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As explained by Ars Technica, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster, and Apple accomplished the alleged e-book price fixing in a two-step process. First, Apple allegedly agreed to sell at a price set by the publishers, taking only a cut of the proceeds. From the perspective of in house counsel, the most concerning thing about these allegations shouldn’t be that they may be true, but that Apple CEO Jobs has made well-publicized statements that indicate that they are true....

A lot of ink has been devoted these past few weeks over Apple’s resistance to the FBI. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has repeatedly made his position clear that Apple customers’ security is among the company’s top concerns. However, there have been some concerns raised that the company might have been less than staunch in this view in the past when dealing with China. Is this a case of double standards in resisting government demands?...

Occasionally, I stop for a bagel on my way into work. On Fridays, however, my office offers a carbohydrate smörgåsbord: bagels and donuts and donut holes. Oh, and fruit. So Friday, instead of scrambling eggs at home (about 90 cents) or buying a bagel (about $2), I load up on carbs for free at the office. Should I be taxed on that amount? The answer turns on whether the IRS considers my bagel a fringe benefit....

It’s not paranoia if people really are following you. AT&T knows that, and will stop selling data-tracking information in March. That’s the information that tells mobile-based services where you are, where you have been, and where you are going. The cellular provider still needs to know for GPS and other reasons, but AT&T heard the complaints about third-parties following customers around. They didn’t like it. Geolocation, You Motherboard reported that mobile companies like AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were selling phone location information to aggregators....

On-call scheduling has become increasingly common among large employers, especially in the retail industry. Under an on-call scheduling system, employees set aside work hours and check in before their schedule to make sure they’re needed. It allows employers greater flexibility in scheduling, but can leave workers with unpredictable schedules and incomes. GC’s who’ve given the practice a green light might want to start rethinking things. On-call scheduling could soon become more of a liability than a benefit....

DoorDash, the on-demand food-delivery service, does one thing relatively faster than deliver food: answer lawsuits. As soon as the company learned it had been sued for advertising certain burgers without permission, it stopped. Burger Antics, a Chicago restaurant, claimed trademark infringement because DoorDash had put its menus and logo on its delivery website. The burger joint’s attorney said it’s not over until DoorDash does something about the nine burger orders it wrongly delivered....

Denial of Puerto Rican community health centers’ request for an injunction to compel Secretary of Health to reimburse wraparound payments vacated Concillo De Salud Integral De Loiza, Inc. v. Perez-Perdomo, 09-2067, concerned a challenge to the district court’s denial of two Puerto Rican community health centers’ request for an injunction requiring payment by Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Health of Medicaid reimbursements that the two centers claimed to be due to them....

To the Sierra Club, Hurricane Florence is even more dangerous than has been reported. That’s because the environmentalists are watching coal ash ponds along Elizabeth River and Deep Creek in Virginia. In Sierra Club v. Virginia Electric & Power Company, they argue arsenic is leaching from the ponds into the rivers and groundwater. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said that may be true, but it is not a violation of the Clean Water Act....

“Client satisfaction” may not be the mantra of your law practice. “Retainer agreement” is probably more the catchphrase. After all, the bottom line for any business is to stay in business. But before you can count the money, you have to count on clients. So yeah, your law firm should measure client satisfaction. Here are some ideas about how to get your mantra on: Client Surveys According to an Altman Weil Pensa survey, more than 85 percent of respondents say law firms should conduct formal satisfaction surveys....

Who knew that Wikipedia would become a problem for the U.S. Courts of Appeal? Last Friday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned convictions in a case due to the fact that a juror used Wikipedia to educate himself on the elements of the crime. The judge cited several other appeals cases where the credibility of Wikipedia had come into question. On appeal, Lawson raised several challenges to his conviction. The most interesting one, however, is that Wikipedia contributed to a Sixth Amendment violation of his rights to Due Process....

In these modern times of wearable tech and 3D printed doodads, a reasonable person usually doesn’t act before Googling, and a reasonably prudent person never acts without Googling twice. The world might as well update the age-old idiom to: Google twice, click once. And when it comes to the reasonable person standard, a.k.a. the reasonably prudent person standard, the internet has changed everything … maybe. For litigators, proving someone didn’t act reasonably when they had the opportunity to Google might seem like a stretch, but is it?...

Setting up a rural law practice should be easy. After all, you will get business when you are the only attorney within 100 miles. Not only that, some states literally pay lawyers to practice in the country. So why is it so hard for law firms to reach rural clients? Blame the internet or blame the lawyers – somebody has to be at fault. Here’s a look at how you can reach rural clients....

In a case arising from bankruptcy proceedings involving fraudulent transfers, given the deficiencies of the present briefing, the appeal is dismissed and defendant’s counsel ordered to show cause by written response as to why the court should not order payment by him personally of attorney’s fees, double costs or both for a brief that renders the appeal frivolous. Read In re: Simply Media, Inc. , No. 08-2498 Appellate Information Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire...

Internet Monopoly money – that’s what many of us would have labeled Bitcoin in its early days. Of course, we’re kicking ourselves for not buying in to the faux currency in its infancy, but that doesn’t make it any more viable long-term – it’s more like a roulette wheel that is juiced to pay out for the first few years. What about now? Though Bitcoin’s value has skyrocketed, average folks can’t mine coins anymore....

Social media has gotten huge. Today, the media part of it is bigger than ever, too. And while regulations are starting to pop up requiring advertisers to disclose when content has been paid-for or promoted, courts are being asked more and more often to decide what space these online platforms occupy: Public forum, publisher, or simply online platform. When it comes to Facebook, the question of what exactly the website does can be tricky to answer, particularly after the recent data mining scandal....

In a recently filed lawsuit, one video-game-playing, music-loving plaintiff has filed a lawsuit against Activision due to feeling burned by a recent purchase of Guitar Hero Live. The lawsuit essentially claims that the Activision has misled consumers into buying the game title because 92 percent of the game will be unplayable in a matter of weeks. That limitation on the game are being imposed as a result of a planned shutdown of Activision’s online servers that support the “Guitar Hero TV” mode....

While we thought the problems that existed between Galileo and the Pope were long gone, we are still faced with the same division between science and religion. Yes, the Technologist Blog is supposed to talk about technological advancements as they relate to the law, or make the legal profession more efficient, but now Kansas has flipped the switch and sent us back to Bizarro World with its new lawsuit. The Next Generation Science Standards (“NGSS”) are a set of education science standards set to enhance the quality of science education among American students, according to Ars Technica....

In an online-automobile dealer’s action against a defendant-website company that allows consumers to comment on the quality of businesses, goods, and services, claiming that certain of these posted comments are false and harmful to its reputation, district court’s grant of defendant-company’s motion for summary judgment is affirmed as, the district court did not err in granting the Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss because plaintiff failed to plead facts sufficient to show defendant was an information provider and not covered by Communications Decency Act (CDA) immunity....

Ian Callaghan and Kenya Moore worked at a teen center at a San Francisco high school. During the school year, supervisors asked employees to list pros and cons about working there. Things reportedly got tense, however, when more cons than pros were listed. During the summer, Callaghan and Moore continued to work for the teen center in different capacities. When the school year arrived, both were rehired, but Moore was demoted, allegedly because of poor performance over the summer....

The Supreme Court rejected the Forsyth County prayer case today. Forsyth County and the Alliance Defense Fund were appealing a July decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners (Board) could only open meetings with nonsectarian prayers. The Board created a written policy for meeting invocations in 2007. Using phone books, Internet research, and resources from the local Chamber of Commerce, the clerk to the Board compiled and maintained the “Congregations List,” a database of all religious congregations with an established presence in the community....