A new antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of iPhone users could get rid of Apple’s exclusivity agreements (‘EA’) with AT&T and Verizon.
The class-action lawsuit (below) accuses Apple of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’) because the EAs do not giving consumers the “absolute legal right to modify their phones to use the network of their carrier of choice.”
If the plaintiffs successfully get a court to let consumers opt-out of carrier EAs, the ripple effect could be be huge. A decision for plaintiffs could potentially affect all carriers and all mobile handsets sold with locked phones with sold with exclusivity agreements in the U.S., regardless of what mobile operating system they use.
A federal judge approved a joint request by mobile telecoms AT&T and T-Mobile to put their $39 billion merger litigation with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division on hold.
U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle signed off on the two companies’ joint motion to stay proceedings in the antitrust case until mid-January.
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 or Apple mobile phone users’ text messages, e-mails and keystrokes, but a number of reports seriously question such claims.
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.
Ouch! That hurts!
That’s what prompted patient Robert Allen Lee to sue his dentist, Dr. Stacy Makhnevich and the North Carolina company, Medical Justice, that created and sold Makhnevich patient consent forms with the restrictive language (Read the lawsuit below)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments next year over the dismissal of a class-action by Facebook users who claimed they were hurt when Facebook promoted its “Friend Finder” by displaying their profile information.
A briefing schedule is now listed on the court’s case docket.
Last month, Judge Richard Seeborg granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint in the ‘Find Friends’ class-action, concluding that the plaintiffs failed to plead how they could actually be hurt. (Read the six-page decision below)
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (‘FTC’) announced that it reached a tentative settlement with Facebook over charges that the social media company engaged in deceptive privacy practices with consumers.
But will the proposed settlement (you can read it below) really protect users in an era when tech privacy law is constantly evolving? It’s not final yet; consumers have until the end of 2011 to tell the FCC what they think about it.
A new antitrust lawsuit filed on behalf of iPhone users could get rid of Apple’s exclusivity agreements (‘EA’) with AT&T and Verizon.
A federal judge approved a joint request by mobile telecoms AT&T and T-Mobile to put their $39 billion merger 
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 
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.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (‘FTC’) 
