several U.S. District courts.

The decision follows a long series of determinations, … Read more

From Aaron Swartz's struggles with an antihacking law to Hollywood's lobbying to a raft of surveillance proposals, the Internet and its users' rights are under attack as never before, according to the creators of a forthcoming documentary film.

The film, titled "War for the Web," traces the physical infrastructure of the Internet, from fat underwater cables to living room routers, as a way to explain the story of what's behind the high-volume politicking over proposals like CISPA, Net neutrality, and the Stop Online Piracy Act.

"People talk about security, people talk about privacy, they … Read more

The FBI has undertaken what is law enforcement's highest-profile effort at crowdsourcing to date: asking for help identifying two suspects linked to this week's Boston Marathon bombing.

"Someone out there knows these individuals," Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office, told reporters this afternoon. He asked the media and the public for help in "identifying and locating these individuals."

The photos published on the FBI's Web site show two men, one wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a backpack, and the other wearing a white baseball cap, around the scene of the blasts. … Read more