Joel Tenenbaum, a 25-year-old Boston University graduate student, is accused by the Recording Industry Association of America of downloading at least seven songs and making 816 music files available for distribution on the Kazaa file-sharing network through 2004.

The recording industry's lawsuit against him is part of an aggressive campaign targeting people who share music online. The industry says it has lost more than $3 billion because of peer-to-peer networks that enable Internet users to share large numbers of songs online.

Record company lawyers believe Tenenbaum downloaded the songs on his parents' computer in Providence and urged a federal magistrate on Tuesday for permission to copy the machine's hard drive for proof of copyright infringement.

"The information on the computer is directly relevant and material to the underlying claims in this case," said attorney Daniel Cloherty.

But Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor representing Arthur and Judie Tenenbaum and their son, said the computer contains information protected by attorney-client privilege and holds other sensitive and personal material that has nothing to do with the case.

"You can hardly imagine anything more intrusive than asking anyone to disgorge a computer," said Nesson, who is also challenging in U.S. District Court in Boston the constitutionality of a federal copyright law that the music industry has used to target song-swappers.

Nesson also argued that the computer was not the one on which the alleged downloading took place. Judie Tenenbaum has said in an affidavit that the couple bought the computer after their son had left home, and that he had used it only occasionally to check his e-mail during visits.

A $49 million infringement ruling in favor of 800 Adept against Targus Information Corp. was overturned Aug. 29 by the U.S. Court of Appeals due to faulty claim construction and other trial-court errors.

In 2006, Vienna, Va.-based Targus lost an infringement case filed by Orlando-based 800 Adept for technology used to route calls to 800-numbers that the Orlando company says was patented technology.

The initial verdict included the $49 million award in damages against Targus, in addition to nearly $6 million in attorney fees.

"We always believed that there was never any basis for this lawsuit and that the jury verdict was totally misguided. We refused to settle and had the courage of our convictions to see it through to the appeals court," said George G. Moore, CEO of Targus Information Corp., in a prepared statement.

Orlando law firms Allen, Dyer, Doppelt, Milbrath & Gilchrist and Maher Law Firm co-represented 800 Adept.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., helps clarify a murky area of the law concerning how much control programmers can exert over their intellectual property once it's been released for free into the so-called "open source" software community.

People are free to use that material in their own products, but they must credit the original authors of the programming code and release their modifications into the wild as well, a cycle that's critical for free software to continue improving.

Because the code was given away for free, thorny questions emerge when a violation has been discovered and someone is found to have shoved the code into their own for-profit products without giving anything back, in the form of attribution and disclosure of the alterations they made.

In the latest case, which involved a computer application that model-train enthusiasts use to program the chips that control their trains, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled that the plaintiff could sue for breach of contract but not copyright infringement.

The distinction is important because it's easier to recover monetary damages in a copyright-infringement case.

Robert Jacobsen, who manages an open source software group that created an application he claims was infringed, sought an injunction against KAM Industries, which makes a competing product. The lower court denied Jacobsen's motion. The appeals court vacated that ruling Wednesday and returned the case to the district court.

"Traditionally, copyright owners sold their copyrighted material in exchange for money," the court said. "The lack of money changing hands in open source licensing should not be presumed to mean that there is no economic consideration, however."

In its lawsuit, Mattel claims the Web site is pornographic and Global sold memberships to persons around the world.

The company, which has principal address in Hollywood, Fla., is listed as inactive on the Florida Department of State Division of Corporations Web site.

No phone number could be located late Tuesday for Global or its registered agent in Hollywood, Fla.

Mattel has aggressively pursued actions against a variety of Web sites that use the Barbie name in the past.

In 1999, Mattel pursued a lawsuit in New York against a Las Vegas company that operated an adult Web site registered as barbiesplaypen.com. A federal judge ultimately ordered the domain

The U.S. International Trade Commission imposed the ban June 7 after ruling that San Diego-based Qualcomm's chips infringed a Broadcom patent on battery power-saving technology.

The court "made no determination of the substantive merits" of Qualcomm's appeal, said Emily Kilpatrick, a spokeswoman for the company. Qualcomm will renew its appeal and seek a delay in the ban after Aug. 6 if the administration does not reverse the import limits, she said.

The ITC's ruling allows the importation of cell phone models available as of June 7, but bans new models with infringing chips. The ruling will limit the availability of cell phones compatible with high-speed wireless data networks built by Verizon Wireless, an affiliate of Verizon Communications Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc.'s wireless division.

Mobile phone makers LG Electronics Inc., Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. will also be hit. The wireless carriers and phone manufacturers joined Qualcomm's appeal and the carriers have also supported its lobbying efforts in Washington.

But in an additional blow to Qualcomm, Verizon Wireless yesterday withdrew its support after striking a deal with Broadcom to license its technology. Verizon Wireless agreed to pay Broadcom $6 for each phone with an infringing Qualcomm chip, up to $40 million a quarter or $200 million over the life of the agreement.

Rebecca Arbogast, a telecommunications analyst at investment bank Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc., said Verizon Wireless's move "substantially reduces the chance there will be a presidential veto."

Verizon Wireless was a driving force behind the wireless carriers' efforts in support of a reversal of the ban, Arbogast said.

The company is a member of CTIA, the wireless industry's top lobbying group, which has urged the administration to overturn the ITC's ruling. John Walls, vice president for public affairs, said CTIA still supports a presidential veto.

The deal between Broadcom and Verizon Wireless also demonstrates that a commercial solution to the dispute exists, Arbogast said.

Presidential vetoes of ITC decisions are rare, with the most recent in 1987, an ITC official said last month. The White House will defer to the recommendation of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, as it has on ITC rulings since 2005.

Meanwhile, five Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab July 12 in support of a veto.

The ITC's order "will stifle the efforts of wireless carriers to deliver cutting-edge technologies to American consumers," said the letter, which was signed by Reps. Joe Barton of Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida, among others.

New York Democrats Rep. Charles Rangel and Sen. Charles Schumer also wrote administration officials last week against the ban.

Broadcom's chief executive Scott McGregor said Thursday that Qualcomm "appears...to have bet their future...on their political lobbying skills."