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Todd Haselton |Jan 20th, 2012 at 11:00AM
The Department of Justice recently released information that suggests a number of large U.S. technology companies may have created secret “no poaching” agreements with one another. The companies that have been under investigation include Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, Adobe and Lucasfilm. The alleged no poaching agreements may have been pretty scary: According to TechCrunch, which published the DoJ’s early findings, companies were told to deny offers to anyone who applied for a...
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Todd Haselton |Jan 17th, 2012 at 09:00PM
Investors who were upset by Netflix’s poor decision making in 2011 have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in a U.S. District Court in Northern California. ”At the beginning of the class period, Netflix was facing increasing competition for streaming business, and content providers were exploring new ways to distribute their content and/or maximize their licensing fees,” the lawsuit reads. “Rather than fully disclose the devastating cost increases which were then threate...
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Zach Epstein |Dec 5th, 2011 at 11:30AM
Apple, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Carrier IQ have been sued in a federal court by what the lawyers involved have deemed a “cell phone tracking software scandal.” Law firms Sianni & Straite LLP, Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy LLP, and Keefe Bartels L.L.C. have jointly filed a class action complaint in a Delaware Federal Court related to the “unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users.” The complaint suggests...
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Todd Haselton |Dec 2nd, 2011 at 01:10PM
Class action lawsuits have been filed against Samsung, HTC and Carrier IQ. Carrier IQ has been in the spotlight after a security expert revealed that its software is installed on millions of smartphones and may be spying on users. Sprint and AT&T have both admitted to using the application, and other carriers likely use similar services, but both carriers have denied taking advantage of the software’s ability to spy on customers. The class action lawsuits are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars...
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Todd Haselton |Nov 17th, 2011 at 06:05PM
Walmart has agreed to pay $27.5 million in damages to more than 25 million Netflix customers who subscribed to the service between May 19th, 2005 and September 2nd, 2011, as part of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit. Litigation was levied against the nationwide retailer after Walmart ditched efforts to run a DVD-by-mail business that would compete directly with Netflix. Reportedly, Walmart agreed to bail on its plans provided that Netflix pointed its customers to Walmart to purchase DVDs. Walmart has not...
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Todd Haselton |Oct 26th, 2011 at 04:40PM
BlackBerry users have filed a class-action lawsuit against Research In Motion after the company’s massive service outage earlier this month, the Financial Post reported on Wednesday. The suit was officially filed by the Consumer Law Group in the Quebec Superior Court “on behalf of individuals who have BlackBerry smartphones and who pay for a monthly data plan but were unable to access their email, BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), and/or Internet for the period of October 11 to 14, 2011.” ...
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Zach Epstein |Sep 1st, 2011 at 12:25PM
Apple has repeatedly accused Samsung of “copying” its products, but it looks like Microsoft is now the one following Apple’s lead. A class action lawsuit filed in Seattle on Wednesday accuses Microsoft of unlawfully tracking users of smartphones that run the company’s emerging Windows Phone 7 operating system. According to the complaint, the camera application in Microsoft’s Windows Phone software continues to track users’ locations and transmit that data to Microsoft even ...
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Todd Haselton |Aug 25th, 2011 at 10:15PM
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has ruled that Verizon customers who take issue with “fraudulent” cell phone charges must arbitrate individually with the carrier instead of filing a class-action lawsuit in court, Reuters recently reported. A group of current and former Verizon Wireless customers originally filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that it was “unconscionable” for Verizon Wireless to require customers to arbitrate any unfair charges in their contracts. ...
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Todd Haselton |Aug 18th, 2011 at 09:06AM
A Motorola Mobility shareholder has initiated a class-action lawsuit against the company after CEO Sanjay Jha announced intentions to sell the firm to Google for $12.5 billion. The shareholder hopes to block the sale and argues that Motorola Mobility failed to shop around for the best price. “The offered consideration does not compensate shareholders for the company’s intrinsic value and stand-alone alternatives going forward, nor does it compensate shareholders for the company’s value as a ...
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Todd Haselton |Aug 17th, 2011 at 10:00AM
27,000 people have filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple in South Korea over concerns Apple collected private location data, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The group is seeking 1 million won per person in damages, or about $930 each and just over $25 million total. In early August, the Korean Communications Commission fined Apple 3 million won ($2,829) following the “Locationgate” scandal that occurred earlier this year. Apple has stood by its claims that the location-tracking was the resul...
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Zach Epstein |May 4th, 2011 at 07:09PM
Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe are among the companies named in a new class actions lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the state of California. The suit, filed by former Lucasfilm software engineer Siddharth Hariharan, alleges that Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar violated antitrust laws by conspiring to fix employee pay.” Hariharan claims that these companies have colluded to limit career opportunities and impose artificial salary caps for employees by entering into agreements th...
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Todd Haselton |Apr 29th, 2011 at 01:31PM
Last week, the public was up in arms after O’Reilly revealed that Apple was recording and storing the location of its iPad and iPhone users. Not long after that, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was also tracking and storing the locations of Android users. Even though Google has said all location sharing is opt-in and that all location data is anonymized, Bloomberg is reporting that two Oakland County Michigan residents have filed a lawsuit against Google with the U.S. District Court, Easter...
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Todd Haselton |Mar 30th, 2011 at 12:12PM
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it has reached a settlement with Google over its controversial Google Buzz social network. The FTC charged Google with using “deceptive tactics and [violating] its own privacy promises to consumers” when it launched Google Buzz — its Twitter-like social network — in 2010. The FTC’s proposed settlement will bar Google from “future privacy misrepresentations,” and requires that Google implement a comprehensive privacy pr...
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Andrew Munchbach |Mar 10th, 2011 at 09:33PM
WiMAX network operator Clearwire is the target of a new lawsuit that has been filed out of a Seattle district court. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs allege that Clearwire “throttles down the speed of its Internet service to speeds similar to dial-up telephone modem speeds,” and likens the company’s business practices to “a bandwidth Ponzi scheme.” Customers who are not satisfied with the speeds provided by Clearwire’s self-proclaimed high-speed internet are forced to p...