By the tone of the press release, though, those terms must be favorable to the plaintiff. "AP is pleased to have resolved the litigation in an amicable manner and appreciates VeriSign and Moreover’s efforts to resolve AP’s concerns," said AP Vice President and General Counsel Srinandan Kasi.

Fair use has been the general (if vague) law of Internetland, with Google and slews of other news aggregation sites relying on the fair use principles to allow them to link to and display short snippets of news content. In regard to content other than news—photos, for example—courts have upheld fair use doctrine for search engines indexing and displaying links, snippets, and thumbnails.

WebProNews publisher Rich Ord explained in October of last year, though, how the law is still fuzzy on this issue, and how the AP’s approach to it is, to put it kindly, a bit out of date. It’s been nearly ten years since this issue really came to a head, which in Internet years is something like half a century.

Nonetheless, major players lately have been reluctant to let the courts decide on news content. After suing Google last year, the AP reached a settlement and licensing agreement with the search giant to display AP news in its entirety. Looks like the lawsuit route is a winning strategy: file suit, come to settlement, get licensing agreement.

That’s not exactly going to be a deterrent for the AP in the future. If the same pattern (and some would argue, abuse) continues, all news aggregators are at risk of being wrangled by the AP. After the AP, Reuters, and after Reuters, well, everybody, and news no longer spreads, but stagnates in its prescribed corners.

The reluctance from the big boys to take fair use principles to court is disappointing. The AP has framed these battles as intellectual property and copyright ones. But no one has advocated scraping, the free-for-all copying and pasting of content onto one’s own site. At issue here is linking and snippeting, which, as far as most are concerned—including Google, historically, and entire link-based economies—have been legitimate and beneficial practices.

Maybe the next aggregation site the AP targets will feel they have more incentive (and gumption) to let a judge and jury decide. Then again, there’s also the risk it doesn’t work out, and then everybody goes down. 
 

The New York Attorney General’s office said Verizon’s "unlimited" plans had hidden restrictions against streaming or downloading video or playing video games, but those restrictions were not clearly presented to subscribers.

Once subscribers reached what Verizon (seemingly arbitrarily) deemed "excessive," they were unable to connect wirelessly to the Internet via phones or modems.

“This settlement sends a message to companies large and small answering the growing consumer demand for wireless services. When consumers are promised an ‘unlimited’ service, they do not expect the promise to be broken by hidden limitations,” said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

“Consumers must be treated fairly and honestly. Delivering a product is simply not enough – the promises must be delivered as well.”

Verizon Wireless also agreed to pay $150,000 to New York state and to revise the company’s marketing of its wireless Internet access plans. 

The parties to this proceeding have been engaged in active and detailed settlement negotiations and appear now to be close to reaching a settlement….

[Google] recently (only hours before of the filing of the present motion) requested a revised draft agreement from Petitioner’s counsel which will incorporate the remaining terms which had been, but may no longer be at issue.

IIIR requested the 30-day extension to finish negotiating the settlement, rather than respond to Google’s motion for summary judgment that IIIR had abandoned its claim to the Gmail trademark in the US, and also cited time zone differences as a reason for delay.

According to Google’s motion for summary judgment, filed at the end of August, if a mark hasn’t been used for three years, it is considered abandoned.

In that same motion, however, it is noted that IIIR came just shy of the three-year non-use rule. Nonetheless, it appeared Google’s argument was that it was close enough to count.

Perhaps Google has changed its mind about that, as IIIR claims that during the 30-day extension period the two companies will either settle or move on to litigation.

American companies, especially Google, generally don’t respond to request for comment regarding ongoing legal matters, but we should know whether there is a settlement or not by the first of November.

A settlement of $80 million will keep Vonage in business with technology a Kansas jury found to be infringing on Sprint’s intellectual property.

Vonage announced $35 million of the settlement covers past usage of Sprint’s licenses, $5 million serves as a prepayment for future services, and the remaining $40 million applies to a fully paid future license.

Sprint objected to the use of Voice over Packet (VOP) technology in Vonage’s VoIP product. The court’s agreement with Sprint as to its claims put Vonage in the position of needing to hammer out a settlement or risk a business stoppage.

Sprint VP of intellectual property Harvey Ball said the decision validated the "strength and breadth" of the wireless company’s patents.

For Vonage, it was another multi-million dollar loss in court. In March, Vonage was ordered to pay $58 million plus royalties for infringing on three Verizon patents.

Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School and certainly no fan of Zango (formerly 180solutions), has gathered evidence suggesting Zango is willingly and openly violating the terms of the FTC settlement.

On his blog, he presents his case:

Among these practices are widespread, ongoing Zango-designed installation sequences which install Zango pop-up ad software without any on-screen disclosure of material terms. Instead, these installations mention Zango’s effects only in a lengthy EULA – exactly contrary to the FTC settlement’s requirements.

Zango’s ongoing practices also include widespread in-toolbar ads without the labeling and hyperlinks specifically required under the FTC settlement. Other Zango ads, including desktop icons and even certain pop-ups, also lack these labels and links.

Perhaps the company filed the FTC fine under "Business Expenses."

Edelman presents a thorough (read: lengthy) investigation, complete with screenshots. In a summary, Edelman cites ActiveX installations, banner-based installations, both without proper disclosure, unlabeled ads, toolbars, desktop icons and pop-ups, and ads for bogus sites with the intent to defraud users. 

Google Fights Back With Copiepresse Appeal

Google doesn’t lose in court very often, but they took what for them equated to a humbling beating from Copiepresse last year. Copiepresse won a judgment against Google for indexing news content from websites it represents.

