After Google announced Google Wallet yesterday, an NFC-based mobile payment system, PayPal sued Google and two of its executives for allegedly stealing trade secrets. The executives in question, Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, led the launch of Google Wallet, but were formerly PayPal employees — Bedier having worked there for nine years and as vice president of platform, mobile and new ventures, and Tilenius having worked at eBay, PayPal’s parent company, for eight years, then continuing to work as a consultant to the company for a little under half a year after that.

PayPal is making some serious claims in their suit, accusing Bedier of having “misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers,” accusing Tilenius of recruiting Bedier, thus breaking a contractual agreement she had with eBay, and also accusing Bedier of attempting to poach former colleagues who were still working at PayPal. If that weren’t enough, eBay claims PayPal and Google were working together for three years to develop a deal where PayPal would act as a payment option for mobile app purchases made on Android devices, and eBay claims Bedier was the senior PayPal executive in charge of the Android negotiations with Google, and that Bedier also uploaded up-to-date documents outlining PayPal’s mobile payment strategies to a non-PayPal computer days before he left PayPal to work for Google.

The debate over whether The Huffington Post, newly enriched following its merger with AOL, should pay its unpaid bloggers has launched an armada of blog posts and a fleet of media roundtables, but today, the stakes will be upped. A group of bloggers has announced that it will file a class-action lawsuit against The Huffington Post, AOL, and Arianna Huffington, who personally pocketed at least $20 million from the $315 million merger.

The lead plaintiff in the suit is a man named Jonathan Tasini, who began blogging for The Huffington Post in December of 2005 and ceased blogging in February of this year, a few days after the merger was announced.

More details TK, but we can only assume that at stake here will be whether The Huffington Post or AOL violated any labor laws in their use of unpaid labor or misled the bloggers as to what they were ultimately entitled to.

Update: The complaint has been filed, and Tasini & co. are asking for a whopping $105 million.

TheHuffingtonPost.com’s continued assertion that it, alone, should be enriched by the valuable content provided by Plaintiff and the Classes has the broad detrimental effect of setting an artificially low price for the valuable digital content created by Plaintiff and the Classes, depressing the market for such content and, over the long term, having a serious depressing effect on the value of intellectual content being created by Plaintiff and the Classes and on the ability of Plaintiff and the Classes to support themselves as creators of high quality, engaging, digital content.

(via Mixed Media)

An Italian court has sided with a case brought against Google that the search engine’s autocomplete text contained libelous information, and was subject to censor.

The case was brought by an unnamed Italian man who found that when typing his name into Google’s search bar, it brought up words such as “fraud” and “con man.” Google had attempted to fight the case by claiming that it was simply hosting the data, a role which is protected by the E-Commerce Directive. But Carlo Piana, the lawyer for the unnamed claimant, held that Google’s autocomplete text was created by Google, and the search giant was therefore liable.

On his blog, Piana emphasized the limited scope of the case.

All I have to say is that it is by no means an endorsement to censorship, as notice to the sued company was given well in advance, the alligations of the complainant were fully discussed with them before even considering to go to court, and the requests was and is only for a very exceptional set of string (two). All cases are different, therefore there is no assurance that similar cases would see the same outcome.

Piana goes on to note that Google already censors some search results, citing in particular Google’s practice of removing search listings that could lead to copyrighted material.

Google has said that they are reviewing their options, and an appeal is no doubt forthcoming. Though censorship of the Internet is always a distasteful thing, this case seems to have not brought an enraging, overly broad interpretation. Instead, it has established some kind of precedent that could give users greater control of their own information. But it is worth asking how much control users deserve. This case aside, people could benefit greatly from seeing “con man” pop up in a search about a nefarious fraud.

(Carlo Piana via ZDNET)

Federal Magistrate Joseph Sperohas allowed Sony to demand information related to the internet activities of George Hotz, the hacker that published tools allowing users to jailbreak their PlayStation 3 consoles. Sony’s suit against Hotz is based around the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which prohibits sharing information to disable copy-protection systems. Their argument hinges mostly on how the jailbreak gave PS3 users allows the use of pirated games, though it can also be used to simply gain full control over the console.

