Archive for Lawsuit

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BlackBerry And Typo Declare Peace In Our Time

Posted in Commentary with tags , on June 1, 2015 by itnerd

The legal battle between the Ryan Seacrest backed Typo who is known for making keyboards for iPhones, and BlackBerry is apparently over. BlackBerry announced this morning that it has settled all outstanding legal disputes:

As part of the settlement, Typo Products LLC, Typo Innovations LLC, Show Media LLC, Hallier Investments LLC, and Laurence Hallier have agreed to permanently discontinue selling anywhere in the world keyboards for smartphones and mobile devices with a screen size of less than 7.9 inches. Typo Products LLC, Typo Innovations LLC, Show Media LLC, Hallier Investments LLC, and Laurence Hallier may continue to sell keyboards for devices with a screen size of 7.9 inches or larger. Other terms of the settlement are confidential.

This pretty much makes sure that Typo and BlackBerry will never cross paths again. Unless BlackBerry makes an 8″ tablet with a keyboard. One has to wonder what the keyboards that Typo has already shipped are going to be worth on Craigslist.

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Bell Is Being Sued Over Internet Tracking

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 17, 2015 by itnerd

If Bell hoped that by ending and changing their controversial relevant ad tracking program, that the issue would go away, they should reconsider. The Globe And Mail is reporting that Bell is being sued over having this program:

A national class-action lawsuit has been filed against Bell Canada over alleged breaches of privacy arising from its recently discontinued target ads program.

The suit against subsidiaries of Bell alleges that the defendants used the program to track, collect and sell the sensitive account and Internet browsing information of their customers to advertisers.

It seeks $750 million in damages for breach of privacy, breach of contract and breach of the Telecommunications Act.

A similar lawsuit has also been launched in Quebec, counsel for the plaintiffs, Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg LLP, said in a statement issued Thursday.

Well, thats exactly what was needed in this case. Having the Privacy Commissioner slap their wrist was good. But companies like Bell will only stop doing bad things when there are real consequences. Lawsuits qualify as eal consequences as they get expensive. Hopefully this gets the attention of any other telco or anyone else who would think of doing something like this.

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Uber Sued Over False Advertising

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 20, 2015 by itnerd

This has not been a good week for Uber. To add to their problems in various parts of the planet, they’re now being sued for false advertising. Here’s what IT World had to say on this:

Taxi companies in California have sued Uber Technologies in a federal court, charging the ride-hailing smartphone app company with misleading advertising regarding the safety of its rides.

Uber has made false and misleading advertisements regarding the safety of rides on its UberX platform, and criticized the safety of taxi rides offered by the taxi companies, the 19 firms said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division.

And:

The claims against Uber by the taxi companies are quite similar to those in a consumer protection lawsuit filed in December in San Francisco Superior Court by the district attorneys for Los Angeles and San Francisco that accused Uber of misleading consumers over its background checks on drivers. The lawsuit on Wednesday appears to focus instead on the damages to the taxi companies from Uber’s allegedly false claims.

The complaint alleges that Uber charges a US$1 “safe rides fee” for each UberX ride, while representing to consumers that the entirety of the fee goes towards ensuring the safety of Uber riders and drivers, as opposed to the company’s bottom line or some other aspect of the company, according to the complaint.

The $1 “safe rides fee” was also charged as a misrepresentation by the district attorneys.

Well, that’s a wee bit of a problem for Uber. Seeing as they’ve had problems with safety as of late. Here are some examples:

Boston Uber Driver Charged with indecent Assault and Battery: bostonglobe.com

Chicago Uber Driver With Felony Conviction Charged With Battery For Allegedly Hitting Passenger: forbes.com

Uber Driver in India Accused of Rape: bbc.com

I’m thinking that Uber is going have a tough time defending this one in court. But I am a computer nerd, not a lawyer.

