While Cisco is busy worrying about whether or not Apple will get to use the iPhone name, Canadian telecommunications provider Comwave is threatening to take legal action against Cisco if they do not change their own iPhone's name. Comwave has owned and been offering an iPhone service since 2004. The president of Comwave claims that "there has been a Comwave iPhone for years, and, (according to)Canadian law on first use, iPhone is ours". Comwave claims that both Cisco and Apple should have thought of other names for their various telecom devices.

Four angry families are suing MySpace, because all of them have one thing in common. All four families have a daughter that's been sexually assaulted by a guy they've met on MySpace, and been seduced into meeting. Two law firms, Barry & Loewy of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin of Houston, says the familes are filing separate suits in the Los Angeles Superior court. MySpace is being accused of being negligent, reckless, fraudulent and misrepresenting itself. MySpace wants to point out that Myspace is "an industry leader on Internet safety", and that they make some serious effort to get parents to take responsibility for their kids. The families of the victims are after several million dollars each.

Fenner Investments sues Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for infringing on its joystick

It sounds too nonsensical to be true, but Texas-based Fenner Investments sued all three console manufacturers for infringing their copyright on a "low-voltage joystick port interface" (patent number 6,297,751). The patent basically states:

The joystick port interface according the present invention is a low power port which interfaces a typical 5 Volt joystick peripheral device with a lower power computer port. The low-voltage joystick port interface includes a bidirectional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal.

If Fenner wins the lawsuits, then they will succeed in banning all three consoles from market, as they are seeking damages and an injunction against the consoles.

A lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court, which aspires to gaining class-action status, accuses Dell of selling notebooks with defects...that they knew about. The prosecution is claiming that the Dell Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150 or 5160 were designed in a way that caused premature motherboard failure due to overheating. A Dell spokeswoman has no comment on this lawsuit.

On December 18th, 2006, Cisco released a set of Skype compatible wifi phones, basically claiming the iPhone name. Cisco and Apple had been talking about who should rightfully get to use the iPhone name since then. When Apple unveiled it's iPhone at Macworld this year, Cisco sued. Cisco wants to halt all sales of the Apple iPhone.

Kodak sued Sony back in 2004, claiming that Sony had infringed on it's patents on digital camera technology. Since then, Kodak and Sony have been counter suing for the control of 10 patents. Sony and Kodak have officially settled by starting a cross licensing agreement, so that both companies have the rights to use the same technology.

Taiwanese MP3 manufacturer Luxpro has stated that they are planning on suing Apple for $100 million. Luxpro was originally sued by Apple on claims that it was copying the design of Apple's iPod Shuffle. Luxpro countered the claims by saying that the prominence of its logo and a series of "easy-to-operate features" were adequate differentiation. After winning an appeal against Apple, the company now plans to move onto the offensive. In a press release, the company stated that it would be suing Apple for 100 million USD. The figure is to receive compensation for Apple's earlier lawsuit in which Luxpro claims they lost valuable market opportunities and a large amount of product orders.

A U.S. research institute has sued Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Matsushita-owned Panasonic for violating a patent for Bluetooth technology, potentially putting the free wireless standard at risk. The Washington Research Foundation, which markets technology from the University of Washington, is seeking damages from the three mobile-phone makers for using a radio frequency receiver technology without paying royalties, according to court papers obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. Nokia, Samsung and Panasonic declined to comment the story.

The Recording Industry Association of America has announced that it is set to sue Russian music firm Mediaservices for $1.6 trillion. Mediaservices also owns AllofMP3.com and allTunes.com and is accused of selling music illegally. Apparently the RIAA want $150,000 for each of the 11 million pirated songs. A spokesperson for AllofMP3.com claimed that the suit is unjustified because the company doesn't operate in New York and obeys Russian Copyright laws - it even pays some of its profit to the Russian equivalent of the RIAA, the Russian Organisation for Multimedia, which the RIAA argues has no right to exist. It has been no secret that the RIAA has been unhappy with Mediaservices, but this is the first real action they've taken.

Apple is set to face yet another lawsuit, this time over the supposed monopoly that the company has in portable media player sales and online music downloads. The lawsuit against Apple claims that by linking its iTunes software to the iPod, other companies are unable to compete because of the difficulty created by the copy protection methods used in music downloads. Songs downloaded via Apple's music store can only be played using iTunes or on an iPod, with songs bought on other sites being difficult to play on iPods because Apple uses its own copy protection. Apple controls about 75% of music online music downloads.

Green Welling LLP filed a nationwide class action lawsuit on behalf of the owners of the Nintendo Wii against Nintendo of America, Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The class action lawsuit arose as result of the defective nature of the Nintendo Wii.

California based Interlink Electronics is suing Nintendo for some parts of the Wii Remote that Interlink claims they have already patented. In patent #6,850,221, which was granted in February 2005, Interlink patented a "trigger-operated electronic device", which is only one aspect of the Wii Remote. Interlink is also claiming that the Wii's pointer functionality is infringing copyrights. Interlink wants a trial by jury, and if it wins, they want damage compensation and a ban on the allegedly infringing products.

Microsoft sued Belkin in August for illegitimately using "U2 technology", which allows keyboard and mice to detect what type of connection is needed. Today, Microsoft is "pleased to announce" that they have reached a settlement. As part of the settlement, Belkin will take a license for U2 technology. Microsoft has been trying to get Belkin as a licensee for over 2 years.