Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Norton Symantec upgrade class action settlement

Reader A.V. writes:

Dear Overlawyered,

I’ve won the class action lottery!

According to the e-mail I received today from Symantec (I’ve been a long-time user of their Norton computer security products), my prize is either: (1) a $15.00 voucher redeemable for the online purchase of any Symantec products; or (2) a cash payment of $2.50. Plaintiffs’ class counsel? Oh, they get “an amount not to exceed $2,275,000.00.”

I know you’ll be pleased for me.

There’s a settlement website in Heverly/Margolis v. Symantec Corp. with further details. Other readers have written in to say they got similar notices. And this morning I too got a notice, so apparently I’m a class member as well. The lawyers who’ve been representing us all this time without our realizing are Green & Pagano of New Brunswick, N.J., Kantrowitz Goldhamer & Graifman of Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., Chavez & Gertler LLP of Mill Valley, Calif., Smolow & Landis of Trevose, Pa., and Kendrick & Nutley of Pasadena, Calif.

More: “Can’t we do better than this?” Jeff Sovern weighs in at Consumer Law & Policy.

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“A Tidal Wave of Regulations to Hit IT Shores”

If enterprise IT departments and data managers thought the compliance burdens of Sarbanes-Oxley were tough, they’d better brace themselves for an even bigger wave of regulation to come, brought on as part of Washington’s reaction to the financial crisis. [Paul Rubens, ServerWatch] More: Jeff Nolan, Venture Chronicles, to whom thanks also for the kind words.

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March 31 roundup

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Troll trips up: SCO told to pay Novell $2.5 million

Bankrupt SCO Group Inc., much loathed for its (sometimes successful) efforts to extract copyright royalties from users of the open-source Linux system, has suffered another humiliating defeat in a Utah federal courtroom. The court proceedings determined, among other things, that SCO didn’t in fact own the copyrights it claimed to own, and had breached its fiduciary duty under an earlier agreement with Novell. (Ars Technica, Information Week, GrokLaw). At the height of SCO’s notoriety, the high-profile law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner was pursuing its anti-Linux claims on contingency. Earlier here, here, and here. [Update Sept. 18, 2009: in dramatic reversal, 10th Circuit, McConnell writing, reinstates SCO’s suit; Boies firm still representing SCO. See WSJ Law Blog, 8/25/09]

In other news, progress is being made on a scheme of “defense patent aggregation”; an outfit called the RPX Corp., with subscriptions from large technology-using companies, aims to buy up (presumably lower-value) patents to keep them out of the hands of trolls (WSJ Law Blog).

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Julie Amero case ends

A judge had overturned the conviction of the former Norwich, Ct. substitute teacher (Jul. 15, Mar. 14 and Jun. 10, 2007, etc.) over the episode in which her computer (almost certainly infected with unwanted malware) displayed a stream of dirty popup windows while her students were watching. To the amazement of many, prosecutors refused to drop the charges and moved to hold a second trial. Now Amero has agreed to resolve the episode by pleading down to a single misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct, as opposed to the 40 years she could have gotten on the original charges. (Rick Green, “Misdemeanor Plea Ends Norwich P0rnography Case”, Hartford Courant, Nov. 22).

More: “What I’d like to see come of it is a computer forensics innocence project.” (Joe Windish, The Moderate Voice; see also Balko/Reason “Hit and Run”, Bill Jempty @ WizBang, Rick Green @ Courant followup).

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“Why Libertarians Should Oppose ‘Shrinkwrap’ Contracts”

Alex Harris thinks a proper understanding of contract law would not call on buyers to go to the expense of shipping back a product if it arrived saddled with unexpected and unwelcome contract terms. But the problem seems to be going away, he says, in that that tech goods are increasingly sold in such a way as to give buyers a chance to examine the contract terms before taking possession of the product. (Technology Liberation Front, Oct. 28).

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