In a somewhat shifty move, the subpeona’s also request information about people who visited Hotz’s site and downloaded the jailbreaking program. Apparently this is to determine the distribution Hotz’s program has received. It’s also being used to determine where the trial will be held. From Wired:

[...] a jurisdictional argument over whether Sony must sue Hotz in his home state of New Jersey rather than in San Francisco, which Sony would prefer. Sony said the server logs would demonstrate that many of those who downloaded Hotz’s hack reside in Northern California — thus making San Francisco a proper venue for the case.

Sony has also requested visitor and download information from Hotz’s webhsot Bluehost, from Google about visitor’s to Hotz’s blog, and also to from YouTube about viewers of the jailbreaking videos. His twitter account is also a target of the investigation. It’s difficult to ignore the ominous overtones of requesting such information, which will likely make those that have downloaded Hotz’s tools squirm a bit. As of now, there is no direct indication that Sony will use the information for anything other than the Hotz case.

Until the hearing begins next month, the ball is more or less in the court of the companies receiving subpoenas and web-privacy advocates. In some cases, companies have fought against such requests — such as Twitter’s resistance to reveal information about an Icelandic member of parliament associated with Wikileaks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already complained about the subpoenas, which appears to have been largely ignored by the courts.

There is certainly a fight of some kind brewing here, likely on web-privacy grounds. For the moment, however, it seems that proponents of open electronics and privacy advocates have lost this round.

(via Wired)

Did you know that Zynga, makers of Farmville, sued Disney Entertainment more than a year ago? You see, Disney had just acquired one of Zynga’s competitors Playdom. Playdom, according to Zynga, had been poaching ex-Zynga employees and had even gotten a hold of Zynga’s “playbook,” a guide to the company’s – ahem – “secret sauce.”

We often wonder, incredulously, when the internet will reach a limit on talking about superhero porn parody movies. Not that we think the production of such things should stop or that they’re not worth reporting on, we simply went through a period where we felt awash in a vast and unruly sea of Batman XXX: A Porn Parody information.

When does the idea of superhero porn parodies reach a point where we feel the need to report on them? What other facet of our news mandate does it have to intersect with for us to want to tell you about it?

File sharing and copyright issues, as it turns out.

After banning 5,000 players for using hacks, mods, and other tricks that are against the StarCraft II terms of use, Blizzard is now suing three of the people who created and distributed those hacks, mods, and tricks in the first place.

The game maker filed suit last week in a Los Angelos court against three programmers going by the handles Permaphrost, Cranix (both Canadians), and Linuxawesome (from Peru). Their suit alleges that:

Just days after the release of Starcraft II, Defendants already had developed, marketed, and distributed to the public a variety of hacks and cheats designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the Starcraft II online game experience. In fact, on the very day that Starcraft II was released, representatives of the hacks Web site advised members of the public that “our staff is already planning new releases for this game.”

Someone has filed a quite crazy preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order against Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Jerry Reinsdorf, Mark Cuban, and Jerry Buss. A key excerpt:

“Mark Cuban stole my credit cards and tried to buy the Texas Rangers with my money. Mark Cuban assaulted me serving ice cream at Dairy Queen. Nolan Ryan threw 100 mph fastballs at my head and he and Robin Ventura beat me up at the Church of Jesus Christ.”

>>>Check it out at SportsGrid.

Back in October, Blizzard Entertainment filed a lawsuit against Alyson Reeves and her company Scapegaming, for violating the end user license agreement of World of Warcraft by setting up a private server for her own profit. On Thursday, the California Central District Court ruled in favor of the game maker and ordered Scapegaming to pay back “$3,053,339 of inappropriate profits, $63,600 of attorney’s fees, and $85,478,600 of statutory damages.”

What, you ask, is a private server, how do you make a profit off of it, and why is it against the EULA? Allow me to explain.

Some people just can’t follow directions. Others, like Los Angeles native Lauren Rosenberg, follow directions a little too well. On January 19 she needed directions for her walk in Park City, Utah. She used her Blackberry to search Google Maps for the directions. These directions happened to contain a half-mile stint down “Deer Valley Drive,” also known as “Utah State Route 224.”

Being a highway, Deer Valley Drive has no sidewalks or pedestrian paths to speak of. Instead of seeking an alternate route, Rosenberg walked down the middle of the highway and was unsurprisingly struck by a vehicle. She is now suing Google for $100,000 in medical expenses along with punitive damages. She is also, more sensibly, suing the man who ran into her, Patrick Harwood of Park City, Utah. The pedestrian may always have the right of way, but here I almost feel bad for the driver.