Articles Posted in Litigation

Yahoo! Mail user Albert Rudgayzer sued the Silicon Valley web portal yesterday, charging that Yahoo’s revelation of users first and last names when they send email violates the portal’s own Terms of Service (‘TOS’), constituting a breach of contract. He seeks relief under federal and California state law.

Rudgayzer, a New York lawyer, alleges that he began using Yahoo email around October 2011. He filed the lawsuit in a pro se capacity in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (read the lawsuit below).

Samsung was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit yesterday over an emoticon patent (see below). Plaintiff Varia Holdings LLC charges that Samsung mobile phones violate its 2007 U.S. Patent (No. 7,167,731) for an “Emoticon Input Method and Apparatus.”

Varia Holdings took a jab at the electronics giant, charging that “Samsung is a prolific patent filer that actively protects its intellectual property,” but allegedly infringes the rights of others.

Of course, there are a few twists to this case.

It’s like a scene from the Wizard of Oz: Righthaven is almost dead as a corporate entity.

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Philip Pro ordered “the transfer of all of Righthaven’s intellectual property and intangible property” — including 278 registered works filed with the U.S. Copyright Office — to court-appointed receiver Lara Pearson tasked with breaking up Righthaven’s assets (read it below).

The order stemmed from an earlier judgment against Righthaven’s for $34,000+ in attorneys fees owed to Wayne Hoehn, a Vietnam vet who successfully got Righthaven’s copyright lawsuit against him dismissed.

Until last year, the Righthaven litigation machine shook down consumers for unfounded copyright violations to intellectual property. But Righthaven defendants had an epiphany moment.

A new federal class action lawsuit (see below) charges that a host of well-known social media, app, and mobile device companies stole “literally billions of contacts” from users’ personal address books by illegally ‘harvesting’ personal data on the sly, without their knowledge or consent.

The 152-page complaint seeks monetary damages under both federal and Texas state law that could be enormous, injunctive relief, equitable relief “to mandate fixes to these mobile devices and apps” to stop alleged privacy violations, as well as attorneys fees and expenses.

Facebook can be a nifty tool for spouses and divorce lawyers investigating suspicions of infidelity. Facebook itself can also tip you off to unfaithfulness by, for example, suggesting friends who are also married to your own spouse.

One Washington State husband, Alan Leighton O’Neill née Alan Leighton Fulk, is learning that the hard way. He faces bigamy charges (read them below) after Wife No. 1 learned about Wife No. 2 via Facebook’s friend suggestion tool.

According to court documents (see below), the FBI and federal prosecutors got help from hacker Hector Xavier Monsegur a/k/a ‘Sabu’ a/k/a ‘Xavier DeLeon’ a/k/a ‘Leon’ to build cases against other alleged members of Anonymous, LulzSec, Internet Feds, and AntiSec hacker groups.

U.S. authorities charged five accused hackers with federal criminal computer hacking violations, while Monsegur pled guilty to a variety of ‘substantive hacking’ violations that included targets like Sony Pictures, Fox Broadcasting, and PBS.

The federal judge presiding over the lawsuit by plaintiff Paul Ceglia, the convicted felon claiming to own half of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, just ordered Google to divulge Ceglia’s Gmail account data and logs by March 5, 2012

Ceglia’s email accounts are at the heart of this lawsuit. Some were known, many were only recently discovered by lawyers for Zuckerberg and Facebook after an electronic forensics investigator learned about four previously previously unknown webmail accounts held by Ceglia. The electronic discovery could shed light on whether or not the contract he claims gives him a fifty-percent ownership stake in Facebook is real, or the fabrication that Facebook and Zuckerberg’s lawyers say it is.

Three GOP presidential candidates got slapped with a patent infringement suit yesterday (read it below) by a California partnership that holds a patent with social media implications for the candidates’ Facebook pages.

EveryMD, a California partnership, contends that one of its patents that enables individual Facebook members like Defendants Santorum, Romney, and Gingrich “to create individual home pages (‘Facebook Pages’).” Instead of suing Facebook, however, EveryMD opted to sue the GOP presidential candidates.

What makes this lawsuit particularly fascinating is that it comes on the heels of plaintiff’s unsuccessful attempts to get Facebook to buy its patent. (view the patent below).

Continental Appliances, Inc., a California manufacturer of a gas wall heater sold at Lowe’s, sued the unknown poster of a YouTube video on Friday for claiming that its product creates “an imminent danger of fire and serious injury” because of “uncertain fuel settings.” (see below)

The lawsuit appears likely to fail, however.

Here’s why.

The U.S. Magistrate Judge overseeing Paul Ceglia’s ownership claim case against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook ordered Ceglia to pay nearly $76,000 in attorneys’ fees to Facebook’s and Zuckerberg’s lawyers for having to repeatedly go to court to compel Cegila to comply with the judge’s earlier orders.

That is in addition to the $5,000 in sanctions that a judge order Ceglia to pay last month.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio’s only reduced the $84,196 that Facebook sought in attorneys’ fees by 10% in order “to ‘trim’ any ‘fat.'”

Magistrate Judge Foschio’s 39-page decision and order (you can read it below) painstakingly details the legal morass that this litigation has become.