 | A request that this article title be changed to Yahoo litigation is under discussion . Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed. |
Yahoo! has been a party to several instances of litigation.
| A request that this article title be changed to Yahoo litigation is under discussion . Please do not move this article until the discussion is closed. |
Yahoo! has been a party to several instances of litigation.
In May 1999, GoTo.com filed a patent application titled "System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine". The patent was granted as US 6269361 in July 2001. A related patent has also been granted in Australia and other patent applications remain pending.
Prior to its acquisition by Yahoo!, Overture initiated infringement proceedings under this patent against FindWhat.com in January 2002 and Google in April 2002. [1]
The lawsuit against Google related to its AdWords service. In February 2002, Google introduced a service called AdWords Select that allowed marketers to bid for higher placement in marked sections - a tactic that had some similarities to Overture's search-listing auctions.
Following Yahoo!'s acquisition of Overture, the lawsuit was settled with Google agreeing to issue 2.7 million shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. [2]
Yahoo filed a suit against Facebook on March 12, 2012, claiming Facebook had infringed on ten of Yahoo's patents . [3]
In 1999, a complaint was instituted against GeoCities stating that the corporation violated the provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act under 14 USC §45, which states in relevant part, "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." The FTC found that GeoCities was engaged in deceptive acts and practices in contravention to their stated privacy act. Subsequently, a consent order was entered into which prohibits GeoCities from misrepresenting the purpose for which it collects and/or uses personal identifying information from consumers. A copy of the complaint and order can be found at 127 F.T.C. 94 Archived 2009-05-11 at the Wayback Machine (page 94). [4]
The litigation came about in this way: GeoCities provided free home pages and e-mail address to children and adults who provided personally identifying and demographic information when they registered for the website. At the time of the complaint, GeoCities had more than 1.8 million members who were "homesteaders." GeoCities illegally permitted third-party advertisers to promote products targeted to GeoCities' 1.8 million users, by using personally identifiable information obtained in the registration process. These acts and practices affected "commerce" as defined in Section 4 of the Federal Trade Commission. [4]
The problem GeoCities faced was that it placed a privacy statement on its New Member Application Form and on its website promising that it would never give personally identifying information to anyone without the user's permission. GeoCities sold personal information to third parties who used the information for purposes other than those for which members gave permission. [4]
It was ordered that GeoCities would not make any misrepresentation, in any manner about its collection or use of personal identifying information, including what information will be disclosed to third parties. GeoCities was not allowed to collect personal identifying information from any child if GeoCities had actual knowledge that the child did not have his parents' permission to provide the information. [4]
On April 18, 2007, Wang Xiaoning's wife Yu Ling sued Yahoo! under human rights laws, specifically the Alien Torts Statute (28 U.S.C. § 1350) and Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106 Stat. 73 (1992) in federal court in San Francisco, California, United States. [5] Wang was named as a plaintiff in the Yahoo suit, as was Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist detained and convicted for emailing a description of Chinese’s government’s instructions to journalists for the upcoming anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Both men were punished for exercising their freedom of speech because Yahoo!’s Chinese subsidiary provided their identifying information to the Chinese government. [6]
The lawsuit was filed by the World Organization for Human Rights USA. [7] "Yahoo is guilty of 'an act of corporate irresponsibility,' said Morton Sklar, then the Executive Director of the group. 'Yahoo had reason to know that if they provided China with identification information that those individuals would be arrested." [8]
In 2006, Yahoo! executives had testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the company was unaware of the nature of the charges against Shi Tao when it gave his personal information to the Chinese government. However, in the course of the litigation, new evidence came to light that Yahoo! knew what the charges against Shi Tao were and disclosed his identity anyway. [6]
In November 2007, Yahoo! was called back to Congress to testify about its actions in China before the bi-partisan House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The plaintiffs’ families traveled from China to bear witness as the Committee questioned Yahoo!’s executives. Referencing the discrepancy between Yahoo!’s leaders’ testimony in 2006 and the new evidence, the Committee Chair, Representative Tom Lantos, said Yahoo!’s failure to correct the record was inexcusably negligent behavior at best and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst.
Rep. Lantos then told CEO Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan to beg forgiveness from the families of the detainees. Both men turned and bowed to the women, and publicly apologized. One week later, Yahoo! and the family settled the lawsuit. [6]
Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning remain in prison.
Pincus v. Yahoo! Inc., 13-cv-05326, was a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, California. Brian Pincus was seeking a class-action suit to represent non-Yahoo customers whose email address was intercepted by Yahoo! who allegedly targets ads to increase its revenue. [9] [10] [11]
A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties against one or more parties in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used with respect to a civil action brought by a plaintiff who requests a legal remedy or equitable remedy from a court. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint or else risk default judgment. If the plaintiff is successful, judgment is entered in favor of the plaintiff, and the Court may impose the legal and/or equitable remedies available against the defendant (respondent). A variety of court orders may be issued in connection with or as part of the judgment to enforce a right, award damages or restitution, or impose a temporary or permanent injunction to prevent an act or compel an act. A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction over federal civil antitrust law enforcement with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. The agency is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, DC.
