Federal Court Grants Preliminary Approval to Sidekick Class Action Settlement

In December 2010 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval to a class action settlement brought against T-Mobile, Microsoft, and Danger regarding allegations of Sidekick smartphone data interruption and loss arising out of an incident that occurred on or about October 2009. Class Action Notice, settlement, claims forms, and related documents can be found at the SidekickSettlement.com web site. If after reading the documents on the Sidekick Settlement website you believe you may be a class member and have further inquiries then please contact us.

isoHunt to be provided with interlocutory appeal

The Judge, at a status conference in January 2010, agreed to provide the isoHunt defendants after the injunction phase, but before the damages phase,  an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Class action lawsuit filed against T-Mobile, Danger, and Microsoft over Sidekick data loss

The Rothken Law Firm filed a  Federal nationwide class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against T-Mobile and Danger, Inc. (a Microsoft subsidiary) over massive data loss by the Sidekick data service. The case is entitled Mapstead v. T-Mobile et al. Read more about this case at CNET News.com

According to the complaint the Sidekick service crashed on or about October 3rd, 2009 and then T-Mobile indicated that Danger, Inc., the service provider, lost massive amounts of customer data, and worse that due to backup failures it was highly unlikely it would recover such data.

The Federal Complaint alleges that T-Mobile and Danger marketed the Sidekick mobile phones as “automatically” storing and backing up customer data, such as contacts, appointments, and other digital files, and then breached its promises and was negligent in storing data in the cloud and backing up such data. The Complaint ask for monetary damages be paid to the class amongst other remedies.

"T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful in the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss" says Ira P. Rothken an attorney working on the case. "We are hopeful that T-Mobile and the rest of the defendants will do the right thing, use this as an opportunity to redesign the system as a new standard for cloud computing storage, and provide full compensation for the data loss" states Rothken.

If you would like more information about the class action lawsuit or have any questions please fill out our web form here.

Torrentspy files appeal of copyright case involving Bittorent technology and privacy issues

Torrentspy and other defendants filed an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a copyright case of first impression regarding Bittorent technology. In the appeal brief Torrentspy argues, amongst other things, that the Court was wrong in its procedures and wrong in its Judgment.

Torrentspy argues that the Court issued Orders, including forced logging of user behavior and IP addresses, that were inconsistent with Torrentspy's longstanding privacy policy. Torrentspy, on its own, cut off access to the United States to help alleviate the privacy concerns.

Ultimately the court in an approximately one hour hearing citing amongst other things lost and redacted data, terminated the case and later on, with little or no findings related to statutory damages, provided for a judgment without a trial. Torrentspy argues that the Court abused its discretion and that the procedures and Judgment were unfair under the circumstances. Read a news story here on the appeal.

The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Preservation, Management and Identification of Sources of Information that are Not Reasonably Accessible

The Sedona Conference® Working Group 1 recently published a Commentary on the issues of preserving, managing, and identifying not reasonably accessible electronically stored information or “NRA ESI". The result is a five-step framework for analysis and six Guidelines for making reasonable, good-faith assessments where no “bright line” rules exist. Ira P. Rothken is a co-editor of the above Sedona Conference Publication entitled Commentary on Preservation, Management and Identification of Sources of Information that are Not Reasonably Accessible.which can be downloaded here and here is a web seminar  on the topic. You can find a review and summary of the commentary here in which the author states that "...I highly recommend that you read this new publication and, more importantly, consult it when faced with tricky preservation issues." 

MindFuse raising money for casual massively multiplayer online game

Most massively multiplayer online (MMO) games focus on hardcore gamers, but MindFuse is building a high-end MMO for casual audiences.

The idea is to create a rich 3-D world that is easy to learn and which can be enjoyed without huge time commitments. Players can play for a shorter time compared with time sinks like “World of Warcraft.” Ira Rothken helped start MindFuse and he assisted in raising seed money for the company. You can read more at VentureBeat.

Torrentspy Appeals MPAA Wiretap Case

Torrentspy has appealed the federal "wiretap" case against the Motion Picture Association of America to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals involving allegations that the MPAA paid a hacker $15,000 dollars in return for use of emails obtained by unauthorized computer access and automated interception. The case is Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America. The redacted brief can be found here. Here is a story from CNET News and the Washington Post on the appeal.

In a Denial of Service outage, has Hollywood gone too far?

According to CNET a company named Revision3 that legitimately distributes its video programming via peer-to-peer systems is shut down for three days after being inundated with traffic. The likely cause was a company paid by the major movie studios and record labels to fight piracy. According to Ira Rothken "It's ironic for a company that is supposed to be helping major Hollywood organizations in getting legal compliance, that they would use techniques that at least optically appear to be in violation of the law."

Federal Judge citing CDA immunity throws out multiple claims against large dating site

From an article in TheDartmouth: a Jane Doe plaintiff is suing in Federal Court an online dating site powered by Friendfinder related to a profile posted by a site user. The case arises out of an alleged feigned profile posted by a member that allegedly used her personal information next to a nude photo of another female. The profile was allegedly created by someone using the Dartmouth College network in 2005. The woman, who filed the suit under the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” claims the fictitious profile was posted for over a year before a friend brought it to her attention. A federal judge threw out five of the woman’s claims because internet sites are protected under a federal law known as the Communications Decency Act or CDA from liability for false postings by others, but allowed two to stand in an order handed down recently.

