An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has sued one of its former engineers in Texas federal court, accusing him of stealing trade secrets related to its chip designs and sharing them publicly on the internet. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday (PDF), said that Harshit Roy "touted his dominion" over the secrets in social media posts, tagging competitors and making threatening statements to the company including "I need to take unethical means to get what I am entitled to" and "remember that empires fall and so will you." Google hired Roy in 2020 to develop computer chips used in Google Pixel devices like smartphones. Google said in the lawsuit that Roy resigned in February and moved from Bangalore, India to the United States in August to attend a doctorate program at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the complaint, Roy began posting confidential Google information to his X account later that month along with "subversive text" directed at the company, such as "don't expect me to adhere to any confidentiality agreement." The posts included photographs of internal Google documents with specifications for Pixel processing chips. The lawsuit said that Roy ignored Google's takedown requests and has posted additional trade secrets to X and LinkedIn since October. Google alleged that Roy tagged competitors Apple and Qualcomm in some of the posts, "presumably to maximize the potential harm of his disclosure." Google's complaint also said that several news outlets have published stories with confidential details about Google's devices based on the information that Roy leaked. Google asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and court orders blocking Roy from using or sharing its secrets.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Lawyers for The New York Times and Daily News, which are suing OpenAI for allegedly scraping their works to train its AI models without permission, say OpenAI engineers accidentally deleted data potentially relevant to the case. Earlier this fall, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so that counsel for The Times and Daily News could perform searches for their copyrighted content in its AI training sets. In a letter, attorneys for the publishers say that they and experts they hired have spent over 150 hours since November 1 searching OpenAI's training data. But on November 14, OpenAI engineers erased all the publishers' search data stored on one of the virtual machines, according to the aforementioned letter, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York late Wednesday. OpenAI tried to recover the data -- and was mostly successful. However, because the folder structure and file names were "irretrievably" lost, the recovered data "cannot be used to determine where the news plaintiffs' copied articles were used to build [OpenAI's] models," per the letter. "News plaintiffs have been forced to recreate their work from scratch using significant person-hours and computer processing time," counsel for The Times and Daily News wrote.

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One of India's largest news agencies, Asian News International, has sued OpenAI in a case that could set a precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted news content in the world's most populous nation. From a report: Asian News International filed a 287-page lawsuit in the Delhi High Court on Monday, alleging the AI company illegally used its content to train its AI models and generated false information attributed to the news agency. The case marks the first time an Indian media organization has taken legal action against OpenAI over copyright claims.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers -- including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider. "iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit," Which noted. The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. "Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023," it wrote, saying it's seeking damages for all affected Apple customers -- and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of 70 pounds (around $90), depending on how long they've been paying Apple for iCloud services. "Anyone who has 'obtained' iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015," will be included in the claim. U.K.-based consumers will have to opt-out if they do not want to be included. "Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action," adds TechCrunch.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.K. consumer rights group 'Which?' is filing a legal claim against Apple under competition law on behalf of some 40 million users of iCloud, its cloud storage service. The collective proceeding lawsuit, which is seeking 3 billion pounds in compensation damages (around $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), alleges that Apple has broken competition rules by giving its own cloud storage service preferential treatment and effectively locking people into paying for iCloud at "rip-off" prices. "iOS has a monopoly and is in control of Apple's operating systems and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what has happened," Which wrote in a press release announcing filing the claim with the U.K.'s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The lawsuit accuses Apple of encouraging users of its devices to sign up to iCloud for photo storage and other data storage needs, while simultaneously making it difficult for consumers to use alternative storage providers -- including by not allowing them to store or back-up all of their phone's data with a third-party provider. "iOS users then have to pay for the service once photos, notes, messages and other data go over the free 5GB limit," Which noted. The suit also accuses Apple of overcharging U.K. consumers for iCloud subscriptions owing to the lack of competition. "Apple raised the price of iCloud for UK consumers by between 20% and 29% across its storage tiers in 2023," it wrote, saying it's seeking damages for all affected Apple customers -- and estimating that individual consumers could be owed an average of 70 pounds (around $90), depending on how long they've been paying Apple for iCloud services. "Anyone who has 'obtained' iCloud services, including non-paying users, over the nine-year timeframe since the Consumer Rights Act came into force on October 1st, 2015," will be included in the claim. U.K.-based consumers will have to opt-out if they do not want to be included. "Consumers who live outside the U.K. and believe they are eligible to be included must actively opt-in to join the action," adds TechCrunch.

