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Silicon Valley Cisco reseller charged with $37 million fraud
The boss of Silicon Valley Cisco reseller Network Genesis has been indicted for selling counterfeit kit and sub-price products bought by the networking company's staff.
According to the federal grand jury indictment, Cuong Cao Dang, sometimes known as Calvin Dang, bought counterfeit hardware for his San Jose reseller business …
Music royalty war spreads to aggregator MediaNet
Singer-songwriter Aimee Man has become the latest recording artist to take aim at the coupon-clippers and parasites of Internet music distribution, hauling a little-known intermediary into court for distributing her work without a license.
Unlike the retail names savaged by the likes of Radiohead's Thom Yorke (who pulled his …
Google buys speech rec patents from SR Tech
A company established last year to negotiate royalties from patents filed by previously low-profile individuals from Cincinnati has vaulted into public eye courtesy of Google, which has bought rights to two of its patents.
SR Tech Group LLC, which principal Stuart Goller told The Register was set up last year (we were unable to …
Texas man charged in multimillion-dollar Bitcoin Ponzi scheme
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a warning about the potential dangers of investing in virtual currencies, after a Texas man allegedly managed to bilk residents of multiple states out of Bitcoins worth more than $60m at today's exchange rate.
On Tuesday, the SEC announced that it has charged Trendon Shavers …
Troll loses 'we own the Web' patent appeal
Eolas, the troll that asserted ownership over pretty much everything anyone ever wanted to do on the Web, has been sent packing, with a US court invalidating its patents.
The case, launched in 2009, had generated worldwide interest and attracted Tim Berners-Lee as a witness. Eolas was claiming ownership over embedded browser …
Texas school strikes devil's bargain, drops RFID student tracking
The Texas school that expelled a student for refusing to comply with its plan to track pupils with RFID tags has dropped the scheme, saying it just doesn't work.
In November, Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas, began a trial of RFID tracking for students in an attempt to cut down on truancy. The …
LG, Sanyo, fined for price-fixing laptop batteries
The USA's Department of Justice (DoJ) has slapped Sanyo (a subsidiary of Panasonic), and LG Chem (part of the sprawling LG Chaebol, with fines for conspiring to fix prices for cylindrical lithium ion battery cells used in notebook computers.
The DoJ announced the fines last week, and said that between April 2007 and September …
Premier League boots footie-streaming site off Blighty's interwebs
The Premier League has won a court order to force UK ISPs to block footie streaming service FirstRow1.eu in Blighty.
The High Court has ruled that the popular Swedish site's links to football match streams from around the world are a breach of copyright and will order the site to be blocked by ISPs including Sky, Virgin, BT and …
Apple flushes poker apps after prod from Australia
In 2001 Australia passed the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, a law the then-conservative government created in a “won't somebody think of the children” knee-jerk reaction to worries about the possible effects of the early-ish internet.
The law banned online gambling services in Australia and, in what was seen at the time as a …
Telly bigwigs try to close down Aereo streaming service - again
A US appeals court has refused to rehear major broadcasters' arguments for temporarily shutting down TV streaming service Aereo while another court decides whether or not it's legal.
The telly bigwigs, including Disney's ABC and NBC Universal, have been trying to get the online TV service banned on the basis that it infringes …
IBM, Accenture play blame game over $1bn project blowout
IBM and Accenture are sniping at one another in public over just who should take the blame - and the fall - for the $AUD1bn blowout of a project to provide the Australian State of Queensland's Department of Health with a new payroll system.
The project kicked off in 2007 with a budget of just over $6m. It's now expected to cost …
Sony coughs up £250K ICO fine after security fears
Sony has begrudgingly abandoned its fight to contest a £250,000 fine handed down by the Information Commissioner’s Office after its massive 2011 PlayStation Network data breach.
The Japanese electronics giant was slapped with the fine back in January for breaching the Data Protection Act after the personal info of millions of …
GitHub to devs: pick a license, we dare you
When Microsoft announced back in January that its flagship development tools Visual Studio and Team Foundation Service would play nicely with Git, it was a sign that the tool and its online manifestation GitHub had become part of the programming furniture.
Many supporters chalk that status up as a win for all things open source …
Wi-Lan loses 3GPP patent suit
Wi-Lan seems a step closer to having to wear the tag “patent troll”, with an East Texas federal jury tossing out its patent suit against Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, HTC and Sony.
