Google has been ordered to pay €500,000 to Bottin Cartographes, a French company that filed a lawsuit against Google France after it began providing its free Google Maps services to customers. Google is also responsible for paying an additional €15,000 in fees. The court found Google “guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application,” Economic Times said Thursday. ”We proved the illegality of [Google's] strategy to remove its competitors… the court recognize...

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has fined Nokia for sending spam-filled text messages to its customers. Nokia had been sending messages with tips on how customers could take advantage of their phones’ features, Reuters said Tuesday, but the government agreed Nokia should allow its customers to opt out of receiving the messages. ”Some businesses are still not getting SMS marketing right,” Australian Communications and Media Authority chairman Richard Bean told Reuters. &#...

Samsung, Sharp, Innolux Corp, Hitachi, HannStar Display Corp, Chungwha Picture Tubes and Epson Imaging Devices Corp will pay a total of $553 million to settle accusations that the firms participated in an LCD price-fixing scheme. The price fixing resulted in inflation of display prices at the benefit of all companies involved, but at the cost of consumers. “This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field for businesses that abide by the rules, and left consumers to pay artificially higher costs f...

Italy’s Antitrust Authority has fined Apple Sales International, Apple Italia Srl and Apple Retail Italia a total of $1.2 million for “unfair commercial practices.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s Italy-based retail stores were fined €500,000 ($653,000) for not providing customers with adequate information about its AppleCare Protection Plan warranties, and an additional €400,000 ($523,00) for not being completely transparent about the length of product guarantees....

Apple has been fined by South Korea’s telecommunications regulator following the “Locationgate” scandal that caused public outrage earlier this year, Dow Jones reports. This marks the second time Apple has had to pay penalties resulting from the iOS location-tracking snafu. A South Korean lawyer sued Apple and was awarded $1 million won, or approximately $945 at the time, by a court this past June. It was discovered in April that the iPhone and some iPad models were secretly tracking user...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Microsoft in an appeal tied to a major patent dispute, ordering the Redmond-based company to pay a record $290 million patent fine. Supreme Court justices voted unanimously to uphold an earlier judgement stating Microsoft had infringed patents belonging to small Canadian software firm i4i. The judgement comes following a legal battle that began in 2007 when i4i sued the software giant claiming its Microsoft Word productivity software infringed on i4i patents. I...

Last week, we told you about Canada’s Competition Bureau slapping Rogers Wireless with a $10 million fine for inaccurate statements it made while advertising for its pre-paid wireless arm chatr. Unsurprisingly, the folks at Rogers have released a retaliatory statement vowing to “vigorously defend” itself and its statements in court:Rogers Communications commented today on the actions of the Competition Bureau regarding chatr wireless. “We’re surprised by the actions of the Co...

The Globe and Mail is reporting that Canadian wireless carrier Rogers may face a $10 million fine for misleading advertising claims made against its competitors. The Canadian Competition Bureau is looking to levy the penalty for Rogers’ assertion that its pre-paid wireless arm — Chatr  Wireless — has “fewer dropped calls than new wireless carriers” such as Wind Mobile. The Competition Bureau reports that there was “no discernible difference in dropped call rates between Rogers/Ch...

Remember when we told you that the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) was looking to fine RIM co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie up to $100 million CDN ($81.1 million USD) for their role in stock option backdating that went on from 1996 to 2006? Well, the gauntlet of justice has just smacked the co-CEOs in the head to tune of $77 million CDN ($62.5 million USD). 88% of the $77 million is to be paid back to RIM itself and the rest of the money to be handed over to the OSC itself. What’s more is th...

Um, wow. Just wow. Remember how Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the co-CEOs of RIM, got in trouble all the way back in 2006 after being busted for stock options backdating? They had apparently been doing it since 1996 and it eventually led to Balsille steping down as Chairman. The Ontario Securities Commission apparently remembers the incident well, and boy does it ever seem like it’s out for blood now. A report today from Canada’s The Globe and Mail said that the OSC is seeking up to a $100 mil...