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Bell Goes To Court Over CRTC Ruling

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 23, 2015 by itnerd

You might remember that I applauded the CRTC for actually doing something right for a change when they slapped Bell and Videotron for exempting their own apps, specifically mobile TV apps from data charges. Well, Bell is going to Federal Court to do something about that. Here’s what The Globe And Mail is reporting:

On Friday BCE-owned Bell Mobility Inc. filed an application with the Federal Court of Appeal seeking leave to appeal a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s decision on Bell’s app, which lets customers stream live and on-demand TV programming on their mobile devices. (BCE owns 15 per cent of The Globe and Mail.)

And:

Bell said its mobile TV app – which attracted more than 1.5 million subscribers – is actually a broadcasting service and is therefore exempt from the provisions of the Telecom Act.

It said that when Bell Mobility provides its customers with access to other Internet-based video services it is simply acting as an Internet service provider and in that respect is governed by the Telecom Act.

In contrast, when it is operating Mobile TV, it said it is a broadcasting undertaking, noting, “Bell Mobility itself acquires, aggregates, packages and markets Bell Mobile TV content before retransmitting it to subscribers.”

The company also argued the CRTC had no evidence that the app caused harm to customers and unfairly placed the burden on Bell to prove the pricing model had no adverse impact on competitive services.

Interesting argument. But even though I am not a lawyer, I’m dubious that this will fly in court because of the fact that the CRTC specifically mentions that the TV app uses bandwidth that they are not charging for which gives their TV app an unfair advantage. They’re also going to court over this:

The company has also filed a request for the CRTC to dismiss a challenge launched by PIAC over its CraveTV video streaming service.

That relates to this story on CraveTV and Shomi potentially violating CRTC rules. Clearly Bell is feeling the heat on all sides.

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Lenovo Gets Sued Over Adware Fiasco

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 23, 2015 by itnerd

When this Lenovo Adware fiasco began, you knew that this was coming sooner or later. A lawsuit has been filed regarding Lenovo’s ill advised decision to put potentially dangerous…. Well, they admitted that it was dangerous…. Adware on their computers. Here’s the details:

A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with “fraudulent” business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware.

Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called “spyware” in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits.

The lawsuit was filed after Lenovo admitted to pre-loading Superfish on some consumer PCs. The laptops affected by Superfish include non-ThinkPad models such as G Series, U Series, Y Series, Z Series, S Series, Flex, Miix, Yoga and E Series.

Well, good on Ms. Bennett. I’m glad that someone slapped this company with a lawsuit and I hope not only that people join in on this class action, but that this is investigated by governments where these products are sold. Because behavior like this from Lenovo deserves to punished as harshly as possible.

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Typo Gets Sued…. Again

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 17, 2015 by itnerd

Fresh off getting slapped to the tune of almost a million dollars, Typo is getting sued again by BlackBerry. The Ryan Seacrest backed company is getting sued over their new keyboard the Typo2 this time. Here’s what BlackBerry had to say:

Just as they did with the Typo Keyboard, Defendants have again copied numerous proprietary BlackBerry designs and patents in the Typo2 Keyboard. The Typo2 Keyboard still blatantly copies BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard trade dress designs that have been embodied in numerous BlackBerry smartphones from the 2007 BlackBerry 8800 to the current Q10 and Classic models. The Typo2 Keyboard also infringes numerous BlackBerry utility patents related to BlackBerry’s proprietary keyboard design, backlighting and typing automation technologies.

Sucks to be them. I really don’t like their chances seeing as they just lost. But I’m a computer nerd, not a lawyer. Having said that, two lawsuits are going be huge drain on the company. Thus, the reason why I don’t like their chances.

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Typo Ordered By Court To Pay BlackBerry $860,000

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 4, 2015 by itnerd

I’ve been covering the Typo v. BlackBerry story for a while and today the news came that Typo has to pay up:

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Typo Products owes BlackBerry more than $860,000 for violating an injunction barring sales of its original iPhone keyboard case.

The contempt finding has to do with BlackBerry’s allegations that Typo continued to sell and market the original Typo case despite a court injunction issued in March of last year. Typo has since released a second product, Typo 2, that it says is designed to avoid intellectual property conflicts with BlackBerry.

