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HP LawsuitNotebook Computer DefectsA recent certified class action lawsuits was filed in court against HP Lawsuit because of Pavilion notebook computers failures. Class action lawsuit claimed that the laptop computer lawsuit have defective voltage inverters. The class action is the laptop battery lawsuit warranty replacement. Pavilion Lawsuit Information.
Federal prosecutors scored a decisive first victory in the investigation of the HP Company ill-fated boardroom spying investigation by HP Friday, when an entry level private investigator pleaded guilty to identity theft and also to conspiracy charges. BJ Wigner, pleaded guilty to the 2 felony charges during his brief appearance in San Jose California federal courthouse. As part of his plea deal, Wigner willfully admitted to illegally obtaining the Social Security number for at least twoof the journalists in the scandal, as well as two former HP senior executives and their family members. The Class action lawyer said Wigner will testify for the prosecution law firm as it persues other people tied to the scandals.Wigner's court sentencing was set for June 2007. There has been was no pre- sentencing deal included. HP Class Action Lawsuit Silicon Valley - A United States Congressional investigation committee this week asked Hewlett-Packard to provide all records that are related to the HP's possible illegal investigation of press leaks, as the corporation's board or directors plans to meet again to talk about the fate of controversial Chairperson Pat Dunn. The summons was issued because of the United States House Energy and Commerce Committee's continuing investigations about pretexting, which is the controversial practice of impersonating an individual to try and get access their personal data. YOU
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Hewlett-Packard engaged private investigators that used federal Social Security numbers and other very personal data to impersonate HP employees and media journalists. The impersonators then went on to trick communication companies into supplying the detailed logs of the subjects home and mobile telephone conversations. U.S. Federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation entered the investigation this week. The United States Attorney General's Offices for Northern California supplied a statement indicating it was "investigating the processes used in an investigation into possible sources of various leaks." The Palo Alto, California located manufacturer of computers, testing equipment & printers said in a routine financial statement that it was cooperating to the full extent with the federal investigation, along with an investigation that is being conducted by the California State Attorney General's Office which has also requested coppies of the same data. HP's board of directors adjourned from an emergency phone meeting earlier in the week declining to announce whether it would fire Ms. Dunn for her part in the investigations that might have used unlawful means to spy on employees and media journalists.
The board of directors for HP is scheduled to meet again soon. U.S. federal investigations helps to complicate the already tricky situation for Hewlett Packard, many experts agree. "It can open up the HP Corporation to aditional scrutiny on a wider and more powerful level," said Kenith Dukia, a former U.S. Attorneyamployee. Bartin Arnolds, VP of the media firm Largen, was heard saying that it will probably be likely that criminal charges are filed against the private investigator, rather than Hewlett Packard Senior Officials. HP did not reveal the name of the investigation company it employed. The United states communications agency FCC has now also joined the HP investigation, asking telco'srecently how HP's private investigator was able to obtain the personal & private data & mobile phone records of employees and media journalists. Following the investigation, board member George Keyworth II was identified as the source of the leak, and HP responded by barring him from seeking re-election. HP's Investigation Broke Laws, Attorney General SaysIllegal acts were committed after Hewlett-Packard engaged private investigators to obtain the private phone records of its own corporate board members as part of an investigative probe into recent press leaks. It is currently not clear who has committed these crimes, stated California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who said in an interview Thursday that he is now focused on how high up the corporate ladder his investigation will lead him. "In this case, clearly a crime has been committed," he said. "The question is by whom. How far does the liability extend?" Once Lockyer determines that, he said, criminal charges are likely. Ryan Donovan, an HP spokesman, declined to comment on the attorney general's remarks, except to say that the Palo Alto company hasn't received any subpoenas from Lockyer's office. "We are of course cooperating fully with their investigation," he said. A spokesman for the attorney general's office confirmed that no subpoenas have been issued.
Meanwhile, security pros say HP's spying should serve as a warning not just to corporate insiders in Silicon Valley and beyond, but also to ordinary citizens who might be unaware that the official-sounding voice at the other end of the phone may belong to a professional snoop.
