The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has held that a company’s alleged use of an employee’s Facebook and Twitter pages without her permission to post marketing messages that looked like they were written by the employee may be liable under the Illinois Right to Publicity Act…
American Express today unveiled Serve, a digital payment and commerce platform that gives consumers a new way to spend, send and receive money with services that go beyond the existing global payment networks. Some interesting points from the press release issued today include the following: With Serve, consumers can make…
In the fast and furious world of app development, time is of the essence. So claims the Plaintiff YoHolla in a lawsuit against an app developer Pinwheel Designs Corp. and its subcontractor Burton Design Group (BDG). Allegedly the defendants’ inability to produce a bug-free app in a timely manner delayed…
On March 15, hours after its asserted patent was issued (U.S. Patent No. 7,908,342), Wireless Ink Corp. filed a complaint for patent infringement against Facebook, Google, YouTube, and MySpace in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Case No. 1:11-cv-01751-PKC. Wireless Ink is a mobile content…
Microsoft Corp. has recently won a bid to force Datel Holdings Ltd. to produce documents and sample products in an action involving Datel’s Xbox 360 accessories. The Judge has ruled in favor of Microsoft and ordered that certain documents must be produced on behalf of Datel relating to allegations that it hacked the Xbox security system in…
Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member and former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, sent a letter dated February 8, 2011 to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting more information about possible consumer protection issues related to “in-app” purchases, particularly relating to kids. The…
Originally posted on the Gamification Blog. Many people are aware that in 2009, the FTC implemented guidelines that addressed the use of endorsements and testimonials by bloggers. The main stream press highlighted just the part of these guidelines that require disclosure by bloggers of compensation received for recommending a product…
A UK court entered a guilty plea against Ashley Mitchell, an IT guy who hacked into Zynga’s servers last year and stole 400 billion virtual poker chips. His efforts to resell them, which is against Zynga’s terms of service, netted him $86,000 and a yet to be determined jail sentence.…
According to a recent study by OpenDNS, Facebook is both the most widely blocked site in enterprises today and the second most widely allowed site in enterprises today. The study goes on to report that more than 14 percent of all enterprises that block websites on their networks choose to…
Gibson Guitar Corp. recently filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee alleging that Seven45 Studios’ video game “Power Gig: Rise of the SixString,” infringes Gibson’s concert simulation patent. Gibson filed its complaint against 745 LLC (d/b/a Seven45 Studios) asserting “Power Gig” violates its U.S. Patent Number 5,990,405,…