Articles about Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Google accusing the company of discriminating against older job seekers and employees. The case against the company has been certified by the Northern California District Court, which is allowing aggrieved applicants aged 40 and older to join together to file a single suit.

Now that the case has been certified, the court has given plaintiffs the right to challenge Google in court as opposed to individually which will make it easier to deal with the company's expert legal team. This move by the court also increases the chances of the company offering those involved in the case a favorable settlement.

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"Third time's the charm", VirnetX is probably now thinking, as a US court has, for the third time, ruled that Apple has infringed the company’s patents. A federal judge in Tyler, Texas ruled on Sunday that Apple must pay $302.4 million (£235.10m) for infringing VirnetX’s patents in services like FaceTime and iMessage.

Back in 2010, VirnetX was awarded $368.2 (£286.25m), but the ruling was partially overturned because it wasn’t exactly clear how the jury calculated the damages. The second time, earlier this year, the court ruled Apple should pay, setting the figure at $625.6 million (£486.37), but that ruling too was voided because the "repeated references to the earlier case could have confused jurors and were unfair to Apple".

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Oracle has once again been unsuccessful in its latest effort to obtain a new trial in its Java API copyright claim against Google. Judge William Alsup of the San Francisco District Court has denied Oracle's latest motion to have its case reheard on the grounds of misconduct on the part of Google's lawyers.

Since 2010, the two companies have been in an ongoing legal war that was ruled in Google's favor. However, in the six years that have passed Oracle has repeatedly appealed the ruling multiple times.

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In the eighties and nineties, MTV was the place to go to watch music videos. That’s all changed now of course. If you want to watch a music video, YouTube is the number one destination.

If you like a song, it’s really easy to rip the music from the video, using one of the many free online services. Just paste in the URL and hey presto it comes out as an MP3. Some sites even let you specify the audio quality, and add tags. However, the music labels understandably aren’t keen on this "stream ripping", and plan to put a stop to it.

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A civil lawsuit filed in a Northern California federal court has accused Samsung and LG of having a clandestine agreement not to poach each other's employees in the US.

The suit was filed by a former LG sales manager who is accusing Samsung and LG of antitrust violations and believes the two South Korean companies have worked together to drive down employee wages. This case is reminiscent of the one which was filed against Apple, Google and other tech companies last year that resulted in a $415 million settlement.

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After falling victim to a phishing scam in March, Seagate is now being sued by its own employees whose sensitive data was exposed in the leak.

The company's HR department was tricked into providing the operators of the phishing scheme with the personally identifiable information (PII) of 10,000 past and current employees and W-2 forms that include their Social Security numbers along with their wage, salary and tax information.

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Microsoft’s aggressive campaign to get customers to upgrade to Windows 10 might have seen the new OS grow in popularity, but the company's approach has, understandably, upset a lot of users. The software giant employed some increasingly sneaky tricks to fool Windows 7 and 8.1 users into accepting an OS upgrade they didn’t want and, inevitably, some unhappy victims are now looking to sue.

The software giant has already paid out $10,000 to a Californian whose PC was ruined by a Windows 10 update, and several US Attorney-Generals are reported to be actively pursuing cases against Microsoft. But on top of that two new lawsuits seeking class-action status have surfaced.

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Pokémon Go has proved almost unbelievably popular, and like any app that gains a huge following, malicious versions of the app soon appeared. The game has been in the headlines after hackers knocked gaming servers offline, but there have also been major privacy concerns.

Now there could be a nightmare brewing for developer Niantic Labs in Germany, where consumer advocates say the game violates the country's consumer and privacy laws. Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) says the company needs to make sweeping changes to a raft of clauses in the app's terms of use in order to avoid further action.

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Oracle has been ordered to pay HP $3 billion after losing a lawsuit with the company regarding the software development for its Itanium servers.

During the lawsuit, HP claimed that Oracle had violated a contract by continuing to develop support software for its Itanium chip. The trial ran for one month in a California state court in San Jose ending with HP being granted the original amount it claimed at the beginning of the case.

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Following a court ruling that it was involved in ebook price-fixing with five publishers, Apple has started the process of paying back $400m in refunds. Despite agreeing to pay out the thick end of half a billion dollars, Apple denies doing anything wrong.

Interestingly, the payouts will not necessarily reach customers direct from Apple. Refunds are being issued through four ebook stores -- iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo -- and Amazon customers (Kindle users) should be getting their credit today. If you're in line for a refund, you should have received an email informing you, but in case this made its way to your spam folder, you can manually check to see if you've benefitted.

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When Facebook announced its first quarter results this week, it also announced that it created a new class of stock. The non-voting Class C stock proposed would enable Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan to more easily fund their philanthropic ventures, whilst keeping Zuckerberg himself firmly in control of Facebook.

In response to this, a lawsuit has been raised that says the proposed deal is unfair. The shareholders raising the class action lawsuit said the deal would grant Zuckerberg even more control and that the board committee didn’t do enough "to obtain anything of meaningful value" in return. The lawsuit accuses him of wanting "to retain this power, while selling off large amounts of his stockholdings, and reaping billions of dollars in proceeds".

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Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s antitrust commissioner, is continuing to put pressure on Google in regard to its Android operating system.

Vestager gave a speech at a conference in the Netherlands today in which she stressed how her department has now begun a close examination of the contracts Google has with mobile device manufacturers and mobile carriers. The European Commission is objecting to the requirements the company puts on its mobile partners to pre-load Google apps on devices.

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Every day across the UK, around 1.5 million professionals work from home; and are more productive, happier in their role, and measurably less stressed, perhaps. At the same time, however, they may be increasing the risk to your sensitive business data.

Since the government has recently given all employees the right to request flexible working, the number of home-workers, and the associated information risk, looks set to increase -- just when the stricter EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are set to come into force.

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What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but what happens online is yours forever. Things posted don't simply go away -- a problem many of today's youth will face in the future. However, it's also a problem people have to come to terms with right now, even when it's not online intentionally.

That's the case with sportscaster Erin Andrews, who was videotaped naked in her hotel room through the peephole of the room's door. Yes, it made for huge views and sensational news, but it also damaged a human being.

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Ever since it was announced that all iPhones would be encrypted by default with no reasonable way for Apple to unlock them, the FBI has been locked in an ever more acrimonious deadlock with the company. In the latest and most explosive development, the FBI has chosen its battle well: could there be a more emotive subject, or seemingly good reason for Apple to comply, than a demand to decrypt a single phone that belonged to a known terrorist?

By drawing its battle-lines in this way, the FBI achieves two things. On a basic level, it makes Apple look unreasonable for refusing, and therefore makes it easy to paint Apple as the "bad guy" who is preventing the "good guys" from protecting the American people against terrorists. This is a powerful argument, and certainly seems to have persuaded all front-running politicians.

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