"Most private investigators do this quite a bit," said Scott Newby, an investigator with offices in San Jose and Merced. "Typically, I'll call someone and say I'm doing a survey on such and such," he said. "This allows me to get information that people might not otherwise give me." In HP's case, the Palo Alto tech giant acknowledged in a regulatory filing Wednesday that "some form of 'pretexting' for phone record information" had been used to delve into the calling habits of its board members. Pretexting is a fancy way of saying "lying." The art of pretexting lies in being slick enough to persuade your target that you're someone who you're not. This can be relatively benign, such as impersonating a survey taker. Or it can be more insidious. HP's investigators are believed to have obtained at least the last four digits of board members' Social Security numbers -- a feat that security pros say isn't all that tough if you know where to look. The investigators are believed to have obtained the numbers through data brokers, companies that sell people's personal information to qualified (or ostensibly qualified) buyers. An investigator then allegedly contacted AT&T and, posing as a specific board member, persuaded the phone company to send him that person's confidential phone records. All this took, apparently, was knowledge of the board member's Social Security number and phone number, and a smooth delivery. Cnet, a San Francisco tech-news service, reported Thursday that phone records of one of its reporters also were accessed by HP's investigators. Private investigators say they're not barred from pretexting -- as long as they don't do anything untoward with the information they receive. Lockyer doesn't quite see it that way. "The law doesn't require injury or fraud," he insisted. "It's an invasion of privacy. "Lockyer acknowledged that some pretexting -- the bogus survey, say -- may not constitute a crime under certain circumstances. It depends on how the elicited information is used. But he said all bets are off if the pretexter is impersonating someone to gain access to that person's data. This is what appears to have happened in the HP case, he said. Lockyer said a crime -- identity theft -- was committed when the company's investigators pretended to be board members. He said a second crime was committed when the investigators gained access to AT&T's phone records. "You've falsely impersonated someone else's identity to illegally get computer records," Lockyer said. "Do I think a crime has been committed? Yes," he said. "But we have to prove who did it." Lockyer said he's now focusing on whether HP's chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, is a party to the crime. The company's regulatory filing says she ordered the probe into the press leaks. If Dunn explicitly instructed the investigators to gain access to the board members' phone records, Lockyer said, she is likely a party to the crime. CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT If, on the other hand, Dunn told the investigators (or any go-betweens) that she wanted information about who the board members may have called but was vague about how such info should be obtained, Lockyer said, HP's leadership may not have direct liability. But the company wouldn't be off the hook. "At the very least, there's a potential conspiracy case," Lockyer said. Chris Hoofnagle, a privacy expert and senior attorney at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, agreed that it appears the pretexting methods employed by HP's investigators violate the law. "Pretexting like this is technically hacking," he said. "This is illegal under state and federal law." Specifically, Lockyer said, the HP case runs afoul of California Penal Code Section 502, which prohibits "tampering, interference, damage, and unauthorized access to lawfully created computer data and computer systems." He also said the case involves Penal Code Section 530.5, which bars use of people's personal info "for any unlawful purpose, including to obtain, or attempt to obtain, credit, goods, services or medical information in the name of the other person without the consent of that person." "Pretexting is a serious problem," Lockyer said. And in HP's case, he said, the company is guilty of breathtaking arrogance if nothing else. "The idea of a corporate official spying on another official is outrageous," Lockyer said. "It's also incredibly stupid." Hewlett-Packard Lawsuits - HP Class ActionHewlett Packard lawsuit HP has been accused of manufacturing
& selling ink-cartridges to the consumer with a "Smart Chip"
that can prematurely show the cartridge as empty or expired, even though
there might still be ink in the cartridges. Some consumers are seeking
damages stemming from this practice, including restitution for that portion
of the ink cartridge that has been rendered unusable.
