Sony BMG is suing Amergence Group, the guys that made the infamous rootkit that went on all of their CD's. Sony is claiming that Amergence was negligent, and delivered software that didn't work. If Sony wins the lawsuit, they will get $12 million USD. Presumably, Sony is trying to get some of the money it lost in the original rootkit lawsuit ($7.5 million USD) back.

Dell is getting sued by a trucking company. This is because, according to Con-Way Transportation Services, Dell is refusing to pay for the transportation of $42,497.26 worth of goods. Con-Way Transportation Services is suing in a Texas court, and is looking for payment of transportation (plus 1.5%/month interest), as well as compensation for the legal costs, such as lawyers.

It seems that every day, one company is suing another. Toshiba filed a complaint against DVD replicating firm EDD just a few days ago with a German Regional Court, claiming that the EDD had not properly licensed equipment with Toshiba or the DVD6C to run their business. Now, Toshiba has decided to sue, asking for EDD to cease and desist all sales of their services, and to give an unspecified amount of money to Toshiba as reparations.

DVD copying firm EDD has not responded to the lawsuit yet.

While Microsoft has recently lost a huge sum of money to make their console work, Nintendo has won a humble sum of money from a court case in Uruguay. Back in 2001, the international version of the FBI busted into a warehouse in Montevideo, Uruguay full of counterfeit Nintendo products. The goods were seized, and the mastermind was captured. The mastermind was charged by the government, and sued by Nintendo. While the mastermind somehow did get an executive pardon, he did not escape Nintendo's lawyers. Nintendo has sought and won $2.5 million USD from the mastermind, as compensation for the counterfeiting.

Nintendo had this to say on this case, and piracy of their consoles in general:

This action exemplifies Nintendo's commitment to combat the international problem of product piracy. These types of illegal operations simply will not be tolerated and Nintendo will do everything in its power to protect its business and its customers.

It seems that NVIDIA is upset that the folks over at NGOHQ.com are distributing their ForceWare drivers with modified install scripts. NVIDIA is threatening legal action towards the site and its owners if they do not comply with their demands.

Of particular note is AMD/ATI's stance on modifying install scripts for their Catalyst package:

"Feel free to distribute and endorse Catalyst software. Just please let your users know that if they use modified drivers we aren't able to support them properly. Keep up the good work in the community." -AMD/ATI

In a figurative triple play, the Delaware Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT) is suing three technology giants for large sums of money. They are claiming that they own patents to Lucent technologies, and the right to sue for past infringements. The MPT is suing over patents regarding an "adaptive non-linear quantizer", "optimized scanning of transform coefficients in video coding", and "video coding with optimized low complexity variable length codes". The MPT wants a lot of money to cover damages, costs, and expenses.

Anyone who thought that the new Windows Vista search features were based off of Mac Spotlight will be interested to hear that someone is suing Apple for ripping off their technology. That someone is a small-town company called IP Innovation. IP Innovation, the plaintiff, is alleging that the widespread use of tabs in OS X Tiger is infringing on a patent they've had since 1987. If the lawsuit somehow succeeds, Apple will have to throw $20 million USD at IP Innovation, and then take Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger off the shelves. Apple has no comment on the situation at this time.

Toshiba is attempting to sue 17 companies, mostly Hong Kong and China based, due to alleged infringement regarding some of Toshiba's DVD patents. The company is demanding monetary damages from companies including Daewoo Electronics America, Dongguan GVG and Star Light Electronics claiming that they are illegally selling DVD products in the USA because they do not have any licensing agreements with Toshiba. "The infringement of Toshiba's patents by these companies has damaged Toshiba's DVD-related business, and also caused damage to the legitimate and licensed DVD product manufacturing and distribution and business as a whole," Tokyo-based Toshiba said in a statement. No comments have been made by the companies mentioned above, but Toshiba has also filed a complaint to the US International Trade Commission demanding that the 17 companies accused stop importing their products to the US.

If you trust the prosecution, Microsoft is guilty of labeling computers as "Windows Vista Capable" when they really can only run the basic edition of Windows Vista. While this sounds like an absolutely ridiculous reason to sue Microsoft, it is a very legitimate case. Microsoft labels almost all new computers as "Windows Vista Capable", which makes users think they are buying all the cool stuff that's advertised in the "Windows Vista Experience", such as Aero. In truth, users can only run the basic edition of Windows Vista, which comes with no such luxuries. The defense (aka Microsoft) claims that this is really not the case, and that "Windows Vista Premium Certified" is just one way to prove that Microsoft "conducted a very broad and unprecedented effort" to educate everyone on the latest version of Windows.

