Tech Legal Week: 'Vista Capable' and Microsoft, RIAA Appeal, Facebook Sues, More

Expert says that Microsoft has made $1.5 billion from Vista Capable — As part of the Vista Capable class action suit, Keith Leffler, an economist at the University of Washington that the plaintiffs hired, estimated that Microsoft has made $1.5 billion from licensing Windows XP on machines labeled as Vista Capable but not Vista Premium Ready. The question remains whether people even cared if they could upgrade to Vista. [Source: SeattleTechReport]

Microsoft wins Chinese piracy case — A Chinese court convicted 11 people of violating China’s copyright laws and operating a counterfeiting ring that sold pirated Microsoft software. Each of the defendants received prison terms. And people think that copyright enforcement in the U.S. is strict. [Source: The New York Times]

RIAA won’t get to appeal mistrial — A copyright infringement suit that the RIAA brought against a Minnesota woman was tossed and the judge ordered a mistrial because he said he misled the jury to think that making a song available for sharing was the same as infringement. Now the RIAA’s attempt to appeal this decision, and avoid another trial, has been shot down. So it’s back to court in March. [Source: CNET]

RIAA drops piracy watchdog– Given some disappointing court losses and more bad publicity than you can shake a media empire at, it might not be surprising that the recording industry, in the form of the RIAA, is backing off from its tough stance on individual piracy and ending its relationship with MediaSentry, which collected evidence for the lawsuits. [Source: The Wall Street Journal ]

Facebook sues Power.com — Facebook brought suit against social networking portal Power.com for “irreparable and incalculable harm” from copyright and trademark infringement. Yes, the Brazil-based Power.com is quite the marketing powerhouse. [Source: New York Times Bits]

Cree and Bridgelux settle patent infringement suit — After two years, Cree, which makes efficient lighting systems, settled its patent infringement suit against Bridgelux, which makes LEDs. The latter will pay a licensing fee to the former and make Cree one of its vendors. [Source: VentureBeat]