Tech Legal Week: Apple Sued, Siemens Settles, Polaroid Files, More

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Hasbro drops suit against Scrabulous– The brothers who wrote Scrabulous, the popular online version of the word game Scrabble, said that they won’t use that name any more and Harbro has agreed to drop its suits. Watchers are expecting joint custody of q, x, z, and any other high-scoring letters. [Source: AP]

Siemens settles cases and will pay huge fines — Siemens pled guilty to violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and is settling a civil suit brought by the SEC. The amount is either $1.34 billion or $1.6 billion, depending on whether you look at the headline or the first paragraph in the New York Times story. The question is what the company, which admitted to massive bribery as a tactic to win contracts, will do to keep bringing in business. [Source: New York Times, BusinessWeek]

SAP still faces Oracle suit — A judge rejected most of the motions from SAP to dismiss parts of the suit that Oracle has brought against it. [Source: Computerworld]

Australia OK’s social networks as way to deliver legal notices — An Australian court ruled that a mortgage lender could use Facebook to serve legal documents to a couple. Are they going to call it serving electrons? [Source: AP]

U.S. ITC to investigate Samsung and LG — The International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate a charge by Kodak that Samsung and LG infringed some of its imaging patents. [Source: Computerworld]

EA ad in UK not OK — The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority called an EA ad for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09″misleading” because it showed Woods using a Wii controller but showed footage from the Xbox 360 version. And here we thought that everyone was just learning to get along. [Source: GameDaily]

Apple sued over Apple TV — EZ4Media, Inc., which makes wireless digital media players, is suing Apple, claiming that the company hired three of its employees and that patented technology to which the trio was privy wound up in Apple TV. [Source: AppleInsider]

Polaroid files for bankruptcy — Polaroid filed for bankruptcy on Friday and said it was related to “apparent fraudulent acts” by its parent company. [Source: CNET]

Erik Sherman is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times Magazine, Technology Review, the Financial Times, Chief Executive, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter.