The lawsuit was filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York “for massive intentional copyright infringement of Viacom’s entertainment properties”.

Viacom wants 1 billion dollars from Google and YouTube, also requesting an injunction that would prohibit the two Web giants (which are now one, after Google’s acquisition of YouTube last year for 1.65 billion dollars) from further displaying Viacom’s copyrighted materials on YouTube or on Google Video.

Google immediately responded saying: “We are confident that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders and believe the courts will agree. YouTube is great for users and offers real opportunities to rights holders: the opportunity to interact with users; to promote their content to a young and growing audience; and to tap into the online advertising market. We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community."

YouTube and Google’s lawyers subsequently declared that the DMCA is enough to prove Google’s innocence.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which criminalizes production and dissemination of technology whose primary purpose is to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on October 8, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended title 17 of the U.S. Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of Online Providers from copyright infringement by their users.

On May 22, 2001, the European Union passed the EU Copyright Directive or EUCD, similar in many ways to the DMCA.

"Here there is a law which is specifically designed to give Web hosts such as us, or... bloggers or people that provide photo-album hosting online ... the 'safe harbor' we need in order to be able to do hosting online," said Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property, during an interview with Reuters.

"We will never launch a product or acquire a company unless we are completely satisfied with its legal basis for operating," Macgillivray added.

Viacom’s complaint contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips from its cable networks, which include MTV, Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon have been posted illegally on YouTube and that these clips had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Viacom is especially at risk of losing money from advertisement when its content is displayed on YouTube, since many of its popular shows, like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report or South Park, are aimed at younger audiences, which are also heavy Internet users.

Viacom slammed YouTube’s copyright policy saying that: “YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.  Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.  In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”

Notwithstanding Viacom’s accusations, Macgillivray is confident that Google will win, citing also a previous dismissal of another copyright lawsuit, filed by Nevada attorney Blake Field.

"This is an area of law where there are a bunch of really clear precedents, so Amazon and eBay have both been found to qualify for the safe harbor and there are a whole bunch more," Macgillivray said.

"We will continue to innovate and continue to host material for people, without being distracted by this suit."

Hutchison Law Group PLLC, the leading provider of strategic business and intellectual property counsel to the Southeast’s life science and technology communities, is pleased to announce that Thomas E. Holsten and Caroline Horton Rockafellow have joined the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice Group, and Amalie L. Tuffin has joined the firm’s Corporate and Securities Practice Group.

“We are excited to have these talented, experienced attorneys join our firm,” said Hutchison Law Group Executive Committee Member Bill Wofford. “For many of our clients, the creation and exploitation of intellectual property is essential to their success. Tom will help life science companies build valuable patent portfolios and Caroline will play a key role in licensing and commercializing these patents and other technologies.”

Helga Leftwich, another Member of Hutchison Law Group, added, “We have a highly sophisticated and growing corporate and corporate finance practice, and Amalie’s deep knowledge of tax and equity compensation will help us continue to provide excellent service to clients in these ever-changing areas of the law.”

Thomas E. Holsten focuses on patent law matters for clients in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, including counseling clients on patent protection strategies, coordinating and conducting due diligence investigations of patent portfolios and preparing and prosecuting patent applications. He has assisted clients with a variety of technologies in areas such as peptide hormonal therapeutics, genomics, bioinformatics, gene expression, small molecule and genetic engineering. Prior to joining Hutchison Law Group, Holsten practiced at the law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, DC. Prior to law school, he was a patent agent and research assistant with Monsanto Company, a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products. Holsten was also involved in research at the University of California at Davis concerning the cloning and characterization of agriculturally important genes. He received his J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law Center and earned a B.S. in Biology from East Carolina University.

Caroline Horton Rockafellow provides counsel to life science and information technology companies, concentrating her practice on legal issues impacting the use and commercialization of intellectual property. Rockafellow speaks and writes often on intellectual property matters and is a member of numerous organizations and associations. She is the immediate past co-chair of the RTP chapter of the Licensing Executives Society (LES). Rockafellow is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Prior to joining Hutchison Law Group, Rockafellow practiced at the RTP law firm of Daniels Daniels & Verdonik, in addition to serving as in-house counsel at both a biotechnology company and a software development corporation. She received her J.D. and Masters in Intellectual Property from Franklin Pierce Law Center and earned her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Drury University.

Amalie L. Tuffin focuses her practice on corporate governance and transactions, in addition to domestic taxation for life science and information technology companies. Prior to joining Hutchison Law Group, Tuffin practiced at the RTP law firm of Daniels Daniels & Verdonik. She was previously associated with Peabody & Arnold in Boston. Tuffin is a member of both the Committee on Negotiated Acquisitions and Committee on Venture Capital and Private Equity of the American Bar Association's Business Law Section. She received her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she served as a member of the Hastings International and Comparative Law Review and as an Editor of the Communication/Entertainment Law Journal. In addition, she earned her LL.M. in taxation from Boston University. Tuffin received her A.B. cum laude from Harvard University.