Hewlett Packard Legal ActionsHP, much of whose profit comes from printer supplies, has sued two companies that sell refilled , but it stopped short of trying to block the refill business altogether.On Friday, HP sued InkCycle in US District Court for the western district of Wisconsin, alleging that the company's ink violates three HP patents. And on Monday, HP sued RhinoTek in US District Court for the northern district of California, accusing RhinoTek of false advertising by using packaging that indicates its refilled HP products are new. Refilling ink cartridges is "a giant problem, not just for HP, but for everybody in the printing business," said Gary Peterson, an analyst with GAP Intelligence. "I would say at least 10 to 15 percent of all consumables purchases are refills. That's a huge chunk of profit taken away from HP and all the other printer companies." But HP said the suits aren't a change in HP's policy that customers have a right to refill legally purchased . "We still believe it's the customer's choice," said spokeswoman Monica Sarkar, adding that HP believes its products have better quality and reliability. The Palo Alto, California-based printer powerhouse requests that InkCycle stop — in HP's opinion — infringing the patents and pay damages and HP legal fees. Brad Roderick, vice-president of marketing for InkCycle, said Monday that a settlement in that suit is expected soon. "We've been in direct communication with HP and expect a very near-term full resolution," Roderick said. He declined to comment on terms or whether InkCycle will continue to sell its products, but he said, "We're a company that has always been respectful of intellectual-property rights." The ramifications of the InkCycle case could spread beyond the company if it's using ink that other refillers use as well. Roderick wouldn't comment on the origin of the company's ink.In the Rhinotek case, HP asserts that the company's "packaging and promotional materials are calculated to give consumers the impression that defendants' cartridges are new." HP wants a requirement that Rhinotek use the words "used" and "refilled" prominently on its packaging of refilled HP ink cartridges. HP also wants all Rhinotek profits from the time of the alleged deceptive advertisements.Rhinotek didn't immediately respond to requests to comment for this story. HP has been less aggressive in legal attacks against printer supply companies than one rival, Lexmark. HP lashed out against Lexmark's attempt to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), to stop ink refillers. "We think it is stretching it," HP printing unit exec Pradeep Jotwani said in a 2003 interview. "The DMCA was put in place [to protect] things like movies, music and software applications." "We consciously make sure that our cartridges are reusable and refillable," Jotwani said at the time. The company does put some limits on the practice, such as adding software that makes some of its cartridges unusable after a certain expiration date — either four-and-a-half years after its manufacture or two-and-a-half years after its installation.In the case against Cycle, HP claimed the company has violated three patents: Nos. 5,165,968; 5,428,383 and 5,488,402. The first concerns fast-drying ink that works well on plain paper, and the second two concern methods for preventing colour from bleeding.HP said in its suit against Rhinotek that it holds 9,000 patents related to imaging and printing, 4,000 of them for consumable supplies such as ink and cartridges. HP Shareholder Lawsuit- Securites & Exchange Commission Hewlett-Packard and EMC have signed a five-year patent cross-licensing deal that will end four years of litigation between the two vendors. The settlement agreement calls for HP to pay EMC a $US325 million "balancing" payment. HP's payment obligation can be satisfied over the next five years through purchase of EMC software for internal use or resale, the companies said. HP spokesman, Ryan Donovan, said HP already uses EMC's VMware software internally and resells it to enterprise customers. "They use some of our products, and we use some of theirs," Donovan said. The expanded relationship gives HP a way of reselling more EMC products, EMC's vice-president of communications, Mark Fredrickson, said. When asked whether the settlement would lead to new products being sold through HP, Fredrickson said, "We're hopeful." EMC sued storage management company StorageApps in 2000, claiming StorageApps' technology infringed EMC patents on creating "mirror" copies of system files. HP became involved in the dispute when it acquired StorageApps in 2001. In 2002, HP slapped EMC with a retaliatory lawsuit alleging that a range of features in EMC's Symmetrix, Clariion and TimeFinder products infringe on seven HP patents. HP later followed up with a second lawsuit against EMC, while EMC fought back with a set of counterclaims. A trial was expected to commence in late 2005. HP lost a jury trial last May on EMC's case against StorageApps. HP agreed to enter arbitration to determine damages, but appealed the judgment of liability. Monday's deal, which ends all the legal cases between the companies over the patent disputes, dismisses the claims with no admissions of liability by either vendor. Both companies said they expect the settlement to expand and strengthen their partnership and reselling arrangements. HP asks court
to dismiss suit over demotion McClendon alleges that HP retaliated when he told company officials that they were risking a lawsuit over the illegal use of outside contractors. He sued under a whistleblower provision in the Sarbanes-Oxley Corporate and Criminal Accountability Act that prohibits retaliation against workers who reveal illegal practices by an employer. The law requires that such lawsuits be filed within 90 days after a company takes action against an employee, according to the HP filing. It contends that McClendon was informed in January 2004 that he was being demoted, but waited five months before filing an initial complaint with the Department of Labor. The company is also asking the court to strike the portions of McClendon's lawsuit dealing with an October 2003 meeting where HP senior counsel Mark DeMeester allegedly discussed a lawsuit filed by outside contractors against Microsoft Corp.The software giant eventually paid $97 million to settle the case. That section of McClendon's lawsuit also alleges that those attending the meeting were ordered to destroy their notes afterwards.HP wants those passages stricken on the grounds that what was said at the meeting qualifies as a confidential communication between lawyer and client.HP has stated that its legal team "abides by their profession's rules of responsibility and by HP standards of business conduct." CLASS ACTION INFORMATION CENTER
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