Notice of Class Action Settlement in the Palm Treo 600 and 650 Case

Palm entered into a nationwide class action settlement subject to the final approval of the Federal Court involving the Treo 600 and 650 smartphones. The settlement provides for certain cash rebates and rights of repair the details of which can be found on the settlement notice web site. Ira P. Rothken served as co-lead class action counsel in this nationwide case.

CNET News Story Profiling Ira Rothken's Career Protecting Internet Technology Companies

From a CNET News.com article published today "Ira Rothken is technology's answer to the radical lawyer, Silicon Valley's version of Johnnie Cochran or William Kunstler.Tech start-ups sued by media conglomerates for copyright infringement typically call on Rothken, a medical researcher turned lawyer. He's made a name for himself by bucking entertainment empires and by backing long-shot copyright cases, such as those involving RecordTV, ReplayTV and MP3Board.com. His efforts have won him praise from...

Click to read more ...

President Signs Bill Aimed at Limiting Online Gambling

The newly approved Safe Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006, which President Bush signed Friday, included a provision aimed at deterring many of the over 2,500 online gambling casino web sites from taking wagers in the United States. The measure, attached to the "SAFE Port Act", seeks to prohibit Internet gambling by outlawing financial transfers, credit card transactions, and hyperlinks to unlawful Internet casinos. Ira P. Rothken was interviewed by Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer regarding the new law.

California Supreme Court rules in favor of consumers by permitting plaintiffs adversely impacted by California's Proposition 64 to amend their complaints to save pending consumer protection cases

In a case in which we participated on behalf of Amicus Curiae the California Supreme Court in Branick v. Downey Savings & Loan Association embraced our client's view and allowed consumers who may have lost the right to participate in litigation due to the passage of California's Proposition 64 the ability to amend their complaint to add additional plaintiffs who meet the new requirements. The Supreme Court ruling assists consumers and plaintiffs suing on behalf of the general public under California's Unfair Business Practices Act.

isoHunt.com, a torrent file search engine, defends itself against a federal copyright lawsuit filed in New York by the major motion picture studios and the MPAA

The isoHunt.com search engine defends itself against allegations from the MPAA and major motion picture studios regarding the issue of whether or not mere passive hyperlinking to "dot torrent" text like files arising out of internet search engine results can constitute secondary copyright infringement. On May 30th, 2006, Gary Fung, who was named as the defendant in the isoHunt.com lawsuit, filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and in the alternative to have the case transferred to Federal Court in California closer to his residence in Vancouver, Canada.

Palm Treo Smartphones investigated by CBS News

The Palm Treo Smartphones were recently investigated by CBS News reporter Bennett Cunningham as being defective. Click here to view the video of the CBS news report which includes a discussion of our pending federal class action case against Palm. We represent owners of Palm Treo 600 and 650 Smartphones in a nationwide federal court class action lawsuit claiming the devices are inherently defective. Click here to get involved in the case, to get e-mail updates, and to tell us about your Treo issues.

Consumer class action lawsuit filed against Palm for allegedly selling defective Treo Smartphones

Three owners of Palm's Treo 600 and 650 hybrid phone/personal digital assistants (PDAs) have filed a class action lawsuit claiming the devices are inherently defective and are seeking an injunction barring the sale of the popular devices and money damages.

Major e-commerce companies defend lawsuits claiming patent infringement for dynamic web page generation

The two patents in the lawsuits filed in Federal Court in Texas, referred to as the 554 and 335 patents, were awarded in 1999 and 2002. They describe a method for "creating and managing custom Web sites" as well as "managing dynamic Web site generation requests," according to documents filed with the U.S. patent and trademark office.

Class action filed against Cardsystems over hacking of consumer credit card data

A class action lawsuit was filed today by California credit card holders and merchants against Cardsystems Solutions, Inc. and others for allegedly failing to maintain adequate data security which led to a security breach exposing over 40 million credit card holders to potential fraud.

Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, CompUSA, Best Buy, and Staples settle a California lawsuit and agree to change their software shrinkwrap license policies to benefit consumers

Consumers filed suit after they bought software products from retailers and read the license agreements for the first time on installation of the software, found the terms not to their liking, did not click " I agree" to the terms, and were thus unable to install the software or to return it to get all their money back (since the software shrinkwrap was opened and defendants allegedly had a policy of not providing full refunds for "opened" software).

The Settlement Agreement provides to the General Public of California, amongst other things, the right of consumers to return applicable Symantec, Adobe and Microsoft software for full monetary refunds even if the shrink-wrap has been opened. In addition, Symantec, Adobe, and Microsoft agreed to provide End User License Agreements ("EULAs") for the applicable software products on their web site and notices on their respective software packaging of the web addresses to such EULAs so consumers can review such EULAs prior to purchase of the software. CompUSA, Best Buy and Staples agreed to provide such EULAs to consumers upon request prior to sale of the above software at their retail stores in California and to provide notices to consumers in such stores to effectuate the above.

RIAA's "Amnesty" program does not provide amnesty

According to a lawsuit filed in Superior Court in California. The lawsuit seeks to enjoin the RIAA's Clean Slate "Amnesty" program as it does not provide a a full release of copyright claims against consumers who are required, as a condition of entering the program, to make admissions of copyright infringment.