Back in May of 2011, the Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) was hacked, compromising as many as all user accounts, as well as those of Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment. A class-action lawsuit was filed, and now there is a settlement, in which all subscribers at or before that time stand to share.

A Federal court has denied Facebook’s motion to dismiss a class action lawsuit, brought on behalf of users whose privacy Facebook breached when it scanned the content of their private Facebook messages to other users, for advertising purposes.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against AT and T, alleging that by throttling the data of their unlimited data customers (who were grandfathered in to the old unlimited data plan) once those customers reach a certain level of data usage, they are violating their offer of “unlimited data”, which offer was used to induce those customers to renew their contracts with AT and T, and to upgrade to new phones.

At last, software patent trolls are getting a smackdown. A few short months ago, the Supreme Court rendered an opinion in the case that has come to be known as Alice vs. CLS Banks. In that ruling, the Supremes held that taking an already widely-used practice, and moving it to a computer, does not create a new, patentable invention deserving of a software patent.

A lawsuit has been filed alleging that if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone, your friends’ iPhones will not be able to send text messages to your Android phone. (Full text of iMessage lawsuit below.)

Two years ago, almost to the day, the government filed an antitrust price-fixing lawsuit against Apple, Hatchette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin, for price-fixing higher rates on ebooks in an effort to put the squeeze on Amazon and their Kindle.

Patent trolls are the bane of nearly any tech business’ existence. While it is certainly true that there are patents that are infringed on, it is also true that a new breed of “business”, the extortion of money by companies whose sole business is to buy up patents, and then to use their patent portfolio to extort monies from companies – in other words, patent trolls – is burgeoning. These patent trolls demand amounts just below what they figure it will cost the target company – or themselves – to go to court, the theory being that the victim will roll over and pay rather than risk expensive litigation.

The U.S. Federal government’s case against Apple for price-fixing is under way. Last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Apple and five ebook publishers of attempting to fix the prices of ebooks, claiming that there was a conspiracy to affect the e-book market. Here’s an explanation of the law suit against Apple.

A New York court has ruled that Manhattan residents can legally use the e-Hail “hail a cab” app to which the private car-for-hire and livery industry had objected. One of the apps, called the “New York Taxi Cab Riders – NYC Taxi Free” app, from Mphony, is the companion app to the “NY Taxi Cab for Drivers and Service Providers – NYC Taxi for Drivers” app, which New York City taxi cab drivers can run on their iPhones or iPads, and which shows where fares wanting to hail a cab are located. However, recently NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission Commissioner David Yassky said that Uber would be the service that would participate in a year-long pilot program.

As most of us know, if only from the movies and television, if not from personal experience, when you are arrested, you may have a mugshot taken. And, these mugshots end up in the public record. From there, it turns out, mugshots are ending up all over the Internet and, most relevently, on several websites whose sole purpose is to curate mugshots – and to charge the subjects of those mugshots if they want them removed. This can cause all sorts of problems for people who have ended up on the wrong side of the mugshot camera, as their mugshots are on the Internet even if they have since been found innocent or had the charges dismissed! In this age of routine Internet searches, imagine having that hanging over your head when applying for a job. Now a class-action lawsuit has been filed by attorney Scott Ciolek, on behalf of two named plaintiffs (Phillip Kaplan and Debra Lashaway), and suing five such mugshot sites – bustedmugshots.com, findmugshots.com, mugshotsonline.com, mugremove.com and justmugshots.com – alleging that such mugshot web sites infringe on the individuals’ “right of publicity”, a right which is intended to protect individuals from unpermitted use of one’s personality. (Public figures are often found to be exempt from this protection, such as in the now infamous case with Jerry Falwell.)

15-year-old Texas teen Andrea Hernandez has launched a fight against the Northside Independent School District to avoid wearing the electronic tracking RFID chips embedded in her high school ID. Hernandez, from a deeply evangelical religion, believes that the ID is “the mark of the beast,” as talked about in the Book of Revelation. But even without the religious aspect, this is an important issue, and the religious nature of her objection helps to provide a more solid basis over which to object to the microchipped school I.D.

Google is yet again finding themselves in hot water as the Federal Trade Commission is poised to slap them with an antitrust lawsuit. The FTC staff recommendation for the antitrust lawsuit is not unexpected given the swift investigations of Google by California, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. On top of the U.S. investigation, there is also an antitrust investigation of Google taking place in Europe.

The verdict is in: Samsung must pay Apple $1.5 billion for smartphone patent infringement. The lawsuit, filed by Apple Inc. last year, accused Samsung of copying the design of iPhones and iPads. Jurors on Friday produced a 20-page verdict, agreeing with Apple’s assertion that Samsung’s smartphones copied the design of the Apple iPhone, in both design and features. Apple lawyers produced pictures of the Samsung smartphones both before and after the introduction of the iPhone.

A settlement over the class action lawsuit against Netflix for privacy issues, which included retaining personally identifiable data with respect to customer video renting and viewing habits, has been reached, and if you are a current or former Netflix subscriber, you may have received an email notice of the class action settlement. The email, sent from “Online DVD Class Action Administrator” has a subject of “Video Privacy Lawsuit – Current and Former Netflix Subscribers”, and goes on to tell you what your rights are with respect to the settlement, which settlement includes Netflix ‘decoupling’ your video rental and viewing data from your personal information. It also advises you that you have to opt out of the settlement in order to retain any rights you may have to sue Netflix directly over the privacy violation.

It’s one of those things that you never think will happen to you. You’re going along in life, hunky-dory, then boom! There are fraudulent charges on your credit card, or an unknown credit card shows up on your credit report, or you get a call from a collection agency demanding payment on an account that you never even knew existed. Unfortunately, credit fraud and identity theft protection are not one of those things that you think about until it is too late. And if the person who stole your identity is a family member, such as your mother, father, sibling or even your own child, you also have an additional set of special circumstances to deal with.