A website exposing and selling personal information and personal items belonging to Paris Hilton, owned by Bardia Persa, has been ordered by a Federal judge to cease and desist from selling the items pending a hearing. The items were purchased by Bardia Persa for $10 million from Nabil and Nabila Haniss, who in turn had purchased them for a little over two thousand dollars. I’m betting that they purchased the items at a storage locker auction; and storage locker auctions are perfectly legal.

Some complained, some praised, when Yahoo closed their chat rooms to those under 18 in an effort to help protect children. Yahoo and other chat sites also routinely close down chat rooms which have ‘themes’ which are related to illegal activities, such as child molestation. Now three men – David Beavan, Alan Hedgcock, and Robert Mayers – have been sentenced in the UK for plotting in a chat room to molest 13- and 14-year-old sisters.

Last June we reported that the family of a 14-year-old girl had filed a lawsuit against MySpace for failing to protect their daughter from Pete Solis, a 19 year old “predator”. Now this girl’s family, along with three others – and the same attorney – have filed cases against MySpace in Los Angeles, claiming in the lawsuit that MySpace had not done enough to protect their daughters from predators which they claim, MySpace knew were there.

It should come as no surprise at all – at least to any regular readers of the Internet Patrol – that Cisco has filed a lawsuit against Apple over the iPhone (the Apple cell phone) trademark. As we told you earlier, Cisco aquired the Linksys iPhone, along with the trademark, when Cisco aquired Linksys several years ago. Was Apple relying on an expectation of neighborly cooperation from fellow Silicon Valley giant Cisco when they knowingly chose to use Cisco’s trademark for their own iPhone, announced this week? Or did they perhaps expect their now famous use of the letter “i” to help them carry the day on this one?

As expected, Apple announced their iPhone – combination Apple cell phone and iPod – this week at Macworld. What wasn’t expected was that they announced a product which won’t be available for at least six months, and which may not even exist yet other than as a handful of iPhone proto-types. Here’s what we think is going on.

We keep telling you that Nigerian 419 and British Lottery scams work because people actually send these scammers money. In case you didn’t believe us, police in Holland have arrested a Nigerian man over the holidays who is being charged with being involved with a 419 scam, and he had cash amounting to $4,599,577 in his pocket!

The long-awaited announcement by Apple of an iPhone – an Apple cell phone – is believed by many to be due in just a few short weeks. However news that Linksys, now a division of Cisco, has owned the iPhone brand for years has the market abuzz and agog. Does this mean a legal battle brewing between giants Cisco and Apple? Regardless, emotions run surprisingly high over such a seemingly small thing as a name and even the letter “i”.

RIM, the makers of the Blackberry phone, have sued Samsung, the makers of the Blackjack phone. How ironic.

James Kim, his wife Katie, and his two daughters, found themselves snowbound and stranded on Bear Camp Road, between Grants Pass and Gold Beach, Oregon. But were they mislead by an online mapping service such as Google Maps?

A settlement announced this week will protect websites that poke fun at or even talk badly about the purple dinosaur that everybody loves to hate, Barney. The settlement came in the lawsuit filed by Stuart Frankel against Barney’s law firm, Gibney, Anthony and Flaherty.

Free speech consideration protects alledged slander and libelous quotes which are posted to the Internet by third parties – including individuals and websites – said the California Supreme Court this week in its ruling in the case of Barrett v. Rosenthal. The case centered around an email sent to Ilena Rosethal, director of the Humantics Foundation, in which Tim Bolen gets particularly nasty about two doctors – Dr. Terry Polevoy and Dr. Stephen Barret.

In a move which may have surprised nobody more than it surprised canned meat company Hormel, Hormel lost their legal effort to regain control over their trademark “SPAM”.

Ronald Guilmette and his company, Infinite Monkeys.com, have filed a $27.4 million lawsuit against spam king Scott Richter and his OptInRealBig.com. Richter claims he is no longer a spammer, Ronald Guilmette says it ain’t so. Also named in the lawsuit are four of Richter’s customers, including Florida-based National Associate Credit Services, Inc..

Target has been sued for failing to make their website accessible to the blind. But should they have to?

Starbucks has been sued for retracting and failing to honor an email coupon which was distributed to people who never should have had it in the first place.