That decision included forcing Google to post the judgment for five days on its Belgian portal. The company did so, in a small font size, and their subsequent posts on their official blog made it clear they weren’t happy about this.

Google and Copiepresse subsequently reached a partial settlement of their differences. But a complete resolution will have to wait for an appeals process to take place.

A Bloomberg report about the case found from Google that an appeal had been filed ten days ago. This won’t interrupt their ongoing negotiations with Copiepresse, however.

Google believes its use of small excerpts of news content in Google News complies with copyright laws. A Belgian court disagreed, finding “no exception” in their laws for this, the report said.

IBM got off with a settlement that does not require them to admit wrongdoing or pay a fine. Reuters said the SEC never accused IBM of committing any type of securities fraud.

It’s a strange end to a dispute that started with IBM telling analysts that expensing stock options would impact earnings more than IBM knew they would. Instead of a 14 cents per share hit, it was a 10 cents per share tap.

The SEC found that IBM anticipated this would happen. “IBM misled investors by failing to disclose information that would have allowed them to accurately determine the impact that the company’s decision to expense stock options would have on its financial results,” Reuters cited from a statement by SEC Associate Director of Enforcement Scott W. Friestad.

“The facts here are particularly troubling because the disclosure decision was driven, in part, by management’s perception of how the news would be interpreted by analysts,” Friestad said.

IBM’s actions violated reporting provisions of federal securities laws, the SEC also said. But after over two years, the best the SEC could do was to back off after eliciting a promise from IBM not to violate disclosure laws again.

Maybe the SEC plays by “no autopsy, no foul” rules these days. It’s too bad the SEC got to play with taxpayer money for the investigation.

Scott Hayden, Amazon

Yahoo Click Fraud Settlement Approved

In a similar agreement last year, Google agreed to pay $90 million ($30 million in legal fees, $60 million in click reimbursement) to Caulfield Investigations, representing Lane’s Gifts & Collectibles in Arkansas, claiming they had been victims of click fraud. Opposing attorneys continued pressing the issue after the settlement, however, claiming that the compensation package was inadequate.

Settlement in the California case had been delayed due to protest from the same Arkansas group, alleging that Yahoo was not operating in good faith concerning the case in that state. With the judge’s ruling this week, however, Yahoo is now free and clear from any other click fraud claims against it in other states.

In addition to the legal fees, Yahoo outlined these additional measures in the terms of settlement:

One-Time Extended Claims Period: Yahoo! will offer advertisers a one-time extended claims period during which advertisers can submit click fraud claims for clicks dating back through January 2004. If our investigation determines that a credit is due that was not given previously, we will issue a 100% credit, which can be used however the advertiser wishes to use it. This claims process will be overseen by a retired Federal judge.

Dedicated Traffic Quality Advocate: Yahoo! will appoint a Traffic Quality Advocate who will be dedicated entirely to addressing advertiser concerns about click fraud and traffic quality issues. This advocate will serve as the internal voice of the advertiser within Yahoo! on these matters.

Annual Access to CTP System and Team: To ensure that the advertising community has ongoing visibility into our Clickthrough Protection system, Yahoo! will host a panel of individual advertisers at our CTP headquarters once a year. During these visits, we will allow the advertisers to review our systems, meet with the CTP team and provide feedback on how we can continue to enhance our approach to fighting click fraud.
Industry-Wide Click Protection Efforts: Yahoo will work with a reputable third party toward building industry-wide efforts to combat click fraud, including development of industry-wide definitions of click fraud and a comprehensive lists of identified bots.

Traffic Quality Resource Center: Yahoo! will commit technical and human resources to build a Traffic Quality Resource Center, which will provide advertisers with more detailed information about traffic quality issues (including click fraud) and solutions via FAQs, advice columns, best practices guides and additional access to analytics tools.
Traffic Quality Inquiry Response Times: Yahoo! will provide advertisers who submit click fraud- or traffic quality-related inquiries with a time by which they will receive the results of Yahoo!’s investigation or, if the investigation is particularly complex, a status update.

Additional Traffic Quality Refund Detail: To provide advertisers with more clarity around refunds for click fraud and other traffic quality issues, Yahoo! will include additional detail in advertiser refund notices.

"Final approval of the settlement validates the strength of Yahoo’s click-through protection systems, and our commitment to delivering a quality experience to both our advertisers and our consumers," says new Yahoo click quality czar Reggie Davis in a CNET article covering the settlement.

"Our commitment does not stop here. Quality is a top priority for Yahoo, and we have a clear road map for how we’re going to create the highest-quality search-advertising network in the industry."

Davis was appointed to his post as Vice President of Marketplace Quality earlier this month as Yahoo looks to offer greater transparency to the issue of click fraud and address any concerns that its advertising partners may have.

Yahoo has estimated that, on average, it filters out anywhere from 12 to 15 percent of clicks due to fraud. This is just what Yahoo managed to catch, however, and isn’t indicative of any fraudulent clicks that slip past the company’s sensors and end up hitting advertisers in the pocketbook.

Anyway, the courts have made the settlement final – at a breathtaking pace of 9 months – and the settlement will stand, “as called on the field.”

The settlement agreement was given preliminary approval by the court last summer. However, attorneys involved in a class action suit over click fraud in Arkansas contested the settlement arguing that Yahoo was not responding to the Arkansas lawsuit in good faith when it was settling the case in California. The California settlement releases Yahoo from all similar click fraud claims against it in other actions, including the Arkansas litigation.

Obviously Yahoo’s new click fraud “czar” is pleased as punch…

The “final approval of the settlement validates the strength of Yahoo’s click-through protection systems, and our commitment to delivering a quality experience to both our advertisers and our consumers,” said Reggie Davis, Yahoo’s new vice president of marketplace quality.

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