The internet is rife with theft. People take content and concepts from others on a regular basis and pawn it off as their own. It’s so common that many websites (including this one) have given up on fighting content-scrapers, spammers, and intellectual property thieves altogether. If you can get by without being too-badly hurt by them, it often isn’t worth the fight. Sometimes, however, it is so blatant that it cannot be ignored. Such is the case with Y Combinator startup Curebit who took design ideas and code directly from 37signals. The startup just received $1.2 million in funding from Dave…

The terrible summer and fall that Netflix had in 2011 seemed to have turned as poor decisions were reversed, new deals were made, and the fallout over price increases had passed. As 2012 begins, Netflix faces a new threat: its own investors. A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, by the City of Royal Oak Retirement System, on behalf of “all plaintiffs similarly situated” claims that the online and mail-order movie delivery service failed to disclose crucial information to them before raising prices dramatically. They were also left unaware that some of the content…

Remember the amazing self-portrait of the monkey that was making the rounds the other week? The Cliff’s Notes background: A photographer, David Slater, left his camera unattended for a little while while he was in the forests of Indonesia. A female black macaque got curious, as monkeys are wont to do, and picked it up. The image accompanying this article was among the results. The photo, first published in the Daily Mail, quickly made the rounds on the Internet and a monkey star was born. This photo was published simply EVERYwhere. TechDirt wrote an interesting piece about the copyright issues…

Lodsys is a company on a mission. They have been determined to sue iOS developers who are, in their eyes, illegally using their own patents. But it’s more complicated than that. Apple licensed these patents and, in some cases, require them to be used by iOS developers. So who is responsible here in the impending legal battles? That’s what we’re all trying to figure out. After an initial round of legal threats were presented to various iOS developers on behalf of Lodsys, Apple remained quiet while the world reacted. But the overall consensus seemed to be that Apple should stick up for their third-party…

Good luck, guys. Two Michigan residents are filing a class-action suit against Google over the sudden location-tracking brouhaha that’s been going down in the past week with first iOS, and now Android. According to them, Google’s location tracking of its HTC Inspire 4G’s is to a level that would normally require a warrant – and as such are demanding that the tracking immediately cease… and $50 million in damages for their trouble. Before you sympathetically take the plaintiff’s side, though, consider that while Google has had its share of privacy fiascoes, Android’s location tracking functionality…

In most cases, you wouldn’t imagine the CEO of a company being summoned to court, unless that CEO has allegedly done something very, very bad. Well, I guess there is something serious going on because a federal judge in Northern California has ordered Steve Jobs to testify for in court for two hours. RealNetworks is accusing Apple of anti-competitive practices that prevented RealNetworks’ music from being played on the iPod in October 2004. That isn’t the interesting part of the case, however. The interesting part is that the judge wants Steve Jobs, who has been struggling with health issues…

“We’ve been sitting here scratching our heads for the last couple of days,” says Greg Schrader, managing director of Teachbook.com. Greg’s head does not have an itch. In an puzzling move, Facebook has decided it owns ‘book’, and has subsequently filed a lawsuit against Teachbook, an Illinois-based company that provides online tools for teachers to manage and share resources. Right away, I guess that sounds pretty reasonable. Teachbook does seem to be playing off Facebook’s popularity, and Facebook tends to agree. “If others could freely use ‘generic plus BOOK’ marks for online…

Hey Zuckerberg, you’d better make way for Paul Ceglia. Who the hell is Paul Ceglia? Why, web designer / wood pellet distributor extraordinaire, of course. Apparently, Paul signed a contract in April 2003 to develop thefacebook.com, for which he would be paid $1000 and 50% share in the company, with an additional 1% share per day until the work was completed. All told, Paul Ceglia should (according to him) currently own 84% of Facebook. Yeah, Paul, and I should own 77% of Google. But I don’t. Because I didn’t design it. The fact that Ceglia is bringing this up seven years after the fact calls into question…

Poor ThinkGeek. Between mounting pressure to develop the iCade and now this, it’s a wonder they bother to participate in April Fool’s Day at all. If you were doing your internet thing this April 1st – and I certainly hope you were – you no doubt are privy to Canned Unicorn Meat, the “sparkling, crunchy, savory meat of today’s elite”. Seriously, I sat here for, like, three minutes trying to come up with a better description than that one, but let’s face it. There isn’t one. Anyway, all is not well – the National Pork Board, owners of the slogan ‘the other white meat’, have issued ThinkGeek a cease and desist….