A news post at Heise online caught my attention earlier today. Linked below is a picture out of the first tab patent (patent # 1,435,664) from 1922. Over 70 years Later this patent merged into a patent (# 5,160,296) owned by the father of an opera developer which was the first web browser utilizing tabbed browsing. The developer later on switched to the Mozilla team and so they were allowed to implement tabbed browsing. As Microsoft introduced the internet explorer 7 it was time for the Mozilla foundation to strike back.

Anyone remember Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy? If not, it was a promising game with good reviews that didn't exactly do too well in the retail market. It seemed to be all but forgotten, until a screenwriter noticed strange similarities between his work (titled Psi-ops) and the previously mentioned game. Accusing Midway of plagiarism, the man is suing for $1.5 million USD. Midway has not commented on this situation.

Some people claimed it was bound to happen. Some people hoped it never would. Pirates didn't care one way or another, and continued uploading illegally-obtained clips to YouTube. There have been tons of rumors regarding YouTube getting sued, and Viacom can proudly claim that they are the first company to actually do it. Viacom was unable to reach a licensing agreement with YouTube, and ordered their clips off YouTube. YouTube attempted to comply, but piracy appeared to prevail. The lawsuit details 160,000 clips still on the site, and wants $1 billion USD in damages. Viacom claims that YouTube's business model, which is "based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws". YouTube claims that they have done everything in their power to remove Viacom's content from their website, and is almost certain the courts will agree.

A former model who now lives in Ohio recently signed up for a Yahoo Email account. This doesn't sound like anything special, however, it became very special the moment Yahoo sent the lady her first Email. She got an email full of tips on how to use the Yahoo account...with her picture on top. She is now suing Yahoo for $20 million USD. She is demanding $10 million for lost profits, and another $10 million to cover attorney fees and the like. The official complaint claims "that the image has been sent to millions of users around the world without Stovall's authorization, violating her right to privacy and right to publicity--that is, to control the commercial use of her identity".

Seattle- A US federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Microsoft by Alcatel-Lucent, alleging that Microsoft infringed on Alcatel-Lucent's patents on speech to text technology.

This ruling comes one week after a jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.52 billion in a seperate lawsuit, the largest ever in a US patent case. Microsoft plans to appeal that ruling.

We reported a couple days ago that Sony would never use rumble in the PS3, as it was a "last generation feature". However, in a recent press release, Sony announced that they had fixed their problems with Immersion, who's technology made it possible for Sony's earlier PlayStation's to have rumble. To make things even more interesting, Sony and Immersion are now business partners. Sony on this partnership:

We are very pleased to have reached a cooperative agreement with Immersion regarding the use of its advanced vibration technology (haptics technology). We look forward to working closely with them as we explore new and innovative ways to utilize this technology in PlayStation products.

Chances are that this means we'll see a rumble feature in the PS3...eventually.

RIAA launches website for music copyright violators to pay without going to court

People who are caught by the RIAA usually have to pay a substantial amount of money to record companies. And so, the RIAA has decided to make a little website dedicated to helping the average pirate through the process of getting caught. P2Plawsuits.com is dedicated to doing three things. The first thing they do is post a list of questions convicted pirates might ask, and proper answers to them. The second thing the RIAA posts on their website is options/details on how to reduce the convict's fine, and even settle out of court. The third thing that the RIAA does is link to a website detailing the advantages of downloading legal music, which also hosts a list of legitimate music downloading services.

With Microsoft receiving a hefty $1.5 billion fine the other day, MP3 patents are once again in the spotlight as a company in Texas is now trying to sue… well every company that makes MP3 players really. At the moment, Apple, SanDisk and Samsung are the three major names involved, but this case has the potential to draw more companies in - although it may seem quite ambitious as things stand. The company behind the lawsuits is known as Texas MP3 Technologies Ltd. which holds a patent which it claims covers the production an "MPEG portable sound reproducing system." The patent was issued in June, and now the company hopes to make money out of the MP3 player industry, which was worth approximately $6.1 billion last year.

