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The MagicJack is a VoIP dongle that hooks ye olde landline telephone up to the world of tomorrow via a humble computer. By all accounts, it seems to work pretty well and does the job it promises. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like we can say the same about its management team. A post on Boing Boing in April 2008 addressed some pretty concerning aspects of the MagicJack EULA: it demands that you cede your right to sue the company and give it permission to “analyze” the numbers you call, but even more worrying was the fact that no links to said EULA were provided either on the website or at the point of sale. That is to say, every purchaser of the product was agreeing to something he or she hadn’t (and couldn’t have, without tracking the URL down via Google) read. Oh, and apparently the software comes without an uninstaller.

The whole thing could’ve been just a nice warning tale about not getting into contracts without reading the fine print, but MagicJack CEO Dan Borislow, hardly a man who shrinks from controversy, felt so offended by Boing Boing’s, erm, statement of factual reality that he took them to court, citing that his company was exposed to “hate, ridicule and obloquy” (we had to look that last one up, it’s just another word for ridicule, which makes the whole thing a tautology. Lawyers, eh?). Unsurprisingly, he lost the case, but he did manage to squeeze in one last act of shady behavior prior to his loss by offering to pay for Boing Boing’s silence regarding the proceedings and costs. After he was turned down, MagicJack’s coffers were still lightened by $54,000 to cover the defendants’ legal fees, whereas its reputation can now be found somewhere in the Monster Cable vicinity of pond scum central. Great job, Boing Boing.

MagicJack sues Boing Boing, gets bounced out of court originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to a post on Maxconsole, a court in Paris has just dismissed a lawsuit filed by Nintendo over the use of flash carts on the DS. Apparently, the gamemaker was attempting to halt the use of the cartridges due to their ability to circumvent copy protection and allow for pirating of software, but a judge in France took a decidedly different view. As the carts are often used for homebrew and DIY projects, the court holds that owners of the console should be able to develop software much as a license holder of Windows might. Furthermore, the article claims that the court also deemed Nintendo’s strict control of development “illegal” (Maxconsole’s words), and said that development of software for the system shouldn’t be hamstrung by the need for proprietary kits. This ruling follows a recent Spanish case in which the court dismissed Nintendo’s lawsuit over flash carts claiming that while the add-ons do violate DRM, they also legitimately extend the functionality of the console.

Nintendo loses DS flash cart case in French court originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm has spent an awful lot of time over the past few years dealing with lawsuits and nastygrams, but it looks as if things will be totally different in the new decade. Just months after Qualcomm and Broadcom settled their differences, the European Commission has agreed to drop a four-year antitrust investigation without levying the first fine or absolving the company. The reason? The entity stated that “companies that objected to Qualcomm’s pricing for its technology have all withdrawn their complaints or are planning to withdraw them.” Sounds like a reasonable reason to let bygones be bygones, no?

EU closes antitrust investigation into Qualcomm, doesn’t levy fines originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel sure sells a lot of chips, but man — it sure blows a lot of that profit on lawyers. Just months after it got nailed with a $1.45 billion fine from the EU in an AMD antitrust case, nearly two years after AMD hit Intel with another antitrust probe and nearly 1.5 years after the FTC sparked up an investigation of its own, Intel has finally decided to pony up in order to rid itself of one of those back-riding monkeys. In an admittedly brief joint announcement released simultaneously by both firms today, Intel has agreed to cough up a whopping $1.25 billion in order to settle “all antitrust and IP disputes” with AMD. In fact, the pair went so far as to say the following:

“While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.”

Aside from AMD’s coffers filling up with cash, the agreement also gives both firms patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement. Of course, we’re betting that this isn’t the end of this exceptionally bitter rivalry, and we highly doubt Intel wrote a check this large while grinning from ear-to-ear. That said, we’re eager to see what AMD does with its newfound cheddar, and if we had our druthers, we’d sit back and watch it invest heavily into beating Intel to the punch with its next few platforms.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel shells out $1.25 billion to settle all AMD litigation originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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