Legal

Social Networks and Privacy: Learning From Facebook’s Mistakes

Observers of Internet trends often pronounce that privacy is a fiction and that it is futile to try to reclaim it. Whether that perspective is correct or not does not matter when faced with a Complaint issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Facebook Complaint and Consent Order recently issued by the FTC provides valuable lessons for how to stay out of the FTC’s crosshairs. Internet attorneys, businesses, consultants and advisors should study what the FTC views as deceptive in order to make necessary adjustments to business plans and operations. In the U.S., there is no federal law that requires a website to have a privacy policy. However, California requires any website that collects personally identifiable information from California residents to have a privacy policy

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Social Networks and Privacy: Learning From Facebook’s Mistakes

Legal

Website Legal Compliance – Congress Struggles With Protect IP and SOPA Legislation

Website legal compliance is now under serious consideration by lawmakers in Washington. The U.S. Congress is now considering two proposed bills, which if enacted into law, would provide ground-breaking weapons for law enforcement and content owners to enforce intellectual property rights. If you’re a content owner that provides content on the Internet, you have an important stake in the current legislative process. The competing bills currently under consideration – The Protect IP Act (Protect IP) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – are both aimed at websites that are focused on infringing the intellectual property rights of content owners. What’s both creative and controversial about these proposed laws from a website legal compliance perspective is the enforcement mechanism – shutting down the offending websites regardless of whether they’re U.S. based or foreign based websites. The typical offenders that are the targets of Protect IP and SOPA are websites that pirate and illegally stream movies, TV shows, and music. However, if you’re a content owner with valuable content that may be the target of infringers, these proposed statutes may provide important legal remedies for you to protect your intellectual property

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Website Legal Compliance – Congress Struggles With Protect IP and SOPA Legislation

Legal

3 Ways to Protect Yourself from Copycats – A SPN Exclusive Article

Small Business can take notes from grass roots political operatives in 2012 and take measures to limit the possibility that competitors will be eating their lunch by mid-year by literally taking their lunch. So how do you keep competitors from copying your good methods and ideas or co-opting them for their own, engaging in corporate theft? You have to grease the signs. Small Business Politics The political time of year is revving up, and with this year being an election year in the US, prepare yourself for more questionable, dirty tricks than you ever thought you would see. Candidates will work years to build the one thing they can run on– their reputation– only to see it demolished by discovery of the skeletons in their closets, or, if those closets happen to be vacant, a heinous accusation that stays regardless of its accuracy. Typically politically dormant, the state of the country is troubling me and I found myself recently at the house of a local businessman for a political meeting, and got to know a guy named David from a national association called Freedomworks, and his job was to assist that group’s chosen candidates win the election.

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3 Ways to Protect Yourself from Copycats – A SPN Exclusive Article

Legal

Google sued by BT over Android OS

British Telecom has now entered the legal fray over smart phone patent infringement, lashing out at Google’s Android. The telecommunications giant is suing Google for billions of dollars over claims the Android operating system infringes on a number of its key patents, adding to the intellectual property actions already taken by Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, eBay and Gemalto against Mountain View. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for Delaware and relates to six patents, which BT said are infringed by Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android. According to the lawsuit, “BT brings this action to recover the just compensation it is owed and to prevent Google from continuing to benefit from BT’s inventions without authorization.” The filing goes on to name a number of US patents BT applied for and, except for one, were granted in the 1990s, which it alleges Android is infringing on. If successful, the suit could mean Google or the mobile’s handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and that is produced. That could be expensive business – Android is currently the bestselling smartphone globally, with its handsets making up more than 40 per cent of sales and more than 40 million produced every quarter. Florian Mueller, an independent expert who closely follows international patent litigation, said: “Android already had more than enough intellectual problems anyway. Now Google faces one more large organisation that believes its rights are infringed

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Google sued by BT over Android OS