Federal Circuit Agrees with Oracle: Google’s Lindholm Email Is Not Privileged
In a Feb. 6, 2012 decision, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied Google’s petition for a writ of mandamus, rejecting Google’s efforts to overturn repeated rulings by Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu and Judge William H. Alsup (N.D. Cal.) that an internal Google email was not privileged. In a terse opinion, the Federal Circuit agreed with the lower court that Google had failed to make a “clear showing” that an email sent by Google engineer Tim Lindholm to Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin and a Google in-house attorney was protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine. In re Google, Misc. Docket No. 106 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 6, 2012).
The Lindholm Email
The Aug. 6, 2010 Lindholm email has become a centerpiece in the Oracle v. Google Java/Android litigation as the parties appear headed for a trial as early as April 2012. In his email, Mr. Lindholm discussed technical alternatives to Java, observing: (more…)
Tags: Automated privilege screen, Autosaves, Clawback, ESI stipulation, FRE 502, Google, Inadvertent production, Privilege, Privilege log, Privilege waiver, Privilege-review protocol
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Google Responds to Congressional Group’s Privacy Inquiry, Microsoft Launches Ad Campaign
On Tuesday, Google posted its formal response to the Jan. 26, 2012 letter from a bipartisan group of House members voicing concerns about the revised privacy policy Google announced on Jan. 24, 2012. In his Jan. 30, 2012 letter to the House group, Pablo Chavez, Google’s Director of Public Policy, stressed that the company would not be collecting any additional personal data from users and that users could control Google’s collection and use of their personal data in several ways – including by turning off their search history, accessing many Google products and services without logging in, and setting up multiple accounts to limit cross-product sharing. (more…)
Tags: Google, Google Plus, Opt-out, Privacy
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Bipartisan Group of House Members Questions Google About New Privacy Policy, Stresses Need for Opt-Out Option
A bipartisan group from the House of Representatives sent a letter today to Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page asking that he answer a series of questions about the privacy changes Google announced earlier this week.
Google introduced its changes in a Jan. 24, 2012 post on the Official Google Blog titled “Updating our privacy policies and terms of service”, which began with a discussion of the merits of “shorter, simpler privacy policies” and went on to explain that “[o]ur new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.” (more…)
Tags: Google, Google Plus, Opt-out, Privacy
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
EPIC to FTC: Google Search + Google+ = Competition and Privacy Concerns
Hot on the heels of Google’s Jan. 10, 2012 introduction of “Search, plus Your World,” integrating the Google+ social network into Google’s search results, EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to review Google’s changes, asserting in a Jan. 12, 2012 letter to the FTC that “Google’s business practices raise concerns related to both competition and the implementation of the Commission’s [2011] consent order.” Google’s modified search service, EPIC explained in its letter, will include
personal data gathered from Google+ in the results of users’ searches, including photos, posts, and business pages of users and their contacts. In addition to the personal information of a user’s contacts, search will also display Google+ business pages and notable Google+ users on the right-hand column of the results page.
In EPIC’s view, these changes “implicate concerns over whether the company prioritizes its own content when returning search results” and raise privacy concerns because (more…)
Tags: Antitrust, Competition, FTC, Google, Google Plus, Privacy, Privacy through obscurity
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Update on Google Books Litigation
Nine months after U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin’s March 22, 2011 decision rejecting the terms of a proposed class action settlement,1 there are renewed signs of life in the litigation brought against Google by a broad class of authors, publishers and related associations over the Google Books Library Project, Google’s plan to construct a huge digital library.
Two weeks ago, The Authors Guild and several authors filed a motion to certify a class (more…)
Tags: Copyright, Google, Google Books
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Internal Emails and Google’s Settlement of the DOJ Online-Pharmacy-Ad Investigation
According to an August 27, 2011 report from The Wall Street Journal, a review of internal Google emails and other documents led prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice to conclude that Google co-founder Larry Page was aware of, and permitted, Google’s practice of allowing online Canadian pharmacies to advertise through Google’s AdWords program targeting U.S. consumers, resulting in the unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs into the U.S. (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
