Xiang Dong Yu, a 47-year-old ex-Ford employee from Beijing, has been charged with theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets, and unauthorized access to a protected computer for his role in stealing more than 4,000 pages of documents from Ford Motor Co. Yu planned to use the documents to secure a job at a Chinese car company but was instead arrested.
Yu was arrested upon stepping off a flight from China at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and the attorney representing the man has yet to comment on the situation. According to the indictment, Yu worked for Ford from 1997 …read more

The poor judgment of a contractor working for a Texas Department of Public Safety has left 1,200 driving while intoxicated convictions completely invalid and the contractor in prison for at least a year. Deetrice Wallace has been convicted of falsifying inspections records for several Houston police departments and was prosecuted for three counts of tampering with a governmental record.
According to the assistant district attorney in charge of prosecuting the case, Wallace failed to change the reference sample in the machines every month and instead chose to manipulate the machines, skimming $146,000 off the top for herself. Her actions will allow …read more

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that the USDA allowed the commercialization of a certain strain of genetically-modified sugar beets without adequately completing the proper steps to do so. According to the judge, the USDA never prepared an environmental impact statement for the sugar beets, which many critics have worried would have a large impact on all sugar beet production.
 
Sugar beets, which are grown on around 1.4 million acres of U.S. farms, are used to create much of the sugar that this country uses. While many farmers only began planting the genetically-modified sugar beets in 2008, several critics …read more

While Microsoft was not able to convince an appeals court that Microsoft’s Outlook software and two other products infringed on an Alcatel-Lucent patent, the software giant was able to have its $358 million damages verdict recalculated. The move came after the court ruled that such a verdict was not actually supported by evidence.
 
The case, which mostly focused on Alcatel-Lucent’s claim that Outlook’s calendar function infringed on one of its patents, has seen Microsoft argue that it should only have to pay $6.5 million in damages. According to the appeals court, as well as part of Microsoft’s argument, the calendar function …read more

TiVo has long suffered from competitors using the television pause and rewind technology for which TiVo became famous. Now, though, the struggling DVR maker has managed to convince a federal judge that Dish Network and its sister firm, EchoStar, have violated an injunction against copying the technology, forcing the latter two companies to pay a total of $200 million to TiVo.
While Dish Network plans to appeal the case, it will be forced to pay the $110 million in damages, $90 million in sanctions, and additional attorney fees, as well as additional sanctions if it loses its appeal. This ruling comes …read more

Allegedly unfair treatment of an ill employee has led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency, to file a lawsuit in a Chicago court against United Parcel Service. According to the E.E.O.C., UPS violated federal laws by not allowing its workers to take sufficient medical leave and by not making reasonable accommodations for disabled employees.
The E.E.O.C. claims that UPS’s violations constitute breaches of the Americans with Disabilities Act and a variety of civil rights laws. The case was brought on in defense of Trudi Momsen, a former UPS employee that was allegedly fired because of her multiple sclerosis, rather …read more

TiVo has long been pursuing reparations from companies whom it accuses of stealing its popular television technology that allows its users to pause, rewind, and fast-forward, but it has now decided to sue AT&T and Verizon over the matter. As it pursues the legal battle, TiVo has also posted a second-quarter loss that was narrower than expected.
 
According to TiVo, the company would have preferred to work out some sort of licensing deal before it went ahead with any sort of legal action, the latest move coming after TiVo apparently could not wait any longer. Analysts expect TiVo to use the …read more

If you’re a freelancer writer, chances are that you’re also an avid reader. I know I am. While I’ve resisted purchasing a Kindle, I know a lot of you guys and gals probably are enjoying this new technology. Well, most of the time. Earlier this month, Amazon deleted the books Animal Farm and 1984 (how ironic) from Kindles around the world after finding that the uploaded version violated copyright laws. Everyone got their money back, but some people are still pissed.

One such person is 17-year-old Justin D. Gawronski, a student at Shelby Township, Michigan’s Eisenhower High School. Along with other …read more

Wells Fargo & Co. has a new lawsuit to deal with, this time facing the state of Illinois after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan accused Wells Fargo of bias. According to Madigan’s lawsuit, Wells Fargo intentionally directed African-Americans and Latinos toward the infamous subprime mortgages, knowing aware of the high costs of these mortgages.
Madigan has stated that Wells Fargo is responsible for turning Illinois’ primarily black and Latino neighborhoods into strongholds for the controversial subprime mortgages. These allegedly illegal sales practices have overwhelmingly led to foreclosures in these neighborhoods, forcing otherwise innocent families out on the street because of Wells …read more

Canadian company MOSAID Technologies has filed a lawsuit against International Business Machines Corp., otherwise known as IBM, for six alleged patent infringements. According to MOSAID, it has tried for years to reach some sort of settlement with IBM but has been unable to agree with the technology giant in negotiations.
 
The lawsuit focuses on IBM’s producing and selling certain products that use technology patented by MOSAID without ever having acquired a license to their patents. The technology involves microprocessors and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits that IBM would otherwise certainly be able to use if it had pursued a license.
 
MOSAID President and CEO …read more