microsoft lawsuit

I guess this didn't go the way Sony wanted it.

In September, after the much-hyped hacking of the PlayStation Network, Sony instituted new language in its terms of service forcing PSN users to agree not to sue the company.

But according to CNET sister site GameSpot, some didn't take kindly to being strong-armed in that way. And now, a Northern California man has filed a lawsuit seeking class-action status against Sony "on behalf of all customers who purchased a PlayStation 3 and signed up for PSN access before the September change to [the PSN] terms of service.&… Read more

Microsoft said today that a Czech Republic-based provider of free domains has agreed to pull the plug on botnet activities using his subdomains, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit the software giant filed in September to shut down the Kelihos botnet.

The suit, filed in federal court in Virginia, named Dominique Alexander Piatti and his domain company, Dotfree Group SRO, as defendants, alleging that they were involved in hosting the Kelihos botnet. Infected computers in that operation, also known as "Waledac 2.0" after a previous botnet that Microsoft shut down last year, were used to … Read more

A judge has granted Google's request for a temporary court order that puts a freeze on a contract the U.S. Interior Department planned to award to Microsoft for an e-mail system.

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Susan Braden cited deficiencies in the procurement process for the $49.3 million contract, according to the 27-page court decision unsealed yesterday and reported on by Bloomberg today.

"Without a preliminary injunction, the award will put into motion the final migration of Interior's e-mail system, achieve 'organizational lock-in' for Microsoft, and cost Google the opportunity to compete," … Read more

On the heels of Microsoft's second patent-related suit against Motorola filed Tuesday, Motorola has fired back with lawsuits of its own.

Yesterday, Motorola accused Microsoft of infringing 16 patents in its Xbox gaming console and in Windows for servers, PCs, and mobile devices, the company said. The accusations are in complaints filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin.

The suit is one of a rash of patent cases that's broken out in the mobile-device market, with other combatants including Apple, Nokia, HTC, Google, and Oracle. Microsoft accused Motorola of infringing its patents … Read more

With court backing and a novel use of a civil procedure, Microsoft appears to be close to obliterating the Waledac spam botnet, changing the way online criminal operations are defeated.

A magistrate judge in federal court in Virginia is expected to recommend within days that the judge hearing Microsoft's case grant a default judgment, Richard Boscovich, a senior Microsoft attorney told CNET on Wednesday.

This would mean that the 276 Web domains deployed as Waledac command-and-control servers to provide instructions to thousands of infected computers would be forfeited to Microsoft, effectively shutting down the botnet for good, he said. … Read more

Microsoft filed a lawsuit this week accusing a Web site of engaging in a new type of click fraud called "click laundering" by getting credit for clicks on ads that were made by botnets or unsuspecting users on a site set up for that purpose.

The lawsuit names RedOrbit, a science news aggregator, as defendant, while a second suit names John Does to cover multiple unknown defendants who allegedly participated in click laundering on Microsoft's AdCenter network, Microsoft said in a statement.

To get around click fraud detection technologies, fraudsters are using so-called "parked" Web … Read more

Revealing a bit of previously hush-hush history that's relevant today, Sun Microsystems' former chief executive says that Apple CEO Steve Jobs threatened to sue Sun for infringing on its intellectual property in 2003 for a user interface design.

And that's not all: Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer also tried to get Sun to license Microsoft Office patents for use in OpenOffice, a move that would have made open-source distribution of the competing product impossible, Jonathan Schwartz said in a blog post Tuesday.

The anecdotes will be of interest at handset maker HTC, which Apple sued last week for patent infringement. … Read more

Updated 4:55 p.m. PST with Mullor comment. Correction, 5:12 p.m. PST: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect day the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on this suit. It was Thursday.

Microsoft has sued a former employee for allegedly lying when he applied for a job there and stealing trade secrets that were later used in a lawsuit against Microsoft partners.

According to the lawsuit, filed January 22 in King County Superior Court, Miki Mullor stated on his application that he no longer worked at Ancora Technologies because it had gone out of business. However, Sammamish, … Read more

Microsoft's latest legal headache is a suit from a little-known company called Gotuit Media, which charges elements of Silverlight infringe on the video metadata company's patented technology.

In a suit filed July 2 in San Francisco Federal Court, Gotuit charges Silverlight infringes on several of its patents and seeks an injunction against the software maker as well as damages and attorney's fees.

Gotuit may be a relative unknown, but Microsoft is facing an opponent it knows quite well. Gotuit is represented by San Francisco-based lawyer Spencer Hosie, the same Hosie that successfully represented Burst.com in its … Read more