Hasta La Gadget!

You personally may not have heard of Soverain Software, but the company is well-known to many online retailers. While Soverain owns several patents, they’re not a legitimate company, but rather a patent troll. They’ve been suing online retailers left and right for the past few years, claiming that their patent entitles them to 1% of every shopping cart transaction on the internet, but computer parts retailer Newegg.com finally took them down.

Soverain actually ended up suing Newegg for $2.5 million in 2010, and won. They also sued Amazon in 2005 and walked away with $40 million. However, unlike other online retailers, Newegg wanted to fight until the death. Instead of taking the safe road financially and settling with Soverain, Newegg decided to take down the retail patent troll for good.

Newegg ended up getting the 2010 court case overturned, thus invalidating all other lawsuits handed out by Soverain, effectively ending their reign on online shopping patent trolling. Newegg’s Chief Legal Officer Lee Cheng says that the attitudes of the court officials had a lot to do with Newegg’s win, when they finally decided that enough was enough and gave Soverain what it deserved.

Chong says that this isn’t the first time that the company has been hit with bogus lawsuits, saying that companies “claim to own the drop-down menu, or a search box, or Web navigation.” Chong also said that one of the reasons that Newegg was able to fight back so relentlessly was that the company is majority-controlled and had a bit more freedom to fight as opposed to other online retailers.

[via Ars Technica]

Newegg takes down infamous shopping cart patent troll is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back in December, you might remember when Facebook offered to settle a class-action lawsuit that saw the social network illegally use its users’ “Like” information on various Sponsored Stories. Instead of taking it to court, the company decided to settle to the tune of $20 million, and if you received an email about the settlement, it means that you’re entitled to up to $10 if you fill out a claims form.

Emails were planned to be sent out starting at the beginning of January, and they’re still being rolled out as we speak. The email titled, “LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION” invites you to take about five minutes to fill out a claims form that may entitle you to up to $10. We say “may” because the settlement agreement states that if it becomes “infeasible” to dish out a couple dollars to every person involved, the $20 million will simply just go to charity.

However, if payments do decide to go out to users, you’ll see a check arrive in your mailbox sometime after June. Many users have been wondering if the email was a scam, because it does include some confusing legal talk along with a title in all caps, but we assure you that the settlement is real, and Facebook is willing to give you a slice for it.

Facebook has over 150 million users in the US, and the settlement is only $20 million, so if every US user sent in a claim, each person would only receive $0.13. However, we doubt every person will send in a claim, but even if only 20 million of US users sent in a claim, that’s only a $1 per person — a stamp alone takes away almost half that, so the money may very well end up going to charity.

Facebook sending out emails for “Sponsored Stories” lawsuit settlement is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Director and writer Frank Darabont, best known for Green Mile and The Walking Dead TV series, claimed that Rockstar Games threatened to sue him and the TNT network for creating a TV show called LA Noir, which Rockstar thought that was too close for comfort with their video game LA Noire. However, Take-Two Interactive, which owns Rockstar, has denied the claims made my Darabont.

In an interview with io9, Darabont says that Rockstar “threatened to sue the shit out of [him], TNT, every company that actually ever worked in Hollywood. And they have the billions of dollars to back it up, apparently.” Because of that, Darabont says that he’s changing the title of his new TV show from LA Noir to Lost Angels. The show is set in 1947 Los Angeles, and it will star Jon Bernthal.

While the previous name, setting, and timeframe of the new TV series seems dangerously close to Rockstar’s LA Noire video game, Darabont says that the TV show is based on a novel titled “LA Noir,” and has nothing to do with Rockstar’s game. However, while Darabont claims that he was threatened with a lawsuit, Take-Two said that nothing of the sort happened.

Speaking with Joystiq, the game publishing company claims that they only approached TNT in order to “express concern over confusion between the properties,” but say that they have never approached Darabont. The actions that led Darabont to change the name of the show are completely unrelated, according to Take-Two.

[via Joystiq]

Rockstar reportedly threatened to sue TV show over LA Noire name, Take-Two denies claims is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This isn’t the first time that the French have gotten involved with shenanigans on Twitter, but today the French government has announced that they’re getting rid of the hashtag and replacing it with what they’re calling the “mot-dièse,” or “sharp-word.” However, citizens of France won’t be required to adopt the new style, but the government will be using it for now on in official documentation.

The decision was made by the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologisme, which seeks to get rid of common English terms in the French language by finding proper French alternatives. However, one possible issue with the new phrase is that “mot-dièse” denotes the sharp sign (♯), rather than the right-leaning number sign, or the hashtag symbol on Twitter (#).

It turns out that the rise of social media and various other technologies have resulted in the subsequent rise in the use of English slang words in foreign languages. A spokesman for the Office Québécois de la Langue Française said that “borrowing too many words from English opens the door to a mishmash of French and English.” This could possibly have an impact on French phonetics and grammar, and not just terminology.

Again, this isn’t the first time that the French have criticized Twitter’s features. Hashtags have been a problem for the French government in the past after racist hashtags, such as #UnBonJuif (“#AGoodJew”), raised a cause for concern in European country, and local courts have been in battle with Twitter to handle offensive content.

[via The Huffington Post]

French government replaces Twitter hashtag with “mot-dièse” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple has been receiving a fair bit of backlash over how some of their suppliers treat their workers, not to mention that some of their suppliers allegedly employ underaged workers as well. Tim Cook has made trips to Foxconn in the past and the Cupertino company has conducted checks in the past, and it looks like all that talk has finally resulted in action as Apple has announced that they would be ending their relationship with one of their suppliers. According to Senior Vice President of Operations, Jeff Williams (via Reuters), the company has ended their relationship with one of their component suppliers, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics over the fact that there were issues regarding underaged labors. In a statement, Williams was quoted as saying, “We go deep in the supply chain to find it […] And when we do find it, we ensure that the underage workers are taken care of, the suppliers are dealt with.” What do you guys think? Is this the beginning of more displays of corporate social responsibility by Apple, and do you think it will be enough to quiet the naysayers?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Best Buy Discounts MacBook Air Starting At $799 Today And Tomorrow, iPad 5 Expected To Resemble An iPad Mini And Release In October [Rumor],