Google to pay record-setting $22.5 million fine over privacy practices
Google will pay a historic fine to settle U.S. government charges that it violated privacy laws when it tracked users of Apple's Safari browser via cookies.
The $22.5 million civil penalty is the largest ever secured by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for a violation of one of its orders.
In its complaint, which it referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, the FTC said that Google falsely told Safari users that it wouldn't place tracking cookies on their devices or serve them targeted ads.
The FTC said that with this misrepresentation, Google violated an existing privacy settlement it had reached with the agency.
The settlement also requires that Google disable all tracking cookies it placed on affected users' computers. Read more...
Defiant LightSquared says FCC action would violate its rights
The FCC's proposal to kill LightSquared's planned LTE network would violate the fledgling carrier's property rights by taking away its spectrum and destroying its multibillion-dollar investment in mobile broadband, LightSquared will argue on Friday in a formal comment to the agency.
Shutting down its project would also violate the public interest by eliminating a potential mobile competitor that would sell network capacity to any carrier, LightSquared said. But the prospects of LightSquared ever launching its network look dim after the FCC's action and the loss of its main partner, Sprint Nextel, which terminated a 15-year network-sharing deal with LightSquared on Friday. Read more...
Samsung scores victory against Apple in Germany
The changes Samsung Electronics has made to its Galaxy Tab 10.1 are enough so that it is no longer a copy of Apple's iPad, a judge at the district court in Dsseldorf, Germany, said on Thursday.
The court blocked German sales of the original version of Samsung's 10-inch tablet in September, after Apple argued that Samsung's product looked too much like the iPad. To circumvent that ruling, Samsung modified the appearance of the tablet to create the Galaxy Tab 10.1N.
However, Apple still felt Samsung was copying its hit tablet, and last month filed a motion to block the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, as well. Read more...
Apple sued over Mac OS X ‘quick boot’
A lawsuit has accused Apple of violating a patent describing a means of "quickly booting a computer system".
Late last week, an outfit calling itself Operating Systems Solutions filed suit in the Middle District of Florida, claiming that Apple infringes its patent with Mac OS X. As pointed out by Patently Apple, the patent in question – RE840,092 – was originally granted to LG Electronics.
The patent describes a method for quickly booting a personal computer system using information that was previously saved to hard disk. This information includes data from memory and the status of devices attached to the system, and it hinges on a POST routine. Read more...