Can gaming company Zynga successfully obtain trademark rights to all things ending in ville, the French word for a town or village? Answering that question is a task facing two federal courts. Before it launched its billion dollar IPO, the San Francisco-based tech company threatened to sue computer game makers…
Articles Posted in social-networking
Tensions could reach a new high point today in the Facebook ownership claim lawsuit between plaintiff, convicted felon Paul Cegilia (inset), and Defendants Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. A court hearing today in Buffalo, New York is scheduled to consider no less than eight (8) motions with roughly eighty (80) pleadings…
More lawyers are learning the hard way that courts will not grant social media discovery requests without first laying a foundation for access to the accounts and information being sought. A trial court judge on New York's Long Island recently granted two different motions to strike defense requests for social…
A juror who tweeted during a murder trial, and while he and his fellow jurors deliberated, led the Arkansas Supreme Court to reverse the conviction of a 26-year-old death row inmate. While there were other factors that led the court to send the case back for a new trial, the…
Facebook is hacking Congress. But don't be alarmed. It's all legal. Really. Democratic and Republican lawmakers and their staffs are making nice on Capitol Hill this afternoon in a hackathon with Facebook engineers and software developers. Mark Zucerkberg's team is helping Senators, Representatives, and congressional staffers brush up on their…
Would televising U.S. Supreme Court proceedings promote transparency in the country's highest legal institution and help generate public confidence in the judiciary, or would putting the court's oral arguments on TV or the Internet demean the institution? These and other questions were raised in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this…
A Brooklyn jury acquitted a man accused of gun possession charges after his criminal defense lawyers discovered a treasure trove of derogatory, racist digital evidence on a Facebook group created by NYPD officers. According to the New York Times, police officers who did not want to work at New York…
Carrier IQ, a mobile phone software and data analytics company that gives telecoms business intelligence on connections, dropped calls and user behavior was hit with at least eleven consumer class-action lawsuits alleging privacy and Federal Wiretap Act violations. The lawsuits accuse the telecom software analystics company of variously recording Android…
Last week a New York trial judge denied a defense discovery request for a personal injury plaintiff's current and historical Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter account information. New York Justice George J. Silver of State Supreme Court in Manhattan reasoned that simply making conclusory allegations that a party's "Facebook account is…
Going to the dentist can be an unnerving experience. It can also feel like you're getting more than a tooth pulled if you're asked to give up any rights to critique the dental work you've had done, and assign all copyrights to any comments you make about it to…the dentist.…