A public interest group asked a federal judge on Wednesday to block Google from changing its privacy policy, reports Reuters. The lawsuit comes from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which claims the search giant is in violation of a consent agreement made with U.S. regulator last March. The group is asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against Google in the hopes that the Federal Trade Commission will enforce the consent agreement. “The Cou...

Acer has filed a lawsuit against its former chief executive officer Gianfranco Lanci for allegedly violating a non-compete agreement. Lanci left Acer last March after the company hit a rough patch and was recently named head of Lenovo’s operations in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. “We believe Mr. Lanci has clearly breached the terms of the non-compete agreement he entered into willingly . . . we believe we have a very robust case,” Acer said in a statement given to the Financial Times. The ...

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...

Apple recently filed to appeal a December 19th ITC ruling that found HTC was infringing on just one of Apple’s patents. Patent expert Florian Muller of FOSS Patents said that Apple filed for the appeal on December 29th, and that it is likely Apple wants a more favorable ruling on the original case that includes a judgement on whether or not HTC is infringing on a real-time API patent. “It’s clear that Apple’s appeal of the ITC ruling at least aims to broaden the scope of the import ...

Motorola Mobility has filed a patent lawsuit against Apple in a Florida federal court. The phone maker is accusing Apple of infringing on six patents related to messaging, antennas, software and data filtering with its mobile devices, Reuters said. Motorola also argued that Apple’s iPhone 4S specifically infringes on one of its patents. Just two weeks ago, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Motorola’s handsets did not infringe three Apple patents. The Mannheim Regional Court i...

Apple is said to have spent as much as $100 million on its first round of legal battles with HTC, and the company has precious little to show for it. Newsweek’s well-sourced Dan Lyons cited “a rumor going around among the lawyers” in reporting the staggering figure on his personal blog, and he noted that Apple’s onslaught of lawsuits around the world have yielded precious little for the Cupertino, California based technology giant. Meaningful wins have been few and far between for App...

Apple is warring with Samsung yet again in Germany. The iPhone maker filed another suit against Samsung and this time is arguing that the slide-to-unlock feature on the Galaxy Nexus infringes on an intellectual property right called a “utility model,” patent expert Florian Muller wrote on his website FOSS Patents Friday. Apple reportedly registered the utility model in 2006 and said it wasn’t able to use its utility model against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus in court yet because the phone ...

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...

Oracle recently asked a court to stay or dismiss a Java-related patent infringement case against Google for up to 9 months. In a letter to the court, however, Oracle also revealed how much it believes Google makes per day from Android activations alone. “Each day’s worth of activations likely generates approximately $10 million in annual mobile advertising revenue for Google,” Oracle said. Patent expert Florian Muller of FOSS Patents explained that while Oracle doesn’t state how it ca...

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...

The United States International Trade Commission on Friday issued a prliminary ruling stating that Motorola Mobility smartphones do not infringe three Apple patents. ”It is held that no violation of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, as amended, 19 U.S.C. § 1337, has occurred in the importation into the United States, the sale for importation, or the sale within the United States after importation of certain mobile devices and related software by reason of infringement of one or more of Claims 1, ...

AT&T has settled a patent lawsuit with TiVo in which it will pay the DVR vendor $215 million through June 2018, including an initial payment of $51 million. AT&T will also pay “incremental recurring per subscriber monthly license fees” to TiVo through July 2018 if its subscriber base surpasses a certain level, TiVo said in a statement Wednesday. AT&T and TiVo were locked in a patent battle after AT&T began to market its own digital video recorder using a technology patented by TiVo...

M-Edge Accessories has filed a lawsuit against Amazon with a federal court in Maryland that accuses the online retailer of bullying it into coughing up higher commissions in exchange for better placement on Amazon’s website. M-Edge Accessories isn’t just filing a suit for extortion according to The Wall Street Journal, however — the accessory maker is also accusing Amazon of patent infringement, false advertising, creating unfair competition and hampering M-Edge’s customer relations. Amazo...

Toymaker Hasbro recently filed a lawsuit against Asus for naming its new convertible Android tablet the “Transformer Prime.” According to The Verge, Hasbro has a pending trademark for “Transformers Prime,” which it used in 2010 for an animated television series. The company also owns four other trademarks related to the “Transformers” name. Hasbro said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit to “aggressively protect its brands,” but it doesn’t appear tha...