Typo which is backed by Ryan Seacrest kind of blew this off as being no big deal:

In a statement, a Typo representative said that the ruling is “part of the ongoing patent litigation related to the initial Typo product”

“It has no impact on the Typo 2 product currently in the marketplace or our other planned product releases for the tablet,” the representative said, declining further comment.

We’ll have to see. It now seems that this lawsuit is in the endgame.

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Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over iOS 8 Reducing Your Available Storage

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 2, 2015 by itnerd

A lawsuit filed this week against Apple alleges that upgrades to the iOS 8 operating system result in you not getting the space that you paid for, and that the company has misled customers about it:

In the legal complaint filed in California, Miami residents Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara accuse Apple of “storage capacity misrepresentations and omissions” relating to Apple’s 8 GB and 16GB iPhones, iPads and iPods. Orshan has two iPhone 5 and two iPads while Endara had purchased an iPhone 6.

They contend the upgrades to the operating system end up taking up as much as 23 percent of the storage space on their devices.

Now I had to admit that I had my challenges upgrading to iOS 8 because I have a 16GB iPhone 5s and I now have less than 1.5 GB of space free. Prior to that, I had over 2GB of space free. But as far as I am concerned, the lack of space is because I was too cheap to buy a 32GB iPhone 5s and not becasue Apple is trying to screw me on storage. Having said that, Apple perhaps could have slimmed down the OS a bit, or include the option of having an SD card in their iDevices to avoid this problem like most other smartphone vendors. After all, SD cards are cheap and you get a lot of storage for your money. By not doing so, it gives the impression that Apple who gives away OS upgrades for iOS and OS X makes its money off selling hardware and will force its users to upgrade any way they can. Perhaps that is more fact than impression? I don’t know.  But perhaps this lawsuit will shed some light on that, if it gets that far.

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Cops Can Search Your Phone Without A Warrant: Supreme Court Of Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags , on December 11, 2014 by itnerd

If you get arrested in Canada and you have a cell phone or smart phone, the Supreme Court Of Canada says that the cops can search your phone without a warrant as long as the search relates to what you’re being arrested for. Here’s some more details from the CBC:

The Supreme Court of Canada says law enforcement officials can go through the cellphone of someone under arrest as long as the search relates directly to the arrest and police keep detailed notes.

The Supreme Court of Canada split 4-3, with the minority arguing cellphones and personal computers are “an intensely personal and uniquely pervasive sphere” that needs clear protection.

The majority also found that passwords protecting phones don’t carry much weight in assessing that person’s expectation of privacy.

“An individual’s decision not to password protect his or her cellphone does not indicate any sort of abandonment of the significant privacy interests one generally will have in the contents of the phone,” Justice Thomas Cromwell wrote.

I can see two reactions to this:

  • There will be those who say “I have nothing to hide so this is a non-issue for me.”
  • There will be those who say “cops shouldn’t have access to my phone without a warrant.” Then they’re going to figure out ways to encrypt their phone to make it difficult for cops to search them or set up their phone to erase after “x” number of failed attempts to enter the passcode.

Honestly, I am not sure which side of the fence that I am on when it comes to this. Though Glenn Greenwald’s TED Talk on why privacy matters does sort of swing me towards the latter camp. What are your thoughts on this? Please leave a comment below and share them with us.

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Microsoft Agrees To Contempt Order So It Can Appeal Case Related To Data Held Overseas

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 10, 2014 by itnerd

This was a plot twist that I did not see coming.

You might recall that Microsoft was actively fighting an order to hand over data from servers located in Ireland under the logic that you cannot serve warrants to search property in other countries. The district judge presiding over the case agreed with the government and ordered Microsoft to comply with its demands to hand over the data.

Here’s the plot twist: Microsoft cut a deal with the U.S. government in which the company would be held on contempt charges but would not be penalized for it until after the outcome of an appeal. The district judge endorsed the agreement (Warning: PDF).

I am not a lawyer, but it looks like to me that Microsoft is trying to force a clear judgment so everyone going forward knows what the rules are. It may win. It may lose. But this is a very good tactic.

More on this as it develops.

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