Trial Begins in Compuware's Piracy Suit
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Lawyers for IBM and Compuware on Tuesday picked a jury to settle Compuware's three-year-old piracy and antitrust claims.
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Compuware accused IBM (NYSE: IBM) of improperly introducing 11th hour evidence in  order to delay a ruling in a legal battle between the two firms.  Compuware is suing IBM for allegedly stealing source code and using it  in its own software products.
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Compuware is seeking reimbursement for its &quot;substantial&quot; efforts related to IBM&#39;s failure to produce the software code, which it wants excluded as evidence from the trial. For its part, IBM remains confident Compuware&#39;s latest motion will ...
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(InfoWorld) - A California attorney claims he has unraveled part of the mystery behind a questionable software program and is prepared to go to court. Attorney Joseph M. Bochner filed a class-action civil suit last September in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County against two men the suit alleges are behind Winfixer, a purported security software. The lawsuit names Marc J. Cohen of Florida, and was amended last week to add James Reno of Ohio as an additional defendant, Bochner said. It seeks compensation and a halt to the distribution of Winfixer, among other remedies. The suit was filed on behalf of Beatrice Ochoa, a mother of two who paid US$39.95 for Winfixer after it badgered her with repeated pop-up warnings that her computer had security threats. The program eventually rendered her computer's hard drive unusable, Bochner said. The suit counts another 100 anonymous victims. "All of these people are being defrauded and they're just ordinary folks," Bochner said. "They buy a computer, they surf the Internet, they're not doing anything unreasonable and suddenly they're defrauded." Indecision over whether Winfixer is a legitimate product may be the reason it still pervades the Internet. Winfixer has been a moving target for security experts, at times going by the names ErrorSafe, WinAntiSpyware, WinAntiVirus, SystemDoctor and DriveCleaner. Security software from vendors such as Sophos PLC and Symantec Corp. will detect it, but give users the option of whether they want to remove it. Sophos calls it "adware" that hypes security threats and then implores users to buy the software. Microsoft Corp., however, pulled no punches last month whenÂ Winfixer ads began show up on its instant-messaging program, calling it "malware," a shorter term for "malicious software." Experts have also seen it install itself on computers via security vulnerabilities in browsers or OSes. However, the lawsuit could face hurdles in court. Web sites are frequently registered under false names or under stolen identifies and the real owners can be difficult to trace, said Sandi Hardmeier, a computer security authority who writes about Winfixer on her blog "Spyware Sucks." Proving the link to the alleged perpetrators, their connections to Winfixer all the way through to the effects on Ochoa's computer will be very difficult, she said. "Forensics is everything," she said. Bochner acknowledges it's hard work to track down fraudsters who use the Internet's anonymity to commit crimes, but the criminals are real people who can be located. Bochner said he has compelling documentation to link the defendants named in the suit to Winfixer. By researching IP (Internet Protocol) addresses that hosted the versions of Winfixer and their owners, Bochner alleges he has uncovered a fraud based in the U.S. that has escaped law enforcement scrutiny. Reno ran a Web hosting company called ByteHosting Internet Service LLC with a postal address in Amelia, Ohio. Bochner said at one time, a support number for Winfixer support also rang through to ByteHosting, which led in part to Reno being added to the suit. Reno, along with other co-defendants and ByteHosting, was sued by Symantec Corp. in 2004 for allegedly creating pop-up ads that told consumers their Symantec software was about to expire. The ads then directed users to fake software that looked similar to Symantec products. Court records show Reno and Symantec reached a confidential settlement in December 2004. Cohen was named for his connections with vipfares.com, a now-defunct travel Web site, Bochner said. At one time, the Winfixer software would hijack the user's browser and suddenly show vipfares.com, he said. Efforts to reach Cohen and Reno for comment were unsuccessful on Wednesday and Thursday. However, Cohen's attorney, Judy Silverstein, appeared on a San Francisco TV news program on Feb. 26 regarding Winfixer and her client. Silverstein said, "His [Cohen's] position is he's done nothing wrong. He's done nothing improper or illegal, and he's had no ownership interested in those Web sites." Bochner said he has turned over some of his research to law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service along with California authorities. While researching IP addresses that linked to Winfixer, Bochner said he suddenly came upon a database detailing sales of Winfixer and the other versions of the programs. The multi-gigabyte database -- apparently left unsecured and open to the Internet -- contained names, addresses, credit-card numbers, transaction amounts and the version of Winfixer that was sold, he said. For example, on Jan. 20, 2006, the data showed 2,351 sales to users worldwide, with an average transaction amount of $40, Bochner said. The database covers transactions made from January 2005 through January 2006. One of the records shows a transaction made by someone who lives across the street from his law office, Bochner said. The data, while incomplete, allows a view of the fraud ring's broad reach and scope, he said. "I think this is far larger than anyone has ever expected," Bochner said. "It's not inconceivable that these people have made $150 million or more over the last few years." Â
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Comcast may have shot themselves in the foot. Lawyers are already circling in the water, and the company could be looking at a world of pain for its sneaky BitTorrent filtering.
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Symantec Corp. has filed suit against an alleged software piracy ring, that has been in operation in North America since late 2003, the software vendor claims.
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Lawyers for Compuware told a jury Wednesday that IBM stole its trade secrets as part of a plan to obliterate the Detroit-based company through unfair competition.
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Sharman Networks, the company behind the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing software, began its defense in a Sydney court room on Tuesday against charges by members of the music industry that the company aided music piracy and copyright infringement.
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Software giant battles activation of unauthorized copies of its new Vista OS.
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Three people on trial for illegally sending junk e-mail inundated America Online customers with millions of messages touting penny stocks and "Internet history erasers," a prosecutor said Tuesday during opening statements.
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A case scheduled for hearing in December focuses on technology for automatically loading software from a disc.
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A key figure in the Kazaa file-sharing trial arrives in Sydney today to give evidence of Australian users downloading copyright material via the peer-to-peer software.
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The music industry on Monday launched a test case against Kazaa, one of the world&#39;s largest file-sharing websites, in a bid to stem rampant internet piracy.
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Microsoft has filed its first lawsuits over allegedly counterfeit and illicit certificates of authenticity, the labels attached to software packages and computers to verify the legitimacy of the programs inside.
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Lawsuits against 23 companies in California and Florida allege distribution of counterfeit software.
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A federal magistrate has ordered IBM Corp. to reimburse software maker Compuware Corp. for costs relating to evidence that IBM produced only three months before Compuware&#39;s lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial.
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Arguments were heard today in a case whose outcome could require software companies to pay fines for patent-infringing software assembled in other countries.