Judge: White House Doesn’t Have to Turn Over E-mail Records

The U.S. Executive Office of the President doesn’t have to turn over information on an alleged 10 million missing e-mail messages to a government watchdog group seeking information on how the e-mails were lost, a judge ruled Monday.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had sought information on the missing e-mails through the 41-year-old Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Office of Administration (OA) in the Executive Office of the President is not subject to the law that allows citizens to request that the U.S. government disclose the contents of previously unreleased documents.

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Judge Slaps TorrentSpy With $111M Damages

A U.S. judge has ruled on a nearly US$111 million copyright-infringement decision against TorrentSpy.com, the BitTorrent peer-to-peer search site.

Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles awarded the judgment to the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA announced late Wednesday. Cooper entered a default judgment against the operators of TorrentSpy in December, saying they had destroyed evidence related to an MPAA lawsuit against them.

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

Judge Takes Qualcomm’s Side in Patent Spat with Nokia

Qualcomm Inc. scored a minor victory in its continuing spat with Nokia when a judge last week recommended ending the investigation Nokia bought against it in August for infringing patents.

In August, Nokia Corp. asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of Qualcomm chipsets used in cellphones, including 3G (third-generation handsets), for allegedly infringing on five patents held by Nokia.

ITC Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern [CQ] granted Qualcomm a motion to terminate the investigation, as the companies are already in arbitration to settle a dispute behind a technology license the two companies signed earlier. If the decision stands after a 30-day review, Qualcomm won’t be prevented from importing its chipsets into the U.S.

(more…)

Friday, February 1st, 2008