Posts Tagged ‘Lawsuit’

TechCrunch is reporting that social games makers Digital Chocolate are filing a lawsuit against Zynga for unspecified reasons. There aren’t any details about the particulars but it is likely related to a patent or a intellectual property matter. We’ve covered Digital Chocolate in depth over the years, and in fact had an in depth interview with founder Trip Hawkins (who was also the founder of Electronic Arts… yes, THAT Electronic Arts). Read on for more details. [Update: Zynga's quote is below]

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All it takes to “share” a favorite website with your friends or “bookmark” an article to save and post on Facebook is a simple click. In fact, the “AddThis” feature on everything from magazine to social networking sites has become so commonplace that even the savviest of Internet consumers may not realize the information they give away each time they click that button.

But now the convenient feature is very much in the spotlight thanks to a federal lawsuit claiming the company behind AddThis, Clearspring Technologies, broke the law by using the widget to gather information on users, including children. The suit was filed in the central district of California by attorneys for a group of minors and their parents.

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A North California District Court Judge dismissed Facebook’s lawsuit against Power Ventures this week, unconvinced by the site’s claim that Power.com’s efforts to integrate Facebook into its platform constituted a criminal violation of the California Penal Code. In short, violating a website’s terms of use is not a crime.
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Last month YouTube won a billion-dollar copyright infringement case, in which they were being sued by Viacom, but just because they won doesn’t mean they didn’t lose massive amounts of money as a result of the lawsuit. In an Google investor relations call yesterday, Google CFO Patrick Pichette revealed that the battle with Viacom cost Google and YouTube $100 million in legal fees since it began in 2007.
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Just last month Brazil-based Power.com launched a social networking aggregator that brought together your activity from across Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5, to name a few. But just weeks after revealing its putlic beta, Power.com is being sued by none other than Facebook itself.

As a social networking aggregator Power.com doesn’t appear to be doing anything wrong, but the way in which it’s accessing Facebook user data is non-compliant with Facebook’s terms. According to The New York Times, Facebook has spent over a month in discussions with Power.com to try to reach an agreement in regards to accessing user data, but no agreement could be reached. As a result, Facebook has filed a complaint against Power.com in Unied Sates Disctrict Court in San Jose, California, for copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, among other charges.
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