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Moto Sues Former Exec For Jumping Ship To Apple
Posted by Matt Hickey at 1:30 PM on July 19, 2008
Motorola, upset that one of its former executives might be violating a no-compete clause in his contract, has sued him for going to work at Apple with the iPhone as an executive in sales. The contention isn't just sour grapes, says Moto, but that the exec, Michael Fenger, has intimate knowledge of Motorola's "trade secrets and customer relationships". But let's be clear here: The people who settled for a free RAZR are not the people waiting in like for the iPhone. We'll see what happen. Non-compete suits are usually pretty cut and dry, but this one could get interesting, if not humourous. [Yahoo! News]
A federal jury has ordered Nintendo to pay Anascape US$21 million for infringing on patents, and almost ironically, all of this has nothing to do with the Wiimote. Instead, their violations were for the GameCube, WaveBird and Wii Classic controllers. The news doesn't come as any huge surprise, as during the last generation of consoles all three of the big manufacturers found themselves in hot 
The University of Mississippi is graduating the first ever space lawyer. While graduate Michael Dodge won't deal with judges sporting particularly wrinkled foreheads, he did draw his degree from the National Centre for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law. With as long as the world has had satellites in the sky, it's surprising that space law took so long to break as its own discipline. Because I could use some advice as to my rights with my "Mark Wilson Is Totally Awesome" star, my "Merry Christmas 1994" star, my "Will You Marry Me Star" and my "Fuck That Bitch, I Was Just Joking" star. Sounds like Dodge signed up just in time. [
A lawmaker in Washington DC has intro'd a bill to the city council that would require all police service pistols to have mini cameras attached to the barrel, which would start rolling as soon as the gun is pulled out of the holster. The tech is already being tested in Orange County, NY. Ostensibly, it's to prevent bad shootings and prove officers acted in good faith, but really I can only think of how awesome an FPS cam would make Cops, like that one scene in the Doom movie, except with intoxicated perps instead of demons from Hell. If it works in DC, I could see this spreading to other police departments pretty quickly as a way to quell lawsuits and such. [
Oops! According to a law professor at George Washington University, all patent judges appointed after the year 2000 have been done so unconstitutionally, making thousands of patent rulings made by said judges null and void. This will have ramifications on patents worth billions and billions of dollars, and it's not clear exactly what's going to happen.
It's Friday, so the mass of stupid and regrettable (and maybe criminal) text messages you wished you never sent is about explode exponentially, as it does every weekend. Google, as you know, keeps your embarrassing search history for "AZN Squirrels Pooping on Bananas" or "Iron Man upskirt" for 18 months. But how long do Verizon and AT&T hang on to your shameful SMSes? Thankfully, not long at all. Sprint hangs on to your textual diarrhea the longest, for about two weeks, while AT&T dumps them after 48 hours, according to Slate's Explainer. We hit up Verizon, who said a "couple days, tops." There are a couple catches, though.
You know how in cop shows they seize deviants' computers and bring them back to the lab for some good ol' latex gloved analysis to prove how obviously guilty or sick the suspect is? That's old hat. Microsoft's latest treat for law enforcement is COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor), a USB drive that'll cut through whatever flimsy security miscreants have slapped on their computer in a flash, and then automatically analyse the dirty bits the cops need to bust their arse, from internet activity to stored data, no pwnage skillz or trips to the lab needed. Microsoft's giving the wonder tube to lawmen for free, and 2,000 officers in 15 countries are already using it. But will it work on Macs? [
In what appears to be an embarrassing error, the Italian parliament may have accidentally legalised P2P music downloads. The new law allows Italians to legally share music over the internet, just as long as it is done for non-commercial gain and the music is degraded. The controversy arises from the definition of the word "degraded."
