AllThingsD » fines

French Court Fines eBay €1.7 Million

Andrew LaVallee — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:22:04 +0000

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton said Monday that a French court fined eBay €1.7 million ($2.6 million) over perfume listings, despite filtering technology that the online auctioneer said is screening out unlawful items.

The court accused eBay (EBAY) of “the unlawful marketing” of Christian Dior, Givenchy and other LMVH cosmetics.

EBay said in a statement Monday that it has taken steps to hide LMVH products from French shoppers and that the illegal listings LMVH submitted contain misspelled brand names or only pictures of products, which enabled them to slip through the cracks.

Alex von Schirmeister, eBay’s general manager in France, added that the fine is disproportionate given the company’s compliance, and that the decision enforces “anti-competitive” distribution practices.

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China Cracks Down on Sexting

Andrew LaVallee — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:30:03 +0000

China’s Henan province threatened cellphone users with jail time and fines if they send unwanted sexual or insulting text messages.

Offenders face five days in detention or a 500 yuan ($73) fine for one such text, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported, while sending three or more erotic messages could land them 10 days plus the fine. Henan follows Liaoning province, which said earlier this year that sexual text messages can factor into sexual-harassment charges.

Two Zhenzhou residents registered mixed reactions. “I’m totally for the rules. It’s uncomfortable to get dirty text messages from male friends, and even more gross when they are from strangers,” Zhang Kai, a clothes trader, told China Daily. “But I’ll take them as jokes and reply if they are from my female friends.”

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EU Mulling Another Withdrawal From Microsoft Bank & Antitrust Co.

John Paczkowski — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:18:35 +0000

Microsoft has a far easier time meeting legal deadlines than software ship dates, doesn’t it? The European Commission today said the company met its deadline to respond to charges that its bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows violates European competition laws. Just how Microsoft (MSFT) responded isn’t known. The document hasn’t been made public and the EC would not comment on it, though presumably the software giant disagrees with the Commission’s contention that its behavior distorts fair competition in the browser market. Microsoft, which has been slapped with more than $2 billion in fines by the EC over time and would rather not be fined any further, is said to be requesting an hearing.

EU Mulling Another Withdrawal From Microsoft Bank & Antitrust Co.

John Paczkowski — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:18:35 +0000

Backdating Settlement in Motion, Redux

John Paczkowski — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:52:23 +0000

Two weeks after Canadian regulators dropped the hammer on Blackberry maker Research In Motion for its stock option backdating scheme, the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped it again. Today, the agency charged RIM CFO Dennis Kavelman, former VP of Finance Angelo Loberto and co-CEOs James Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with illegally granting stock options to company executives and employees over an eight-year period from 1998 through 2006. “RIM and its highest level executives engaged in widespread backdating of options which provided them and other employees with millions of dollars in undisclosed compensation,” said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement. Worse, the four executives subsequently made “false and misleading disclosures” about how RIM (RIMM) priced and accounted for options. Without admitting (or denying) guilt, the four execs agreed to settle the matter. Each will disgorge the in-the-money value of backdated options they exercised and pay a fine ranging between $150,000 and $500,000–far less steep than the $75 million in penalties ordered by the Ontario Securities Commission.