Law and Order

Prenda Law, the firm that became controversial as a prolific "copyright troll" by suing thousands with lawsuits over downloading porn movies, has fallen apart over the course of the last year. The organization and the lawyers widely believed to be behind it—John Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy—have been sanctioned by numerous federal judges.

While Prenda has settled a few cases, most of the Prenda setbacks, including the original hammer-drop from US District Judge Otis Wright, are actually being appealed.

According to a report by the Korean language MediaToday (machine translation), Samsung is taking issue with negative reports related to the Galaxy S5 camera.

Samsung alleges the news source published incorrect information, while the news site appeared to defend its reports, stating that "the story fits the facts" and was not a "false alarm."

Samsung should pay more than US$2 billion for repeated infringement of Apple patents in more than 37 million smartphones sold in the U.S., a Silicon Valley jury was told Tuesday as a trial between the two companies got underway after more than two years of preparation.

Apple opened its case by declaring, "the reason the damages are high is because the scope of Samsung's infringement is massive," but Samsung hit back soon after, telling the jury that the Apple figure was "a gross, gross exaggeration and an insult to your intelligence."

Earlier this month, a Fresno man received what is believed to be the strongest sentence issued anywhere in the United States for firing a laser pointer at an aircraft—14 years in prison. His girlfriend was also convicted on similar charges, but she will not be sentenced until May 2014.

“To our knowledge, it is the largest sentence imposed in this type of case,” Karen Escobar, the assistant US attorney for the Eastern District of California, told Ars.

A lawsuit that accuses Google, Apple and other top Silicon Valley companies of driving down wages by agreeing not to hire each other's workers can go to trial, a judge ruled on Friday.

The case alleges that executives including former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt agreed not to poach the other's workers during a period between 2005 and 2009. The alleged agreements would violate state and federal antitrust laws. Adobe Systems and Intel are also named as defendants.

President Barack Obama's plan to stop the National Security Agency's bulk collection and storage of telephone records is a good first step that needs to go much further to protect Americans' privacy rights, advocates say.

Obama unveiled his plans Thursday, saying in a statement, "I have decided that the best path forward is that the government should not collect or hold this data in bulk."

The PCI-DSS assessor for Target is named in a lawsuit. Where does responsibility sit?
With all IT data breaches there is a common cycle. First there is the fear over who is at risk, then theories on how the breach occurred, and finally the blaming and lawsuits start to roll in. In the breach of retailer Target, the lawsuits are now coming in, but in a surprising move, one lawsuit isn't just going after Target; it's also going after security vendor Trustwave.

As the gap between the law and how technology and social media is used in the work place continues to widen, how is it possible for employees and employers to clearly understand what is and what is not acceptable in terms of monitoring?

Earlier this week, an ex-Microsoft employee was charged with the theft of trade secrets in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. Alex Kibkalo allegedly sent code and other intelligence about Microsoft products to an unnamed French blogger.

In the course of tracking down the alleged leaker, Microsoft searched through the blogger's e-mail account -- before involving law enforcement -- according to court documents.

Well, that was fast. We just had our post about the unfortunate trademark situation that Sparkfun found itself in, with 2,000 multimeters held by US Customs at the border because they happened to have a yellow outside, and multimeter king Fluke happened to trademark an aspect of that look. Fluke, of course, had no direct hand in stopping this particular shipment, but had (a) gotten that trademark and (b) years ago gone to the ITC to get an injunction against other multimeter makers.