High court rules against dot-com investors
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Blog: Group of investors had accused ten leading investment banks of misconduct for their role in initial public stock offerings of several hundred high-tech companies during the late 1990s.
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The U.S. Supreme Court said on Thursday it would hear an appeal by leading Wall Street underwriters and institutional investors of a ruling that a lawsuit accusing them of illegally manipulating the price of stocks in initial public offerings can proceed.
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A court ruled that the distributors of software used by millions of people to exchange music files over the Internet cannot be held liable for aiding copyright infringement.
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Investors lost another round at the Supreme Court Thursday when the justices imposed a strict standard for shareholder lawsuits seeking to recover losses from companies accused of fraudulent business practices.
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Web surfers from Beijing to Berkeley have made Google their search engine of choice, but some of Europe&#39;s institutional investors have gone sour on the dot-com on the eve of its ...
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A new federal case illustrates the role computer intrusion is taking in the high-stakes world of niche Internet commerce.
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A civil suit filed in Florida by Dell and its Alienware subsidiary is giving insight into the enormous sums of money that can be made by creating Web pages full of advertising links.In October, Dell sued a group of domain registrars, alleging the companies bought more than 1,100 domain names with trademark-infringing characteristics, such as &quot;dellbatterrogram.com&quot; in order to put advertising links on the pages.The practice, known as&#160;typosquatting, is illegal. It&#39;s intended to draw unwitting Web surfers to pages with URLs (uniform resource locators) that are similar to legitimate sites, and then redirect them to other sites. The owners of these Web sites get revenue from advertising referral programs every time a link is clicked.The defendants -- Belgiumdomains, Capitoldomains, Domaindoorman, Netrian Ventures, iHoldings.com, Juan Pablo Vazquez, and 10 unnamed defendants -- deny the claims. Dell contends the businesses, most of which are registered outside the U.S., are shell companies engaged in collusion.Dell sought a court order in November to freeze their assets so the money from their operations wouldn&#39;t disappear. Last month, the court amended the freeze order, and contained in the details of the new order are clues to just how much money the defendants may be raking in.Google, whose AdSense advertising-placement program was used to monetize the domains, was ordered to hold in a special account the first $1 million collected on behalf of the defendants each month. The second $1 million that accrues in the account every month will be given to the defendants. If more than $2 million accrues in one month, the money is split between the defendants and the Google account.Google takes a cut of AdSense revenue, which shows that it in part benefits from this kind of abuse of the Internet. However, Google recently announced it will not allow AdSense campaigns on &quot;kited&quot; domains.Kiting is a technique used by some rogue registrars to avoid having to pay the fee for using a domain. The domain is repeatedly registered and unregistered within a five-day Add-Grace Period. The grace period, which applies to a handful of TLDs (Top Level Domains) was intended to let people get a refund of their domain registration fee if they made a spelling mistake.Kiting often goes hand in hand with another abusive practice, &quot;domain tasting.&quot; A domain name is registered and monitored during the grace period to see if it gets sufficient traffic to pay for its registration fee. The domain owners then get refunds on the sites with low traffic. However, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers&#160;(ICANN) is considering keeping a $0.20 fee&#160;it normally refunds as part of the registration process in order to stop tasting.Dell has accused the typosquatter defendants in its lawsuit of both practices and is claiming their profits as well as $100,000 per infringing domain used.Google&#39;s antikiting policy doesn&#39;t apply to domain tasting, meaning the company will still potentially benefit from Web sites intended merely for advertising. A Google spokesman said Tuesday, however, that Web sites are supposed to have legitimate content in order to be accepted into AdSense.Other information in the court documents shed light on the economics of monetizing domain names. Dell contends the defendants control some 1 million domain names, and believes they also have used at least 64 million other unique domain names.When the court froze the defendants&#39; assets in November, it also froze their ability to stop renewing domain names that weren&#39;t producing enough revenue to justify the registration fees. Since the defendants controlled so many domain names, the automatic renewal of those names -- likely around 3,000 domains a day -- cost them $20,000 per day.However, the defendants successfully petitioned the court to cancel domains that were generating less than $8 a year in revenue.&quot;These [figures] tell us that there&#39;s lots of money in tasting, and it&#39;s a game of huge volume,&quot; wrote John Levine, a consultant and author of &quot;The Internet for Dummies&quot; on his blog.The Dell case continues in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.&#160;
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AN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 - Affirming a lower court decision, a federal appellate court ruled Thursday that the distributors of software used by millions of people to exchange music files over the Internet cannot be held liable for aiding ...
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A federal judge yesterday upheld some of the main charges against former brokers at the Boston office of Prudential Securities who securities regulators said hid thousands of improper trades that defrauded dozens of mutual fund companies.
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Europeâs second-highest court upheld today a 2004 antitrust ruling that found the software company had abused its dominance in operating systems.
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The U.S. Supreme Court said on  Thursday it would hear an appeal by leading Wall Street  underwriters and institutional investors of a ruling that a  lawsuit accusing them of illegally manipulating the price of  stocks in initial public offerings can proceed.
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Securities regulators yesterday won court approval to freeze the assets of a Hong Kong business and its owner, accusing them of trading in the stocks of at least a dozen companies using information they may have gained by hacking into computer networks to view forthcoming news releases.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted rules ensuring that it can sue hedge funds for misleading investors.
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Several large technology corporations will urge the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to continue to shield businesses and innovators from legal responsibility if their products or services are used by consumers for illegal acts.
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A European Court of Justice ruling this morning appears on the surface to reaffirm the rights of Internet users from having their data subpoenaed in civil trials. But a deeper read of the ruling shows the high court left the matter wide open.
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Investors lost another round at the Supreme Court yesterday when the justices imposed a strict standard for shareholder lawsuits seeking to recover losses from companies accused of fraudulent business practices.
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The U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a ruling in a tax refund case that the transactions under question were a tax avoidance mechanism, and not an investment strategy.