law

As Apple and Samsung have proved, everyone has some kind of patent on something -- which means that everyone could, in theory, sue someone else for some other feature that seems blindingly similar to their own feature.

It all comes down to how much money you have, how good your lawyers are, and what moods judges and juries happen to be in.

When Facebook introduced the "Like" button, it seemed so thoroughly obvious that you couldn't believe someone hadn't thought of it before -- a 5-year-old in Bangalore, for example.

Now, a patent company called Rembrandt Social Media has decided it holds the patent for, well, liking things online and a few other aspects of Facebook.… Read more

Sometimes, even after a murder conviction, some see reasonable doubt that the conviction was a righteous one.

Such is the case in the murder of Dennis and Merna Koula in La Cross, Wisc, a quiet community.

Their son Eric was found guilty and is currently serving two consecutive life-sentences for the murder of the wealthy couple.

It was Eric Koula who found the body. It was Eric Koula whose alibi didn't stand up. Eric Koula was broke.

Yet as CBS News' "48 Hours" reported, there are some inconsistencies that some can't quite put aside. They include … Read more

The names Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Fredrik Neij might not mean much to the average person, but in the annals of Internet history, they will always be known as the co-founders of The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular file-sharing hubs of all time.

Now you can view an 82-minute documentary titled "TPB AFK" (The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard), a film that chronicles the people behind the Pirate Bay attempting -- and failing -- to navigate past Swedish authorities who accused them of numerous copyright infringement charges.

The movie, released under a Creative Commons license and directed by Simon Klose, officially debuted for free today online and at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Here's the official synopsis from the "TPB AFK" Web site:… Read more

Gamers are emotional.

They live in the moment. And sometimes they die in the moment -- which leads to self-expression, occasionally involving shouts, screams, and the rending of garments.

One Call of Duty player in Sweden though, may not have been prepared for the result of his pained outburst.

Kotaku directs me toward the reporting of Sweden's the Local, which describes how a group of teens were playing Call Of Duty and quite naturally became vocal.

You know how it is with Call Of Duty. Sometimes, you die. In this particular case, after an especially galling death, one of … Read more

According to friends of Rodrigo Diaz, they were all going ice skating. Diaz was driving the car, and they were going to pick up one more skater.

They pulled into a driveway, which their GPS -- at least, according to one of the friends -- told them was their destination.

Then, as WSB-TV Atlanta explains, this tale took a troubling turn.

According to Yeson Jimenez, 15, one of the passengers, Diaz pulled into a driveway; then 69-year-old Phillip Sailors peered out of a window of the house.

He allegedly came out, went back inside, then emerged again, firing a gun … Read more

Babies and guns go together like salmon and WD-40. Still, in the inevitable quest to amuse, excite, fascinate or merely catch the eye of those who saunter around Facebook's dark corners, sometimes people feel the need to post odd things.

Domonic Gaines thought it might be (perhaps) fun to post a picture of him holding his 1-year-old daughter while also holding a gun.

The desired effect is unknown. But the slightly less desirable result was that he was arrested for child endangerment.

As Fox 19 in Cincinnati reports, Gaines, a 22-year-old from Colerain Township, Ohio, is currently being held … Read more

Twitter must hand over the identities of users in France who post racist tweets, a French court ruled today.

According to AFP, the court's ruling stemmed from a test case "that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech," and answered a petition made in October by the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which had claimed that many anti-Semitic tweets had violated the law in the European country.

The UEJF had demanded that Twitter do a better job of policing obviously anti-Semitic tweets.

Twitter said today in a statement that "we are … Read more

Sometimes, readers send me things to incite an emotion or two.

Sometimes it's laughter. Sometimes it's nausea. Sometimes, though, it's mere bafflement.

An example of this last one came from a reader in Houston. She sent me a lease agreement created by a company called Fine Arts Apartments.

She asked me to focus on one particular clause: "No use of electronics in common areas."

This seemed so peculiarly draconian that I wondered how it might have come about.

Did it really mean that you couldn't walk along the corridors of one of Fine Arts … Read more

If I were Wayne Dobson, I'd move house. I'd move a few blocks away from his Las Vegas home. Or I'd leave Las Vegas altogether.

Dobson, you see, suffers constantly by virtue exclusively of where he lives.

Angry Sprint customers turn up at his door and demand he gives them their cell phones back.

He doesn't have their cell phone. He doesn't have anyone's cell phone. He doesn't even own a cell phone.

As the Las Vegas Review-Journal painfully portrays it, 59-year-old Dobson is at his wit's end.

However, he's also … Read more