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The FTX estate has filed a lawsuit against Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to recover $1.76 billion, alleging a "fraudulent" 2021 share deal that involved funding from FTX's insolvent Alameda Research. The suit also accuses Zhao of misleading social media posts that allegedly spurred customer withdrawals and contributed to FTX's collapse. CNBC reports: In a Sunday filing with a Delaware court, FTX cites a 2021 transaction in which Binance, Zhao and others exited their investment in FTX, selling a 20% stake in the platform and a 18.4% stake in its U.S.-based entity West Realm Shires back to the company. The FTX estate alleges that the share repurchase was funded by FTX's Alameda Research division through a combination of the company's and Binance's exchange tokens, as well as Binance's dollar-pegged stablecoin. "Alameda was insolvent at the time of the share repurchase and could not afford to fund the transaction," the suit claims, labeling the deal agreed with FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried -- who's now serving a 25-year sentence over fraud linked to the downfall of his exchange -- a "constructive fraudulent transfer." Binance denies the allegations, saying in an emailed statement, "The claims are meritless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves."

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IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF). This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge. It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.

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A former teacher has filed a federal lawsuit against PowerSchool, alleging the education technology giant illegally sells student data to third parties without proper consent. Emily Cherkin, lead plaintiff in the class action suit filed in San Francisco, claims PowerSchool has amassed 345 terabytes of data from 440 school districts, including sensitive information about students' health, behavior, and academic records. The company provides software services to more than 60 million students across 90 of the largest U.S. school districts. The lawsuit alleges PowerSchool sells anonymized student data to over 100 partners, including educational consultants and government agencies, while marketing its analytics for workforce and policy planning. The company's Naviance college-planning software alone tracks 6 million high school students. PowerSchool has denied the allegations.

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The clash between law's need for finality and science's evolving nature is creating serious justice problems, an opinion piece on Scientific American argued on Monday. Two recent cases highlight this: Robert Roberson faces execution based on now-discredited shaken baby syndrome science, while the Menendez brothers' life sentences are being questioned due to improved understanding of childhood trauma's effects on violence. Scientific understanding in criminal justice has repeatedly proven wrong. Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 based on invalidated arson science. The FBI found errors in 90% of their reviewed hair analysis cases. Courts still accept bite mark evidence despite experts failing to distinguish human from animal bites. The legal system fails in two critical ways, the story argues: Judges don't properly screen out bad science despite their "gatekeeper" role established in Daubert v. Merrell Dow, and courts resist reopening cases when scientific understanding changes. While some states like Texas and California have laws allowing appeals based on updated science, implementation remains weak. Roberson has spent 20 years on death row and the Menendez brothers 28 years in prison while courts drag their feet on reviewing their cases with current scientific knowledge. The piece argues that constitutional due process requires allowing convicts to challenge their cases when the science underlying their convictions proves faulty. The system can reform by enforcing stricter scientific evidence standards and creating clear paths to challenge convictions based on outdated science.

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A Russian court has fined Google an astronomical sum of around $20 decillion for YouTube's blocking of Russian media channels tied to sanctioned entities. The amount compounds weekly as Google continues to disregard the ruling. The Register reports: To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google might be one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, but even if Sundar Pichai rummages around the back of the sofa he won't be able to raise the funds to pay the penalty. The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media. "Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS. The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called "a case in which there are many, many zeros."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Delta Air Lines on Friday sued cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in a Georgia state court after a global outage in July caused mass flight cancellations, disrupted travel plans of 1.3 million customers and cost the carrier more than $500 million. Delta's lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court called the faulty software update from CrowdStrike "catastrophic" and said the firm "forced untested and faulty updates to its customers, causing more than 8.5 million Microsoft Windows-based computers around the world to crash." [...] Delta, which has purchased CrowdStrike products since 2022, said the outage forced it to cancel 7,000 flights, impacting 1.3 million passengers over five days. "If CrowdStrike had tested the faulty update on even one computer before deployment, the computer would have crashed," Delta's lawsuit says. "Because the faulty update could not be removed remotely, CrowdStrike crippled Delta's business and created immense delays for Delta customers." Delta said that as part of its IT-planning and infrastructure, it has invested billions of dollars "in licensing and building some of the best technology solutions in the airline industry."