The patents at issue had been acquired from Airspan Networks. They included techniques such as channel pooling, subscriber terminals (mobile phones), and …
Microsoft: 'Google's secret government meetings let it avoid import ban' - Report
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit which claims US Customs officials failed to block imports of Motorola Mobility phones after the agency's ear was bent by Google in a series of secret meetings.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday, according to Bloomberg News, and accuses the US Customers and Border Protection (CBP) Agency of failing to …
Is it a BIRD? Is it a plane? Right first time – and she's in SPANDEX
Pics In a pop-up shop in Shoreditch, two rubber-clad hotties are snogging in front of a small audience of pretty PR people. It might sound like an average Saturday night for the racier denizens of this uber-hip part of London but it is, in fact, a tenuous marketing ploy for the Huawei Ascend P2, a flash new smartphone from the world' …
Yahoo!: We! tried! to! protect! your! info! ... secret! court! case! will! prove! it!
Yahoo! has launched a fresh bid to reveal the top secret workings of the US surveillance state and prove it did not voluntarily hand over its customer's data to NSA spooks.
The Purple Palace wants to lift a seal on a 2008 court case in which the firm "strenuously objected" to the National Security Agency's requests for its …
Samsung asks for retrial on rubber-band
Samsung versus Apple has taken yet another twist, with the Korean company asking for yet-another-trial on the basis that Cupertino reduced the scope of its infamous “rubber-band” patent during a re-examination.
The companies' litigation, set to replace SCO versus IBM as the tech sector's Jarndyce v Jarndyce, has spawned …
Apple surrenders in 'app store' trademark suit against Amazon
After battling it out in the courts for more than two years, Apple has dropped its lawsuit against Amazon over the e-commerce giant's use of the term "app store", claiming legal measures are no longer necessary.
"We no longer see a need to pursue our case," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told Reuters on Tuesday. "With more …
US, UK watchdogs file legal moves to curb government surveillance
Two privacy watchdogs, one in the US and one in the UK, have filed legal actions against their respective governments, petitioning them to curtail - or at minimum uncover - their domestic surveillance operations.
In the US, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a petition (PDF) with the US Supreme Court, …
'Banner year' for patent lawsuits: Number of cases, awards both up
Describing 2012 as a "banner year" for patent litigation in the US, a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers says the number of patents granted and the number of patent lawsuits filed were both up during the year, even as the damages awarded in such suits hit all-time highs.
According to the report, although the number of patent …
Texas teen jailed for four months over sarcastic Facebook comment
Concern is growing for a Texas teenager who has spent the last four months in jail after being arrested for making seemingly threatening comments on Facebook.
Justin Carter, 19, is currently being held under suicide watch in Comal County Jail near San Antonio, Texas, after being arrested in February following a Facebook argument …
Gotcha: Oz Greens squeeze web snoop law confession
Senator Scott Ludlam of The Australian Greens is trumpeting a victory in the ongoing data retention debate in Australia, with the attorney-general's department admitting that it had prepared a draft of relevant legislation, in spite of earlier denials.
On Friday, Ludlam issued a media release reiterating that in hearings in May …
Of mice, the NSA, GCHQ and data protection
Comment Suppose you see a mouse in your house: is it likely to be the only mouse in your house? The relevance of the question will come apparent when we dig deeper into those infamous “black boxes” allegedly used by the USA’s National Security Agency1, the latest GCHQ mass interception fandango, and the responsibilities of the UK …
EU crackdown will see tougher sentences for stupid cyber-badhats
The European Parliament has agreed to toughen criminal penalties across the EU for cyber attacks, especially any that threaten national infrastructure or are deemed to be aimed at stealing sensitive data.
The new directive forces the 28 member states to impose national maximum sentences of at least two years in prison for trying …
Olympus trio escape jail but firm fined £4.6 MEEELION
Three former Olympus execs have been found guilty of massive accounting fraud and the camera-maker fined ¥700m (£4.6m), although the disgraced trio escaped prison sentences.
Tokyo District Court on Wednesday sentenced former chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, auditor Hideo Yamada, and ex-VP Hisashi Mori to suspended prison terms after …
Apple back in court as Shanghai firm takes offence at Siri
Apple has been back in a Shanghai court this week defending claims by a local company that Siri voice assistant technology infringes one of its patents.
Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology is suing the fruit-themed tech giant’s Apple Inc and Apple Trading (Shanghai) businesses for alleged IPR infringement.
In Shanghai No. 1 …
Boston U claims LED patent, files against tech giants
Boston University, which last year assessed the cost of “patent trolling” in the American economy at $US29 billion, has fired its litigation gun at a slew of tech companies – including Apple.
Since October 2012 – incidentally the month in which its cost-of-trolling research was released – the university has been filing lawsuits …
Dotcom, NZ PM clash over spy laws
New Zealand's proposed revisions to the laws that govern its Government Communications Security Bureau have provided a venue for political theatre by Kim Dotcom, who choppered into Wellington to speak against the bill.
