Tech Law: Google Hat Trick; Bankruptcies Galore; More

A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world.

Google Books settlement challenged — An official opposition hasn’t yet been filed, but many interested parties are challenging the class action suit settlement that would let Google have what are effectively exclusive rights to so-called orphaned works, where rights holders for out-of-print books cannot be found. Don’t expect a formal legal challenge to be far behind, as Microsoft as put $50,000 into the kitty to fund such an effort. [Source: The New York Times, Search Engine Land]

Google pays to make a different class action go away — Google shells out $20 million to end a long-running class action over budget caps set by advertisers using Google AdWords. [Source: Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog]

And Google told to defend a trademark suit — It’s a high tech court hat trick for Google. A U.S. District Court had dismissed Rescuecom’s trademark suit against Google over the latter allowing its customers to buy the former’s name as a trigger for ad displays. But now a Court of Appeals ruling overturned the dismissal and is ordering Google to defend itself. [Source: Reuters]

Ritz Camera to close 40 percent of all stores — As part of a bankruptcy restructuring, Ritz Camera will close 300 stores, or about 40 percent of its current 700 locations. [Source: TWICE]

Smart Technologies suing NextWindow — The Canadian Smart Technologies is suing New Zealand-based NextWindow for alleged patent infringement. [Source: DigiTimes]

Swedish antipiracy law scares off IP traffic — The day after Sweden passed an antipiracy law that forced ISPs to provide IP addresses for file sharers, Internet traffic between the country and the rest of the world dropped by a third. [Source: Silicon Valley Insider]

Applied Materials trumps Oerikon — In an oral decision, the European Patent Office has sided with Applied Materials in a thin-film solar technology battle and revoked a patent used by Oerikon. [Source: DigiTimes]

Silicon Graphics files for bankruptcy — Silicon Graphics has filed for bankruptcy and is selling its assets to Rackable Systems for $25 million. [Source: The Wall Street Journal ]

SeeqPod files for bankruptcy — Music search engine SeeqPod filed for bankruptcy after a number of the record labels sued the company. [Source: Ars Technica]

Gavel image via Flickr user Thomas Roche, CC 2.0.