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The EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of Intel, dismissing the European Commission's appeal and ending a nearly two-decade-long case over allegations that Intel's rebates to computer makers were anticompetitive. Reuters reports: The European Commission had fined Intel for giving rebates to computer makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo for buying most of their chips from Intel, which regulators said was an attempt to block Advanced Micro Devices. Regulators generally oppose rebates offered by dominant companies because they fear they may be anticompetitive, while companies say enforcers must prove discounts have anticompetitive effects before companies are sanctioned. EU regulators had initially fined Intel 1.06 billion euros ($1.14 billion) but a lower tribunal scrapped that. Intel's case was boosted earlier this year when an adviser to the court said regulators had not properly performed an economic analysis.

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A judge has allowed Saudi dissident Yahya Assiri to sue the kingdom for allegedly targeting his devices with Pegasus spyware and other Israeli-made surveillance tools. Reuters reports: Yahya Assiri, a founder of the opposition National Assembly Party (NAAS) who lives in exile in Britain, alleges his electronic devices were targeted with surveillance software between 2018 and 2020. He is suing Saudi Arabia at London's High Court, saying the country used Pegasus - made by Israeli company NSO Group and sold only to nation states - and other spyware made by lesser-known Israeli firm QuaDream because of his work with dissidents. Earlier this month, Roger Eastman, a judge in the High Court, gave Assiri permission to serve his lawsuit on the Saudi government, a step that required the court to find Assiri has an arguable case. The decision announced on Monday to allow the case to be served on Saudi Arabia in Riyadh was made on Oct. 11. Assiri said in a statement: "I am fully aware that the authorities will want to target me. However, it is outrageous for them also to target individuals such as the victims of rights abuses and their families in Saudi Arabia simply because these people have been in contact with me."

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News Corp's Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have sued Perplexity, a startup that calls itself an "AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity," alleging copyright infringement. From a report: "Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company that claims to provide its users accurate and up-to-date news and information in a platform that, in Perplexity's own words, allows users to 'Skip the Links' to original publishers' websites," the companies said in the federal lawsuit, filed Monday. "Perplexity attempts to accomplish this by engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers' copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders. This suit is brought by news publishers who seek redress for Perplexity's brazen scheme to compete for readers while simultaneously freeriding on the valuable content the publishers produce."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Korean game publisher Nexon is using the U.S. legal system to address online copyright infringement. The company obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to hand over the personal details of suspected pirates. While Discord has shared information in the past, it doesn't plan to cooperate any longer, refusing to play the role of 'anti-piracy police'. [...] The messaging platform wrote that it is prepared to file a motion to quash the subpoena, if needed. It further urged Nexon to withdraw their demands, and cease sending any similar 'defective' subpoenas going forward. To support its stance, Discord made a list of twenty-two general objections and reservations. Among other things, the company wants to protect user privacy and their first amendment right to anonymous speech. "Discord objects to the Requests as infringing its users' decisions to remain anonymous, an aspect of their freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Requests improperly seek to unmask anonymous speakers and consequently compel disclosure of material protected by the First Amendment," it reads. This strongly-worded letter didn't have the desired result, however. Instead of backing off, Nexon doubled down, filing a motion to compel (PDF) at a Texas federal court late last week. The game company refutes Discord's objections and asks the court to enter an order requiring Discord to produce the requested user data. Nexon says that it needs this information to protect its copyrights. "Discord's failure to cooperate discovery has impeded Nexon's ability to discover relevant, non-privileged information that will support its potential claims against the users who have provided access to the infringing material," Nexon writes. While the court has yet to rule on the matter, Discord is expected to file a formal motion to quash the subpoena in response, as indicated in its earlier communications.

