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Microsoft seizes botnet domains through legal precedent | TG Daily

September 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Microsoft has defeated the Waledac botnet in court, after a legal decision that could provide a precedent in future cases.

A judge in the Eastern Virginia District Court says he’ll recommend that the defendants transfer 276 domain names to Microsoft so they

can’t be used for cybercrime again. The decision confirms a temporary restraining order issued in February.

They have two weeks to challenge this, but may well not do so, as they failed to turn up in court. According to Microsoft, they used other tactics instead.

“Microsoft presented evidence to the court that although the defendants did not come forward, they were aware of the case and actively tried to retaliate, attempting to launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the law firm that filed the suit and even going so far as to threaten one of the researchers involved in the case,” the company says on its blog.

The owners of the botnet are believed to be based in China, where most of the domains are registered. Confiscating the domains without the presence of the defendants was a legal first, but was carried out under a principle called ‘ex parte’. This allows the court to make such decisions on the grounds of public interest.

via Microsoft seizes botnet domains through legal precedent | TG Daily.

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How Altria Is Winnowing Out Fake Marlboros – BusinessWeek

April 12, 2010 By

Cigarette smuggling is booming, in part because New York and 21 other states have raised cigarette excise taxes in recent years. On top of that, the U.S. government increased the federal tax on cigarettes last year by 159%, to $1.01 per pack. A pack now typically sells for about $10 in New York City, more than double what it cost 10 years ago, and the state is considering yet another excise increase.

The high levies, meant to help close huge budget gaps and discourage smoking, have had the unintended side effect of spurring the illicit market. One passenger car filled with Marlboros bought in low-tax Virginia and driven up Interstate 95 to resell in New York can yield more than $30,000 in profit, says Crisanto Perez, a senior official with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives.

In Asia, Altria employees have begun to build an intelligence network to combat the counterfeiting problem. The company cites academic research estimating that factories in China manufacture 400 billion knock-off cigarettes a year. Altria has hired detectives to try to infiltrate the international distributors that sell Chinese fakes to mom-and-pop shops in the U.S. The company says it will funnel the information it gathers to government authorities.

Back in the U.S., Altria has 21 employees in its brand integrity unit, which it created in 2002. They are assisted by outside contractors hired nationwide. The company even has given nearly $2 million over the past eight years to cash-strapped public police departments in such places as Los Angeles and Suffolk County, N.Y., to help fund contraband investigations.

Tax collectors have their own concerns. New York currently loses $1 billion a year because of cigarette tax cheating, according to a 2009 study by the New York Association of Convenience Stores. Across the country, tobacco excise revenue lost annually to smuggling totals $5 billion, the U.S. Justice Dept.'s Inspector General concluded last year.

via How Altria Is Winnowing Out Fake Marlboros – BusinessWeek.

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“Sexting” Town Hall Meting held in Cleveland « USDOJ: Justice Blog

March 19, 2010 By

Recent studies have shown that approximately one in five teens have sent or received a sexually suggestive photo via text messaging, a practice known as “sexting.” What teens do not understand are the significant and long-term negative implications such risky behavior can have on them, legally, socially and psychologically. Such implications can be as simple as embarrassment or as serious as criminal liability. Most don’t realize that sending or receiving a sexually explicit picture could result in charges of production, receipt, distribution or possession of child pornography.

“Once one of these kids hits the ‘send’ button, they expose themselves and their families to a web full of hurt,” said Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. “All control over the image is lost – it can be forwarded repeatedly all over the school, town, state, country and world. Sadly, such behavior has led to at least two teens taking their own lives after suffering harassment by classmates who received their nude pictures, which had been repeatedly forwarded by other classmates.”

According to Dettelbach, “The best service law enforcement offers is preventing crime.” With that in mind, on March 12, 2010, he sponsored a Town Hall Meeting to discuss the impact of this risky teen behavior. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will partner with WVIZ/PBS Ideastream to make this important program available to students around the state of Ohio.

The panel featured Juvenile Court Judge Thomas O’Malley, Berea Police Department Detective Charles Gute, and Assistant United States Attorney Michael A. Sullivan. Additionally, Robin Palmer, who heads the Mokita Center, where teens charged with “sexting” are sent for assessment and treatment, and Cristina Fernandez, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in Alexandria, Virginia also participated.

Phizzle, a San Francisco-based company, which provides Web-based mobile platforms, donated its services for the program, which allowed students viewing the program to ask questions of the panel via text messaging and to participate in survey questions, asked throughout the show, designed to assess the scope of the problem.

via “Sexting” Town Hall Meting held in Cleveland « USDOJ: Justice Blog.

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Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny E-Discovery | Law.com

February 20, 2010 By 1 Comment

E-discovery was once the sole concern of large law firms involved in large-scale litigation. But as EDD increasingly becomes an issue in smaller cases for smaller law firms, small and solo lawyers are learning some hard lessons about electronic evidence in litigation.

