Nearly 130 years after Vincent Van Gogh painted “The Night Café,” and nearly a century after Russia’s Bolshevik government took the painting as its own from the collection of a private citizen, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to not chime in on the $200 million painting’s rightful owner, meaning it will remain in a Yale University gallery, where it’s been since 1961. [More]
lawsuits
Failed For-Profit College Operator Ordered To Pay $1.1 Billion For Predatory Practices
By 3.24.16
Corinthian Colleges Inc. — which formerly ran for-profit education chains like Everest University, Heald College, and WyoTech — may have collapsed and had its remnants sold off, but the lawsuits against the failed company continue to loom. This week, a California judge ordered the defunct company to fork over $1.1 billion to the state for lying to students, investors, and regulators. [More]
Lumber Liquidators To Pay California $2.5M For Having Too Much Formaldehyde In Its Flooring
By 3.22.16
More than a year ago, a 60 Minutes report on the formaldehyde levels in laminate flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators kicked off a string of investigations, and lawsuits, culminating with the exit of the company’s CEO. Today, California regulators finally closed the book on its Lumber Liquidators case after the retailer agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle charges is sold flooring that contained formaldehyde in excess of the state’s allowable levels. [More]
Verizon: We Still Hate Net Neutrality And Hope It Loses, But We Love Net Neutrality!
By 3.22.16
Verizon is at it again: with a ruling on net neutrality likely to show up in the next few weeks, they are falling all over themselves to talk about how much they love net neutrality and what it protects, while explaining that they hate the rule that’s been put in place to protect net neutrality, and think it could ruin everything. [More]
Judges Tell Porn Copyright Troll That Geolocation Tools Aren’t Enough To Pinpoint Pirates
By 3.22.16
Malibu Media — online porn producer and copyright troll — has filed more copyright lawsuits than most of the other trolls combined, most of them against anonymous “Doe” defendants whose identities are currently nothing but IP addresses for their Internet service. Malibu and others have tried to use geolocation tools to more precisely identify these alleged porn pirates, but two judges recently told Malibu that this simply isn’t good enough. [More]
Supreme Court Will Not Hear EA’s Appeal In Madden NFL Case
By 3.21.16
No, the First Amendment does not give one of the world’s largest video game publishers the right to make money off the likeness of professional athletes without their permission or compensating them. Or at least the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t want to hear anyone argue that it does. [More]
Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Samsung V. Apple Patent Case
By 3.21.16
The ongoing patent battle between smartphone standouts Samsung and Apple will get its day before the Supreme Court this year, as the nation’s highest court has decided to hear arguments about one facet of the long-simmering dispute. [More]
Appeals Court Questions Tennessee & North Carolina Lawsuit To Restrict Community Broadband
By 3.18.16
More than a year after the FCC voted to preempt state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that heavily restrict city- and county-owned utilities from providing broadband to consumers, the states and the federal regulator finally had their day in court. [More]
Starbucks Customers Suing Over Allegedly Skimpy Latte Servings
By 3.18.16
It can be tough when you don’t get enough coffee in the morning — you’re tired and cranky all day, your coworkers hide from your scorching gaze, etc. — and you have no one to blame but yourself for not getting more caffeine. Some Starbucks customers are blaming their lack of coffee on the company, claiming in a class action lawsuit that the chain consistently underfills its lattes. [More]
Comcast, AT&T Lobbyists Help Kill Community Broadband Expansion In Tennessee
By 3.16.16
When cable and telecom companies go through the effort of writing anti-consumer legislation for states, they can later be counted on to lobby to keep those laws in place when challenged. Case in point: Lobbyists for Comcast and AT&T recently helped kill a small piece of legislation in Tennessee that would have allowed a city-run utility to expand the reach of its broadband service. [More]
Dish Sues NBC For Blabbing Publicly About Looming Blackout
By 3.15.16
It’s not uncommon for TV networks and pay-TV operators to get into very public spats about contract negotiations and looming blackouts, but the folks at Dish say that NBCUniversal crossed the line this week in going public about its ongoing contract dispute with the satellite company. [More]
California Appeals Court Puts The Kibosh On Medical Marijuana Delivery App
By 3.15.16
Californians who were hoping to summon medical marijuana to their homes with the tap of a smartphone app will have to find anther way to get their pot, after an appeals court upheld an injunction against a weed delivery app called NestDrop. [More]
5 Strange Things We Learned About Sudden Closures Of Old Country And HomeTown Buffets
By 3.15.16
Earlier this month, buffet restauranteur Ovation Brands filed for bankruptcy and abruptly shut down many of its restaurants — like Old Country Buffet, HomeTown Buffet, Fire Mountain, and Ryan’s Steakhouse — without even a heads-up to its employees. Curious about what drove Ovation into this bankruptcy — the company’s third since 2008 — we took a closer look at some of the court filings, which raised more questions than they did answers. [More]
Whole Foods Asks Judge To Put The Kibosh On Lawsuit Over “Natural” Label On Baked Goods
By 3.11.16
When it comes to products with labels reading “all natural,” are you willing to pay more than you would otherwise? Whole Foods customers who have filed lawsuits against the grocery chain said they paid a premium price for baked goods that were falsely labeled as natural, as they actually contained synthetic ingredients. [More]
Appeals Court Shuts Down For-Profit College Industry’s Effort To Avoid Accountability
By 3.8.16
The for-profit college industry lost an important legal battle today, when a federal appeals court upheld last year’s lower court ruling in favor of new regulations intended to hold these controversial schools accountable. [More]
Supreme Court Leaves Apple On The Hook For $450 Million In E-Book Refunds
By 3.7.16
Nearly three years after Apple was found liable for conspiring with book publishers to fix prices on the e-book market — and nine months after losing again at the appeals court level — the electronics giant has failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case one final time, meaning Apple is now on the hook for $450 million to e-book buyers. [More]
Dozens Of Tech Experts Ask Court To Not Force Apple To Unlock iPhone
By 3.3.16
The day after Apple filed its formal objection to a Feb. 16 court order compelling the company to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone that belonged to one of the terrorists who killed 14 people last December in California, a group of nearly four dozen tech industry experts have asked the court to rethink its decision. [More]
IBM Lawsuit Accuses Groupon Of Infringing On Its Patents, Including One For Prodigy
By 3.3.16
Do you remember Prodigy, the online service that had many a mid-1990s user surfing the Internet, in the early days of the World Wide Web? IBM sure does, considering it holds patents for that dinosaur of the technological age, and is accusing Groupon of infringing on two patents that grew out of Prodigy, as well as a few others, in a new lawsuit. [More]