With only 15 minutes to speak to a parliamentary hearing into proposed spy laws in New Zealand, Kim Dotcom didn …
Fugitive Shadowcrew suspect hauled into US court... 9 YEARS on
US prosecutors have finally got their hands on a fugitive cybercrime suspect, nine years after the Bulgarian national was indicted (PDF) over his alleged involvement in the infamous Shadowcrew carding forum.
Aleksi Kolarov, 30, appeared in a Newark, New Jersey court on Monday following his extradition from Paraguay last Friday. …
Brit fantasy artist sues James Cameron over Avatar world
The highest-grossing film of all time has once again found itself in the courts as a British artist has accused Avatar's creators of copyright infringement, breach of implied contact, unfair competition and unjust enrichment.
"Pathways" painting by W. Roger Dean, also featured on the album cover of Yessongs (by English prog rock …
Judge nixes Microsoft SkyDrive name in BSkyB court ruling
BSkyB has won a legal case against Microsoft in the UK and EU over its use of the name "SkyDrive" for its cloud storage service.
British judge Sarah Asplin, sitting in the chancery division of Blighty's High Court, ruled that the evidence in the case "revealed confusion amongst real people" about the SkyDrive service, including …
Yorkshire plods LOSE 9,000 GUNS in rogue BOFH database blunder
Bungling police staff at South Yorkshire Police have finally copped to a huge snafu in their firearms database after spending the last two months writing to thousands of firearms licence holders. The letter simply requested they "update their details". Bosses have blamed the database snafu on the actions of a sacked …
Apple threatens ANOTHER Samsung patent lawsuit
After a US judge refused Apple's request to add the Galaxy S 4 to the list of products for which Cupertino accuses Samsung of infringing upon its patents, Cook's crew is threatening to fire up yet another lawsuit against the Korean smartphone and tablet rival.
US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal turned down Apple's petition to add …
US cops make 'first ever' Bitcoin seizure following house raid
American cops have made their first ever seizure of Bitcoin after raiding the house of an alleged drug dealer.
The Drug Enforcement Administration seized a haul of 11.02 Bitcoins (worth $814.22 at today's rates) from an address in South Carolina on April 12. They were in the possession of a man suspected of dealing drugs using …
US trade commish kicks off patent-troll-nixing plan
The US International Trade Commission has kicked off a pilot scheme to rein in the glut of intellectual property claims from patent trolls.
The ITC said that it will soon require complaining firms to prove upfront that they have any actual business in the States before pursuing their case.
The commission has become a popular …
Ex-inmate at Chinese prison: We made airline headsets
Major airlines including British Airways and electronics manufacturers have been accused of sourcing products from a Chinese prison where inmates are tasered if they don’t hit production targets. BA and some of the other companies denied this while others said they hadn't knowingly bought them and are investigating their supply …
Premier League seeks court order to ban footie-streaming Swedish site
The Premier League is set to ask for a UK court order to force ISPs like BT and Sky to block popular football streaming site FirstRow1.eu.
The Swedish soccer site would be the first to be banned in Blighty if the League gets the order, which the BBC said ISPs weren’t planning to challenge.
Neither BT, Sky nor TalkTalk would …
India's eager IT grads fall for fake interview scams
Technology companies in India are warning prospective employees of a fresh round of scam mail designed to trick job-seekers into paying a security deposit in return for an interview.
The fraudulent letters and emails usually hit a peak between June and August as this is the beginning of the academic year in India and the time …
US Supremes sit on hands in $625m patent case, hand Apple victory
The US Supreme Court has handed Apple a victory in its long-running patent-infringement battle with Mirror Worlds LLC, declining to review a lower court's decision to overturn a $625.5m judgment that had been leveled against Cupertino.
The Supremes made no comment on the case, merely lumping it into a list of 157 cases released …
Tokyo beak rules against Samsung in Apple 'bounce back' case
Tokyo's district judge has ruled that Samsung smartphones and fondleslabs infringe on Apple's infamous "bounce back" feature.
The pair of patent-battling firms still have cases backed up around the world, including in Japan, where a judge last ruled against Apple in a suit over syncing music and video data in August last year. …
Offensive, iconoclastic internet trolls will NOT be prosecuted, says DPP
Cases involving trolling on social media sites should now be easier to deal with after the Director of Public Prosecutions published definitive guidelines on the tabloid-fodder phenomenon this morning.
Keir Starmer, who will leave his post as DPP in the autumn, said that the interim guidelines the Crown Prosecution Service …
