Google has been sued, asked for $77.5 Million

One more 'sue' news. And this time one of the biggest companies caught. Yes, Google has been sued for copyright violation, for posting news from Belgian newspaper on Google news. What is this i mean? If Google is doing this since years, posting news and links to others, no one has complained till now.

What you think? Is this right? Or the newspaper company wants a benefit from Google? What Google will do? Because they just want their hands out of such things ASAP. I think they will pay something appropriate.

A group of Belgian newspaper publishers wants Google to pay up to €49.2 million (US$77.5 million) in damages for violating copyright law by publishing their articles on Google News and caching their web pages.

It made the claim in a court summons served last week, and made public on Wednesday. The Belgian publishers' group Copiepresse first filed suit over the Google News service in April 2006.

Read more @ pcWorld.com

Dell engaged in fraudulent case

What you think? what will happen? And what should court do if they find Dell guilty? I think every customer who is affected must get amount or new machines from Dell? :) Whatever, but now even big and reputed companies are also not left from being sued!

A New York State Supreme Court said Tuesday that Dell and its financial services arm misled customers.

he company was accused by the state of New York of offering no-interest or no-payment financing options for its products while Dell Financial Services would fail to honor them.

Dell told Reuters it "disagrees" with the ruling.

"We are confident that when the proceedings are finally completed, the court will determine that only a relatively small number of customers have been affected,"

according to the company's statement.

news.cnet.com

MPAA sues website linking to pirated media

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sued Pullmylink.com, a website featuring links to free - and allegedly pirated - movies and TV shows, claiming the site promotes and profits from copyright infringement. The lawsuit is the seventh action filed by the MPAA against content aggregators in the US since late last year and is part of a larger anti-piracy campaign that included a criminal raid on the UK headquarters of the website TV Links. The campaign against sites that link to, but do not host, illegal content has raised some eyebrows with critics asking why the association doesn’t go after the host sites or search engines such as Google, which owns video sharing site YouTube.

“...Is the message that it’s less criminal to host illegal content on YouTube than it is to link to it from a site such as TV Links?...”

Guardian technology columnist Jack Schofield wrote in the wake of the MPAA-directed raid on TV Links in October.

rlsLog.net

Apple Sued Over iTunes Technology

Apple was sued Wednesday over allegations that its iTunes online music store and iPod music players are illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet. Atlanta-based ZapMedia Services Inc. sued Apple in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing the Cupertino-based company of violating two ZapMedia patents, demanding royalties on Apple's sales of iPods and iTunes music, which reached nearly $11 billion last year. The patents in question cover a way of sending music and other digital content from servers to multiple media players, a broad description that could also apply to a wide swath of other companies selling digital media and the devices to play it.

ZapMedia applied for the patents in 1999. One was granted in March 2006, the other on Tuesday. ZapMedia said it met with Apple to discuss licensing, but Apple rebuffed the offer.

"When someone takes our vision and our intellectual property without a license after several attempts, we have no option but to protect it through every means available to us,"

- Robert Frohwein, ZapMedia's general counsel

said in a statement. An Apple spokeswoman said the company doesn't comment on pending lawsuits.

CNN.com

Oracle amends complaint in SAP suit

Oracle amended its lawsuit against SAP on Friday, alleging its rival copied its software and support materials to the point of repeating minor errors it had in the original versions.

Oracle, which in March filed a lawsuit against SAP and its wholly owned subsidiary TomorrowNow, alleges TomorrowNow copied and stored its proprietary software and support materials when accessing its system. TomorrowNow, a competing third-party support and maintenance provider, targets Oracle's PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Siebel customers.

Under the amended complaint, Oracle has added allegations that TomorrowNow violated its copyrights and breached contracts.

SAP's TomorrowNow, as with other third-party support and maintenance providers, is generally allowed to access a company's systems to retrieve the needed information that is covered in that customer's contract. Oracle, however, alleges TomorrowNow systematically accessed its files and software to a level far beyond what the contract called for.

Oracle, for example, created a Daylight Saving Time (DST) document with instructions on how to conform Oracle's software to the new daylight saving time change. But the software maker alleges TomorrowNow copied the information on two occasions in January and swapped out Oracle's logo and copyright and placed its own logo on the documents.

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Symantec sues 8 firms for $55M

Anti-virus and computer security software-maker Symantec Corporation has announced it is suing eight companies, for a total of $55 million USD. Symantec alleges in filings in U.S. District Court in California that the businesses are guilty of trademark infringement, copyright infringement, fraud, unfair competition, trafficking in counterfeit labels and documentation, as well as false advertising. The software company is seeking between $4 million US and $10 million in damages in individual claims from the following companies: Acortech (California), mPlus (California), Logical Plus (New York), SoftwareOutlets.com (Florida), Rowcal Distribution (California), Global Impact, Inc. (Florida), Directron.com (Texas) and eDirect Software (Canada). Symantec is also seeking a permanent injunction in each of the lawsuits to block the companies named from selling "unauthorized Symantec products" and to surrender all alleged counterfeits of Symantec goods.

CBC News

Microsoft sued for patent suit over .Net

Vertical Computer Systems Incorporated filed a suit on April 18 in a U.S. District Court in Texas against Microsoft Corporation for patent infringement related to Microsoft's .Net framework, used for building Windows-based software. Vertical alleges that Microsoft has infringed on its Patent #6,826,744, for a "system and method for generating web sites in an arbitrary object framework." The patent is for Vertical's SiteFlash technology, which utilizes XML (Extensible Markup Language) to create a component-based structure to build and efficiently operate Web sites, according to the company's Web site. The complaint says Microsoft is still wilfully infringing on the patent despite Vertical having put Microsoft on notice about it on February 7. Vertical is asking for a jury trial. Vertical, based in Fort Worth, Texas, describes itself as a global Web services provider. It went public in 2000 but is not listed on a major stock exchange.

ComputerWorld

Viacom sues Google, YouTube for $1 billion

MTV owner Viacom Inc. said Tuesday it has sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google Inc. in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1 billion in damages.

Viacom claims that the more than 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, have been available on the popular video-sharing Web site.

The lawsuit marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube. Last month Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips after several months of talks between the companies broke down.

MSNBC News