In international law and business, patent trolling or patent hoarding is a categorical or pejorative term applied to a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against accused infringers far beyond the patent's actual value or contribution to the prior art, often through hardball legal tactics Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question. However, some entities, which do not practice their asserted patent, may not be considered "patent trolls", when they license their patented technologies on reasonable terms in advance.
Shi Tao is a Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to 10 years in prison for releasing a document of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to an overseas Chinese democracy site. Yahoo! China was later discovered to have facilitated his arrest by providing his personal details to the Chinese government. Yahoo! was subsequently rebuked by a panel of the U.S. Congress, settled a lawsuit by Shi's family out of court, and pledged to reform its practices.
The multinational technology corporation Apple Inc. has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation and, like its competitors and peers, engages in litigation in its normal course of business for a variety of reasons. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. From the 1980s to the present, Apple has been plaintiff or defendant in civil actions in the United States and other countries. Some of these actions have determined significant case law for the information technology industry and many have captured the attention of the public and media. Apple's litigation generally involves intellectual property disputes, but the company has also been a party in lawsuits that include antitrust claims, consumer actions, commercial unfair trade practice suits, defamation claims, and corporate espionage, among other matters.
Wang Xiaoning is a Chinese engineer and dissident from Shenyang who was arrested by authorities of the People's Republic of China for publishing pro-democracy material online using his Yahoo! account. In September 2003, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.
June Fourth Heritage & Culture Association is a United States-based non-governmental non-profit organization that conducts research and advocacy on the Culture of June Fourth Movement, Democracy, Political Freedom, and Human Rights in China.
AMD v. Intel was a private antitrust lawsuit, filed in the United States by Advanced Micro Devices ("AMD") against Intel Corporation in June 2005.
The multinational Internet corporation Yahoo! has received criticism for a variety of issues.
MyLife is an American information brokerage firm. Founded by Jeffrey Tinsley in 2002 as Reunion.com, it changed names following a 2008 merger with Wink.com. MyLife gathers personal information through public records and other sources to automatically generate a "MyLife Public Page" for each person. These pages can list a variety of personal information, including an individual's age, past and current home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, employers, education, photographs, relatives, political affiliations, a mini-biography.
Vringo was a technology company that became involved in the worldwide patent wars. The company won a 2012 intellectual property lawsuit against Google, in which a U.S. District Court ordered Google to pay 1.36 percent of U.S. AdWords sales. Analysts estimated Vringo's judgment against Google to be worth over $1 billion. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the District Court's ruling on appeal in August 2014 in a split 2-1 decision, which Intellectual Asset Magazine called "the most troubling case of 2014." Vringo appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Vringo also pursued worldwide litigation against ZTE Corporation in twelve countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, India, Spain, Netherlands, Romania, China, Malaysia, Brazil and the United States. The high profile nature of the intellectual property suits filed by the firm against large corporations known for anti-patent tendencies has led some commentators to refer to the firm as a patent vulture or patent troll.
Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging and messaging tool developed by Google. It replaced Google Wave and was integrated into their web-based email program, Gmail. Users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox.
A copyright troll is a party that enforces copyrights it owns for purposes of making money through strategic litigation, in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic, sometimes without producing or licensing the works it owns for paid distribution. Critics object to the activity because they believe it does not encourage the production of creative works, but instead makes money through the inequities and unintended consequences of high statutory damages provisions in copyright laws intended to encourage creation of such works.
Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., 676 F.3d 19, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision regarding liability for copyright infringement committed by the users of an online video hosting platform.
Doe v. 2themart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088 (2001), was a federal case decided by United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, on the issue of an individual's First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the Internet and a private party's right to disclose the identity of the anonymous Internet user by enforcing a civil subpoena. The court held that 2TheMart.com (TMRT) failed to show that the identities of these anonymous Internet users were directly and materially relevant to the core defense in the litigation, and thus the subpoena should not be issued. Therefore, Doe's motion to quash the subpoena was granted.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been involved in several lawsuits, generally regarding the content of Wikipedia. They have won some and lost others.
The smartphone wars or smartphone patents licensing and litigation refers to commercial struggles among smartphone manufacturers including Sony Mobile, Google, Apple Inc., Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, LG Electronics, ZTE and HTC, by patent litigation and other means. The conflict is part of the wider "patent wars" between technology and software corporations.
United States v. Google Inc., No. 3:12-cv-04177, is a case in which the United States District Court for the Northern District of California approved a stipulated order for a permanent injunction and a $22.5 million civil penalty judgment, the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ever won in history. The FTC and Google Inc. consented to the entry of the stipulated order to resolve the dispute which arose from Google's violation of its privacy policy. In this case, the FTC found Google liable for misrepresenting "privacy assurances to users of Apple's Safari Internet browser". It was reached after the FTC considered that through the placement of advertising tracking cookies in the Safari web browser, and while serving targeted advertisements, Google violated the 2011 FTC's administrative order issued in FTC v. Google Inc.
Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business, and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.
Xiaoning et al v. Yahoo! Inc, et al, No. C 07-2151 CW, was a civil litigation in a federal court in San Francisco, California. The plaintiffs were Chinese citizens and democratic activists in China arrested, incarcerated, and tortured allegedly after defendants Yahoo provided Chinese officials with access to their personal emails, user IDs, and other identifying information. Yahoo settled with the plaintiffs out of court.