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In a new 32-page filing (PDF), the Department of Justice indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy for its search and advertising monopoly. The remedies necessary to "prevent and restrain monopoly maintenance could include contract requirements and prohibitions; non-discrimination product requirements; data and interoperability requirements; and structural requirements," the department said in the filing. CNBC reports: The DOJ also said it was "considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features -- including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence -- over rivals or new entrants." Additionally, the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and "other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products." That would include Google's search position agreements with Apple's iPhone and Samsung devices -- deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a "choice screen," which could allow users to pick from other search engines. Such remedies would end "Google's control of distribution today" and ensure "Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's case accusing Amazon of stifling competition in online retail will move forward, though some of the states that sued alongside the agency had their claims dismissed, court documents showed. U.S. District Judge John Chun in Seattle unsealed his ruling from Sept. 30, which dismissed some of the claims brought by attorneys general in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oklahoma. Last year, the FTC alleged Amazon.com, which has 1 billion items in its online superstore, was using an algorithm that pushed up prices U.S. households paid by more than $1 billion. Amazon has said in court papers it stopped using the program in 2019. The FTC has accused the online retailer of using anti-competitive tactics to maintain dominance among online superstores and marketplaces. Amazon asked Chun to dismiss the case in December, saying the FTC had raised no evidence of harm to consumers. The judge said in his ruling that he cannot consider Amazon's claims that its actions benefited competition at this early stage in the case.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A federal judge blocked one of California's new AI laws on Wednesday, less than two weeks after it was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Shortly after signing AB 2839, Newsom suggested it could be used to force Elon Musk to take down an AI deepfake of Vice President Kamala Harris he had reposted (sparking a petty online battle between the two). However, a California judge just ruled the state can't force people to take down election deepfakes -- not yet, at least. AB 2839 targets the distributors of AI deepfakes on social media, specifically if their post resembles a political candidate and the poster knows it's a fake that may confuse voters. The law is unique because it does not go after the platforms on which AI deepfakes appear, but rather those who spread them. AB 2839 empowers California judges to order the posters of AI deepfakes to take them down or potentially face monetary penalties. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the original poster of that AI deepfake -- an X user named Christopher Kohls -- filed a lawsuit to block California's new law as unconstitutional just a day after it was signed. Kohls' lawyer wrote in a complaint that the deepfake of Kamala Harris is satire that should be protected by the First Amendment. On Wednesday, United States district judge John Mendez sided with Kohls. Mendez ordered a preliminary injunction to temporarily block California's attorney general from enforcing the new law against Kohls or anyone else, with the exception of audio messages that fall under AB 2839. [...] In essence, he ruled the law is simply too broad as written and could result in serious overstepping by state authorities into what speech is permitted or not.

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WhatsApp and its parent Meta asked a judge to award them a total win against spyware maker NSO Group as punishment for discovery violations in a years-long case accusing the Israeli company of violating anti-hacking laws. From a report: NSO Group violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, repeatedly ignoring the court's orders and its discovery obligations, according to a motion for sanctions filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. "NSO's discovery violations were willful, and unfairly skew the record on virtually every key issue in the case, from the merits, to jurisdiction, to damages, making a full and fair trial on the facts impossible," they said. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton should award the companies judgment as a matter of law or, "if the court finds that the limited discovery produced in this case does not suffice," enter default judgment against NSO, WhatsApp and Meta wrote. The social media platforms first filed their complaint in October 2019, accusing NSO of using WhatsApp to install NSO spyware on the phones of about 1,400 WhatsApp users. The move follows Apple asking a court last month to dismiss its three-year-old hacking lawsuit against spyware pioneer NSO Group, arguing that it might never be able to get the most critical files about NSO's Pegasus surveillance tool and that its own disclosures could aid NSO and its increasing number of rivals.

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WP Engine, a major web hosting provider, has filed a federal lawsuit against WordPress [PDF] co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Automattic, alleging libel and attempted extortion. The suit stems from a public dispute over WordPress trademark usage and open-source licensing. WP Engine, which hosts over 200,000 websites, accuses Mullenweg and Automattic of "abuse of power, extortion, and greed." The conflict escalated after Mullenweg called WP Engine a "cancer to WordPress" on his blog, prompting a cease-and-desist letter. Automattic subsequently demanded 8% of WP Engine's monthly revenue as royalties for alleged trademark infringement. The lawsuit includes 11 complaints, ranging from slander to violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

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