Combined, these attorneys bring over three decades of experience to Hutchison Law Group and its clients.

www.hutchlaw.com

By anonymizing our server logs after 18-24 months, we think we're striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google's services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices. In the future, it's possible that data retention laws will obligate us to retain logs for longer periods.

Last year, Google fought a Justice Department subpoena seeking to force the search engine giant to hand over a large amount of user data, including one week's worth of query searches and up to 1 million web addresses.

The DOJ requested the user data as part of an effort to re-write the federal Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was overturned by the Supreme Court's 2004 ruling in Ashcroft v. ACLU as a violation of First Amendment free speech protections. Microsoft and AOL complied with the DOJ subpoenas, but Google argued that the DOJ would gain little useful information from the requested data. A federal judge granted the DOJ limited access  to the Google records.

Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire the online meeting company WebEx Communications Inc. for about $3.2 billion in cash.

Cisco, the leading maker of routers and switches that direct data over computer networks, said it will pay $57 per share of WebEx. That represents a 23 percent premium over WebEx's closing price of $46.20 Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Shares of WebEx soared $10.53, or more than 22 percent, to $56.73 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Cisco shares lost 6 cents to $25.79 on the same exchange.

Cisco said the acquisition has been approved by both boards and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. Cisco said it expects transaction to have an immaterial effect on its fiscal year 2008 earnings after one-time charges are subtracted. The total purchase price will be about $2.9 billion when factoring in WebEx's $300 million in cash on hand.

The San Jose-based company has recently made a number of acquisitions branching out from its core business of supplying networking gear and into communications, social networking and other areas that help drive traffic over the network and increase demand for its core equipment.

Santa Clara-based WebEx makes applications that enable online conferences and secure instant messaging. The company says it commands 64 percent of the online meeting market, with more than 3.5 million people using WebEx services every month for online communications.

Cisco said the acquisition will allow it to tap into the increasingly lucrative market for business communications over the Internet.

"As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently," Charles H. Giancarlo, Cisco's chief development officer, said in a statement. "The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications."

Some analysts expressed concern on a conference call about the price of the deal, considering WebEx had just $380 million in revenue last year and just under $49 million in net income. Some also suggested that Cisco could have snagged the company at a much cheaper price had it acted sooner. WebEx's stock price rose more than 56 percent since last year, based on the company's closing price before the deal was announced.

However, some industry observers said the deal is a perfect fit for Cisco's Linksys division, beefing up its offerings for small businesses. The deal also will also give WebEx access to larger business customers and the opportunity for expanded growth worldwide, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc.

"From Cisco's point of view, it makes some sense: You're beefing up Linksys, you're grabbing a player that can help increase the value of the Linksys franchise, and you're a grabbing a player that's already well established in markets you've assessed will have high growth rates," Kay said.

The split three-judge opinion from Judge Harry Pregerson expressed sympathy for some arguments by plaintiff Angel Raich, 41, an Oakland resident whose doctor testified she could die if she stopped smoking pot. But the ruling backed the 1970 federal Controlled Substances Act barring marijuana.

Raich, who suffers from many ailments, says marijuana keeps her alive by easing pain and bolstering appetite.

"Today I found out I am basically a dead man walking," Raich, who once worked as an accountant and massage therapist, told Reuters. "Today the court said I don't have the constitutional right to basically stay alive."

The mother of two said U.S. officials had never moved to arrest her or bar her from using marijuana and said she would continue to do so every two hours. "I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't," she said.

Raich said she would lobby Congress in Washington to change U.S. law. The court said use of the drug for medical purposes was gaining support but federal law still banned it.

"We agree with Raich that medical and conventional wisdom that recognizes the use of marijuana for medical purposes is gaining traction in the law as well," the judge wrote.

The ruling acknowledged the law could change if legislators reconsider the issue.

"Although that day has not yet dawned, considering that during the last 10 years 11 states have legalized the use of medical marijuana, that day may be upon on us sooner than expected," Pregerson said.

Voters in California, the nation's most populous state, became the first to approve medical marijuana in 1996, putting it in direct conflict with federal law. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitting using marijuana in the past.

Suspected of conducting dubious financial transactions, Eric Yu, senior vice president at BenQ, has been detained by Taiwanese police and finance managers Alex Liou and Billy Liou were arrested and then released on bail.

BenQ made an announcement on Wednesday, saying that their offices in Taoyuan and Taipei had been raided by the police and the sudden check had something to do with the company's payment of bonuses to its overseas employees.
The BenQ spokesperson says that they will fully cooperate with the investigation.

In 2005, BenQ purchased Siemens' handset unit, but the company failed to build it into much of anything. Following the detention of Yu, BenQ's stock dropped dropped by 7% to its lowest level in years, as investors started to question the company's corporate governance.