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New Media News Every Morning

Google Books under attack from Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, indies

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Oh dear. It seems as if everyone, from the big boys to the independent publisher, is against Google when it comes to the Google Books project.

google-books-rhino

New bedfellows Microsoft and Yahoo, along with book-turned-Aladdin’s-cave seller Amazon, are set to join the Internet Archive and library associations to oppose Google’s plan to put millions of books online and make them freely searchable.

A serious problem is that Google is effectively saying to authors and publishers “you’ve automatically opted in unless you explicitly opt out”. [Read more…]

Originally posted on August 21, 2009 @ 5:48 am

Tagged.com may be sued over alleged social network spam

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tagged-logoOne of the world’s largest social networks, Tagged.com, has been accused of spamming by using the email address books of its members without permission to send misleading marketing messages.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo believes that Tagged.com had taken “the address books and identities of millions of people” who had thus been “forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts.”

Tagged’s CEO Greg Tseng responded by saying that the social network only uses the same practises employed by many other services: that of making it very clear that members can automatically invite friends via email but that it’s completely opt-in. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 13, 2009 @ 6:50 am

Court Bans Sales of Motorola Android Products in Germany

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Motorola has suffered a setback in Europe. A ruling promulgated by a Mannheim Court has resulted in Motorola’s Android-based devices getting banned for sale in Germany. More specifically, any Motorola device that uses FAT technology for its internal storage are going to be pulled from stores and other sales avenues in Germany. The ruling’s effect is immediate.

The court ruling was basically in favor of Microsoft’s suit. The software giant has a patent for the FAT or File Allocation Table, a technology that allows people to more readily find and label media files when using a storage system that runs FAT. With this ruling, Motorola may be forced to just implement a different file system, but in the meantime, expect the company to file an appeal with the court. [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 30, 2012 @ 8:23 pm

Google To Pay Fine in France For Google Maps

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I remember a time when offering something for free would elicit gratitude and calls for the person to run for president. Google was probably thinking the same thing when it decided to offer a number of its services for free. But that’s not what the Company got for offering their highly useful Google Maps for free.

For the “crime” offering Google Maps to the public free of charge, Google is being asked to pay a fine. [Read more…]

Originally posted on February 6, 2012 @ 7:05 pm

Lawsuit Filed For RIM’s Use of BBM Brand

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The amount of lawsuits that we’ve been reporting here at 901AM is getting to be quite a lot. But then lawsuits are very interesting news to say the least. We’ve reported significantly about the constant exchange of lawsuits between Samsung and Apple. So any new lawsuits are kind of a breath of fresh air.

For example, Research in Motion is also embroiled in some legal kinks. A company, BBM Canada, has filed a lawsuit against RIM claiming the mobile phone manufacturer and service provider is infringing on the trademark of BBM Canada by using “BBM”, which stands for Blackberry Messenger, which is RIM’s very popular mobile messenger service that is used by Blackberry phone users all over the world. [Read more…]

Originally posted on December 26, 2011 @ 1:23 pm