It was going to happen eventually, we all knew it, Amazon even knew it from the start. Apple has decided to sue Amazon over the name of it’s new Appstore for Android. In case you didn’t know, Apple has the trademark for the term App Store. Amazon simply removed the space to make it into more »

Google’s Android platform has been championed as the side of openness compared to Apple in the mobile OS wars, but it seems that claim isn’t as clear as you’d think. According to a lawsuit filed by Skyhook against Google, it would seem that in some instances Google is running more of a closed platform. According more »

A few weeks ago we learned that Microsoft was to halt the sale of Word, one of its most popular applications. The ban of Word came from a patent dispute with the Canadian company i4i that holds the patent for “custom XML.” The suit saw Microsoft having to pay damages and halt the sale of more »

Earlier this week Microsoft was ordered to stop selling Word within 60 days. The decision came down from Texas, a state known for being very pro-patent owner. While Microsoft isn’t saying much more than the fact that it will file for appeals, the Chairman of i4i, the company that filed the patent suit, Loudon Owen more »

The RIAA has won another outrageous settlement. A Boston student has been ordered to pay $22,500 each for the 30 songs he admitted to downloading and sharing. That’s a total of $675,000. A judge in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts found him guilty of infringement and asked the jury to decide damages. They were more »

Everyone’s favorite torrent site (if only for the interesting news they provide) looks to be in quite a bit of trouble again. It just can’t seem to catch a break — it’s as if every organization with a ton of copyrights finds it necessary to sue the site. Last time it was the amalgamation of organizations that sued the site for various copyright infringements. This time the suit comes from Dutch antipiracy group BREIN.

A Chicago woman has been slapped with a $50,000 lawsuit by her landlord. Horizon Group Management filed the lawsuit after the woman complained about her apartment on Twitter. Horizon was angered by her claim that they didn’t care about the mold problem in her apartment. Although she did not have her tweets protected, the complaint only reached about 20 people. Horizon claims the statement “”maliciously and wrongfully” defamed them.

When, oh when, are they gonna learn it is pretty much senseless to even attempt to hunt down the pirates? Right or wrong, P2P file sharing happens. And suing the creators of the popular Pirate Bay isn’t gonna stop it. And now, in a rather obvious attempt to support that fact, someone went out and created a The Pirate Google Bay. And you have to appreciate how bright and colorful they made their ship!

The Pirate Google Bay is a custom Google search made to find torrent files. They say right on their home page that:

“Please Note: This site is not affiliated with Google, it simply makes use of Google Custom Search to restrict your searches to Torrent files. You can do this with any regular Google search by appending your query with filetype:torrent.”

But slapping the “Google” name right on there sure makes it sound all official like, eh? Ahhhh….I can see a lawsuit against Google brewing anyway. That one should be entertaining. I mean, even a recent article in Forbes magazine said that Google itself is an incredibly efficient torrent tracker. That’s not any big secret.

Evan will be filling in as The Water Cooler contributor while Bryan continues his plot to take over the world, for the next few weeks, across the pond in London . There’s good news for losers like me who look forward to the end of the day when they come home and all five episodes more »