Tech Law: IE to Turn Off, Google Settles, Apple Sued for Exploding iTouch, More

Microsoft to add IE off switch to keep EU off its back — Some bloggers have found that the Windows 7 beta has a setting to allow users to turn off Internet Explorer. This is likely Microsoft’s way of avoiding additional antitrust charges by the European Union. Does anyone remember how Microsoft claimed in the past that IE was too interwoven into the structure of Windows to make it possible to remove? Amazing what intense work — or a big legal stick — will do. [Source: Associated Press]

Label looses additional downloaded revenue pitch — FBT Productions, which signed rapper Eminem before he became fiscally huge, had sued Universal Music, seeking greater royalties for downloaded tracks. But a jury said that there was no difference between selling a song one way or the other, so royalties stay as they were. [Source: AppleInsider]

Google settles infringement suit — Inventor Judah Klausner apparently had either a strong enough case or annoyance factor that Google settled an infringement suit over a visual voicemail patent. [Source: InternetNews]

Hitachi latest to cop a plea — Yet another company, Hitachi Displays is pleading guilty in the ongoing U.S. Justice Department action against alleged LCD panel price fixing. The corporation will be paying a $31 million fine. [Source: Associated Press]

U.S. professor sues LED makers — A Columbia professor of materials science and engineering, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, has filed a patent infringement suit against some LED makers in Taiwan and China. [Source: DigiTimes]

Hynix to pay Rambus … maybe — Given a court upholding the decision from a ten-year-old patent infringement case, Hynix has agreed “in principle” to pay $396 million to Rambus. But the former will be appealing the decision, and who knows how long that could take? [Source: Ars Technica]

Yet another consumer suing Apple — A woman in Kentucky is suing Apple over the iPod Touch. What, a consumer suing Apple? How ordinary. But how many people allege that a device exploded in someone’s pocket, resulting in second-degree burns? [Source: Red Herring]

Gavel image via Flickr user Thomas Roche, CC 2.0.