During the last week already Blizzard Entertainment and Vivendi Games filed against Michael Donnelly, creator of WoW Glider. WoW Glider is a so called Bot which acts for you and controls your character while you are away. Blizzard respectively Vivendi, who are known for banning thousands of players because of using such 3rd party software, accused Donelly of violating their rights associated with "World of Warcraft", of infringing copyrights owned by them, violating the DMCA and so on.
A fairly one-sided and biased presentation of what happened can be found at MarkeeDragon.

If you are interested in more forensic details you can read a few documents regarding the claims and counterclaims over here.

The lawsuit, brought about by investors, accuses computer maker Dell Inc. of "secretly receiving approximately $250 million a quarter in likely illegal kickbacks payments" from its long time partner Intel. This money was supposedly received in return for an exclusive purchase agreement for Intel's microprocessors. Chip maker Intel claims that the accusations are just a renewal of similar previous complaints by chip maker AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). Dell would not comment on the lawsuit. In the past Dell has only used processors manufactured by Intel, but just last year began buying processors from Intel's competition AMD.

In addition, Dell is also currently under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Justice Dept. for its accounting practices.

Source: CNNMoney

The two companies previously agreed the deadline was on Thursday, but on Thursday evening( the 15th of Febuary ) Cisco extended the deadline nearly another week. I see this as an interesting strategy, Cisco seems to be aiming at at achieving a settlement here.

Some of you may have heard that The Ant Commandos were known for making an aftermarket Guitar Hero controller. Of course, you may also remember that they never got permission from Activision to make/use it. And so after a considerable amount of lawsuits/counter-suits, they settled. Now, with Harmonix having left the Guitar Hero project, things have gotten much stickier. Some Red Octane employees left the Guitar Hero project, and went over to The Ant Commandos to help them make their own game. This game is being accused of using elements that were clearly used in the Guitar Hero series, and some forms of DDR. Activision responded immediately by banning the demo from being downloaded. The demo will remain banned unless The Ant Commandos can prove that they developed their game without the help of the Red Octane employees or Reverb Communications.

About a week ago, Turner broadcasting tried to promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force in Boston. However, this creative advertising, which involved hiding blinking electronic devices around the city, went dreadfully awry. The devices were misinterpreted as a terrorist attack, drawing a police response similar to 9/11. Public transportation, including entire roads and rivers, effectively halted as the city descended into a panic. At the height of the alert, Boston authorities mobilized bomb squads, federal agents, the coast guard, hundreds of officers, and emergency crews. Red faced, Turner broadcasting and marketing firm Interference agreed to pay $2 million USD as compensation for the disturbance.

There has been a dispute between Apple Corps and Apple Inc. (once known as Apple Computer Inc.) for some time now - it originally dates back to the late 1970s. After a settlement of $80,000 in 1981, Apple Inc. agreed to stay out of the music business as part of the deal, and both companies carried on as they were. But during 2006, Apple Corps (which was founded by British band The Beatles) claimed that iTunes and the iPod broke the agreement and has been trying to sue Apple Inc. ever since. However, today it has been revealed that the two have settled their differences, and although very little information about the agreement has been revealed, it seems both sides are now happy with the outcome and there is even the possibility of an iTunes deal to let Apple Inc. sell The Beatle's music, although that isn't certain.

Many people are very unhappy with the lack of good/WHQL certified drivers for their very expensive G80 video cards. A thread on NVIDIA forums has been swarming with lots of flames and FUD toward the G80, and has been closed by one of their moderators. And so, instead of protesting the only (or so they are accusing) way NVIDIA really lets them, G80 users are trying to get enough research/evidence together to start a class action lawsuit against NVIDIA. Anyone who wants to help support this lawsuit, please visit NVidiaClassAction.org. NVIDIA Class Action wants evidence such as screen shots and box covers claiming Vista compatibility in some way.

The site motto is rather catchy.

The surprise we've all been waiting for - a $650 coaster.

Fox Entertainment Group gave YouTube a very nice subpoena. This subpoena demands the full identity of mister "ECOtotal". Fox wants this information mainly because "ECOtotal" had posted a bunch of Simpsons and 24 episodes, some of which were posted before they were released on television. The VP of Fox Entertainment Group feels that "the uploaded material could cause Fox irreparable harm". Ecototal's YouTube account has been suspended.