Michael Barnsback, an employment and civil litigation senior associate with DiMuro Ginsberg says e-discovery is increasingly an issue for his 12-attorney firm in Alexandria, Virginia. While it is a challenge, he thinks it can sometimes benefit a small firm like his. He says there was a time when big law firms could count on bigger budgets and staff to out-muscle opposing counsel at smaller law firms. In particular, the document dump, the practice of sending as many files for review close to the start of a trial, has long been a favorite tactic for overwhelming an opponent. “It’s certainly leveled the playing field for us,” he says. “You don’t need a big team to do review. If someone dumps a truckload of boxes on you, now you can scan them, put them in a searchable format, and one person on one computer can find what you need to go into the case prepared.

via Law.com – Itsy-Bitsy, Teeny-Weeny E-Discovery.

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Report on New Patent Litigation Trends and the Increasing Impact of Nonpracticing Entities Released by… — NEW YORK, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ –

January 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

According to a new report released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), the debate over patent reform has become more strident in the past few years as many of the world's largest companies face increasing threats of litigation from competitors and from organizations known as nonpracticing entities (NPEs) that do not design, manufacture, or distribute products.

The report, “A Closer Look: Patent Litigation Trends and the Increasing Impact of Nonpracticing Entities,” studies the recent trends of patent decisions. PwC has compiled and maintained a thorough database of patent damages awards (from 1980 through 2008), collecting information about patent holder success rates, appellate reversals and modifications, time-to-trial statistics (from 1995 through 2008), and practicing versus nonpracticing entity statistics (from 1995 through 2008).

“Companies are continuing to realize value from patents — whether protecting their product commercialization initiatives, or through their enforcement and other monetization efforts of patents — they see the upside of using patents for competitive advantage,” said Chris Barry, PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory partner in the Forensic Services practice. “With U.S. patent trial success rates at their highest level in history, patent holders are winning considerable awards for damages.”

Key findings from PricewaterhouseCoopers include:

Annual median damages awards ranged from $2.2 to $10.6 million.

Damages awards for NPEs have averaged more than double those for practicing entities.

NPEs have been successful 29 percent of the time overall versus 41 percent for practicing entities, due to the relative lack of success for NPEs at summary judgment; however, both have roughly a 2/3 win rate at trial.

The disparity between jury and bench awards has widened and is likely a contributing factor to the significant increase in use of juries since 1995.

Reasonable royalties continue to be the predominant measure of damages awards.

Alleged infringers increase their trial success rates slightly as plaintiffs seeking declaratory judgment.

While the median time-to-trial has remained fairly constant since 1995, significant variations exist between jurisdictions.

Certain federal district courts (particularly Virginia Eastern and Texas Eastern) continue to be more favorable to patent holders, with shorter time-to-trial, higher success rates, and higher median damages awards.

Five federal district courts accounted for 33 percent of all identified decisions involving an NPE as the patent holder.

via Report on New Patent Litigation Trends and the Increasing Impact of Nonpracticing Entities Released by… — NEW YORK, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ –.

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EDD Tale: Caught in the Middle

November 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

When Midwest Data Group was assigned the job of looking for e-mail evidence in a recent business dispute over sales commissions, it seemed like just another job. But when no responsive e-mails were found and Midwest discovered that approximately 70,000 files had been deleted from a computer system, investigators suspected evidence might have been destroyed.

The court had given the company protocols to work by, but those didnt offer much direction beyond directing computer examiners to look for e-mails pertinent to the case. But this discovery forced examiners to decide if they should simply report that the search was unproductive, or report suspicions of spoliation to the lawyers or the court.

Unfortunately, Midwest took its findings to just the plaintiffs attorneys, and quickly found itself on the receiving end of a motion for a contempt sanction for failing to disclose its findings evenly. “We got sucked into the battle. Our examiners report conclusions sounded a little too much like advocacy,” says Mark Vassel, the CEO and chief forensic examiner at Midwest Data Group. “Weve had to learn to keep the language of our reports neutral and to save anything else for the courtroom or deposition.”

That case, Technical Sales Assocs., Inc. v. Ohio Star Forge Co., Nos. 07-11745, 08-13365 E.D. Mich. May 1, 2009, demonstrates the sometimes precarious position of the computer forensic examiner in litigation. “It gets particularly troublesome when the opposing counsel wont play nice and the forensic examiners can get caught in the middle,” says John Simek, vice president of Sensei Enterprises, a computer forensics company in Virginia. “I always tell our people, make sure you talk to both parties, tell them what our interpretation of the information is, and then let them argue it out.”

Computer forensic examiners can play several roles in litigation. Their basic function is to manage legal evidence found in computers and digital storage media for litigation. Often hired by one party or another, they are also sometimes appointed by the courts to serve as special master, a neutral role.

Continued: EDD Tale: Caught in the Middle.

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