(Reuters) — The outgoing Trump administration said on Thursday it was issuing new rules that would allow manufacturers of automated vehicles to bypass some crash standards required of conventional vehicles, which would cut production costs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the rules would exempt from certain crash standards automated vehicles that are designed […]
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(Reuters) — A federal judge in Florida on Tuesday dismissed Apple’s copyright infringement claims against a Florida startup whose software helps security researchers find vulnerabilities in Apple products including the iPhone. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith ruled in favor of Corellium LLC, saying its software emulating the iOS operating system that runs on the iPhone […]
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Hours after announcing that it acquired self-driving truck startup Ike, Nuro revealed it’s the first company to receive permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to charge a fee and receive compensation for its driverless delivery service. Unlike the autonomous testing licenses the California DMV previously granted to Nuro and others, which limited […]
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(Reuters) — Texas and nine other states sued Google on Wednesday, accusing it of working with Facebook in an unlawful manner that violated antitrust law to boost its already-dominant online advertising business. The states asked that the Alphabet-owned company, which controls a third of the global online advertising industry, compensate them for damages and sought […]
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Google asserts that the patent industry stands to benefit from AI and machine learning models like BERT, a natural language processing algorithm that attained state-of-the-art results when it was released in 2018. In a whitepaper published today, the tech giant outlines a methodology to train a BERT on over 100 million patent publications from the […]
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(Reuters) — U.S. auto safety regulators on Thursday said they were opening a formal regulatory proceeding that could eventually result in the adoption of new safety standards for autonomous vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it was issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to get public input on how to ensure […]
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Motional, the joint autonomous driving partnership between Aptiv and Hyundai, today announced that it has received permission from the state of Nevada to test its autonomous cars without a driver behind the wheel. The company says it’s part of the completion of a self-imposed testing and assessment period. Relatively few companies have obtained permits in […]
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After achieving a narrower than expected mandate of 56% on November 3, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) has now passed. This new act overhauls the preexisting California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and is a landmark moment for consumer privacy. In essence, the CPRA closes some potential loopholes in the CCPA – but the changes […]
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Technology keeps creating challenges for intellectual property law. The infamous case of the “monkey selfie” challenged the notion of not just who owns a piece of intellectual property, but what constitutes a “who” in the first place. Last decade’s semi-sentient monkey is giving way to a new “who”: artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of AI […]
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As of early October, more than 84.2 million absentee ballots had been requested or sent to U.S. voters in 47 states and the District of Columbia ahead of the U.S general election. According to some estimates, the swing state of Florida has already doubled California’s 1 million total, with nearly 2 million voters casting their […]
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(Reuters) — The U.S. Justice Department and 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday for allegedly breaking the law in using its market power to fend off rivals. The lawsuit marks the biggest antitrust case in a generation, comparable to the lawsuit against Microsoft filed in 1998 and the 1974 […]
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Following a Maricopa County Grand Jury decision, last month the woman behind the wheel of a semi-autonomous Uber vehicle was charged with negligent homicide for the 2018 killing of Elaine Herzberg. The backup driver being charged following the first autonomous vehicle fatality appears to be a first, and it promises to be a landmark case […]
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(Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared divided on Wednesday as it considered whether to protect Alphabet Inc’s Google from a long-running lawsuit by Oracle accusing it of infringing Oracle copyrights to build the Android operating system that runs most of the world’s smartphones. The shorthanded court, down one justice following last month’s death of […]
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Members of Congress investigating the activity of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google say antitrust law reform is needed to “ensure that our economy remains vibrant and open in the digital age” and safeguard democracy. The findings comes from a document released today (PDF), the culmination of a 16-month long investigation carried out by the antitrust […]
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A federal judge in Oakland heard arguments today over a temporary restraining order in an antitrust case between Apple and Epic Games. In doing so, she shed light on some important arguments in the case. The judge didn’t offer a ruling on the TRO, in which Epic is asking a judge to reinstate its Fortnite […]
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The coronavirus outbreak caused a shift in the usage of digital devices. As people worldwide become heavily dependent on the internet for essential information, work, school, entertainment, and basic needs such as medication and groceries, it’s clearer than ever that digital inclusion is crucial. Yet people with disabilities have struggled to stay informed, shop, and […]
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Amazon-owned Zoox today announced that it received a driverless testing permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). With it, Zoox becomes the fourth company to hit that milestone after Waymo, Nuro, and AutoX. The new permit will enable Zoox to test “at least two” autonomous vehicles on streets without a driver behind the […]
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In June, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) detailed the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing (AV TEST), a program that purports to provide a robust source of information about autonomous vehicle testing. Today marked the official launch of AV TEST after several months of ramp-up, beginning with a tool for […]
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The rules that facilitate much of the digital commerce between the EU and US have been thrown into a state of flux in recent weeks. Last month, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) passed a landmark judgement to invalidate the Privacy Shield, a framework governing the flow of EU citizens’ personal data […]
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(Reuters) – Facebook won preliminary approval late on Wednesday from a federal court for settlement of a lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data of millions of users without their consent. The social media company had in July raised its settlement offer by $100 million to $650 million in relation to the […]
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(Reuters) — A California judge on Monday granted the state’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking Uber and Lyft from classifying their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. The ruling by Judge Ethan Schulman of San Francisco Superior Court is a defeat for the ride-hailing companies, as they defend against a May 5 lawsuit […]
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(Reuters) — A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower court ruling against chip supplier Qualcomm in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission. The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals also vacated an injunction that would have required Qualcomm to change its intellectual property licensing practices. The decision amounted to a […]
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(Reuters) — A U.S. judge on Tuesday sentenced former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski to 18 months in prison for stealing a trade secret from Google related to self-driving cars months before becoming the head of Uber’s rival unit. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Levandowski, who was convicted on Tuesday following a […]
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Members of Congress put forward a bill today named the National Biometric Information Privacy Act, which would make it illegal for businesses to collect, purchase, or trade biometric information obtained from customers without permission. This includes face prints used in facial recognition as well as voice prints for AI assistant personalization as well as eye […]
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(Reuters) — Chinese artificial intelligence company Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology, also known as Xiao-i, has filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging it has infringed on Xiao-i’s patents. Xiao-i is calling for 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in damages and demands that Apple cease “manufacturing, using, promising to sell, selling, and importing” products that infringe […]
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Gary Reback is perhaps best known as the lawyer who helped convince the U.S. Department of Justice to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. He watched the majority of the House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook […]
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Given my background as a political science major, lawyer, and journalist, I shouldn’t be dispassionate about today’s Congressional antitrust hearing on the market power of online platforms, which will bring the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google into a single (virtual) space for questioning. This is the sort of feat that only a governmental body can pull […]
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(Reuters) — Facebook is suing EU antitrust regulators for seeking information beyond what is necessary, including highly personal details, for their investigations into the company’s data and marketplace, the U.S. social media group said on Monday. Facebook has been under EU competition enforcers’ scrutiny since last year, with one investigation focused on its trove of […]
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Watch the final day of VB Transform live on YouTube! The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) today awarded autonomous car startup AutoX a permit authorizing it to test driverless vehicles on streets within a designated part of San Jose. While AutoX has had state authority to pilot vehicles with safety drivers since 2017, the […]
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