According to a filing in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, the entire case was dismissed with prejudice. Both companies issued identical statements on the subject: “EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.”

If you don’t recall, EA filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Zynga in August, charging that Zynga’s social game The Ville was an “unmistakable copy” of EA’s The Sims Social. The complaint was seeking injunctive relief and damages.

The following month, Zynga filed a pair of motions to rebut Electronic Arts’ claims, arguing that The Ville on Facebook is not similar to EA’s The Sims Social. And, in a third filing, it countersued, alleging that EA participated in unlawful actions, including anti-competitive business practices, when it came to recruiting employees.

All of the cases have now been dismissed. The terms of the settlement are confidential, so exactly how the two companies worked out their differences is not known.

But in some respects, the issues EA had surrounding The Ville should no longer be a concern.

In October, Zynga said it was “significantly reducing” its investment in The Ville as part of a restructuring plan that is designed to return the company to profitability. The Ville was just one of more than a dozen games being phased out.

Electronic Arts Vs. Zynga

In a statement issued a few minutes ago, Apple said it is in “active discussions about returning additional cash to shareholders,” and said it would “thoroughly evaluate Greenlight Capital’s current proposal to issue some form of preferred stock.”

The talks come as Greenlight Capital has sued Apple over a plan its CEO David Einhorn says could generate as much as $32 a share through the issuance of preferred stock.

Einhorn launched a public campaign today alongside the lawsuit, urging Apple shareholders to vote against a proposal in Apple’s proxy that he argued would eliminate preferred stock from the corporate charter.

In its statement, Apple disputes Einhorn’s view of the proposal, the second going before shareholders on its latest proxy statement: “As part of our review, we will thoroughly evaluate Greenlight Capital’s current proposal to issue some form of preferred stock. We welcome Greenlight’s views and the views of all of our shareholders.”

Apple’s hoard of cash — it counts both cash and short- and long-term investments in its cash position — has grown substantially in recent years to north of $137 billion as of its most recent quarter ended in December. The cash, easily the largest among tech companies, and among the highest cash positions of all corporations in the world, comes from Apple’s considerable generation of free cash flow: $23 billion went straight into its coffers last quarter alone, and it hasn’t had debt for years.

Last year, Apple initiated a quarterly dividend payment to shareholders of $2.65 a share in partial reaction to shareholder outcry.

Here’s the full statement from Apple:

Statement by Apple
By early last year, Apple’s cash balance had built to a point beyond what we needed to run our business and maintain flexibility to take advantage of strategic opportunities, so we announced a plan to return $45 billion to shareholders over three years. As of next week we will have executed $10 billion of that plan.

We find ourselves in the fortunate position of continuing to generate large amounts of cash, including $23 billion in cash flow from operations in the last quarter alone.

Apple’s management team and Board of Directors have been in active discussions about returning additional cash to shareholders. As part of our review, we will thoroughly evaluate Greenlight Capital’s current proposal to issue some form of preferred stock. We welcome Greenlight’s views and the views of all of our shareholders.

As a part of our efforts to further enhance corporate governance and serve our shareholders’ best interests, Proposal #2 in our proxy includes some recommended changes to our articles of incorporation. These changes were recommended independently of Greenlight’s proposal and would not preclude Apple from adopting their concept. Contrary to Greenlight’s statements, adoption of Proposal #2 would not prevent the issuance of preferred stock.

Currently, Apple’s articles of incorporation provide for the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock by the Board of Directors without shareholder approval. If Proposal #2 is adopted, our shareholders would have the right to approve the issuance of preferred stock. As such, Proposal #2 has the support of many of our shareholders.

We remain committed to having an ongoing dialogue with our shareholders to get perspectives around return of capital and driving shareholder value.

Sitting in front of a spectacular view of San Francisco at his home this afternoon, former Square COO Keith Rabois looks spent.

He is just recovering from a bout of pneumonia, which would be bad enough, but it’s clear from his tense and unusually — for him — disheveled appearance that the sexual harassment claim made by a current male employee at the San Francisco payments startup has taken its toll on the typically hard-charging exec who is not known for suffering fools.

But, now, given a judgement he made to continue in a personal and physical relationship with that unnamed junior staffer after he was hired at Square, Rabois feels both foolish and also angry.

“At the end of the day, this is personally embarrassing to me, because when anyone’s life is exposed to a public forum, it creates quite a damaging situation,” said Rabois. “As we looked at it, it was going to become a distraction that was going to hurt the company.”

It appears as if he wanted to stay — he shrugs when directly asked about it, though he will not say so explicitly. But, Rabois finally agreed with Square’s top management, including CEO and founder Jack Dorsey, that is was better that he leave.

“It was very clear once this outrageous demand was made, instead of building great products, it would be all about that,” he said.

That said, after an internal investigation, the company is backing him in the expected filing of a lawsuit from the employee, who has threatened a panoply of explosive allegations against him and the company that Rabois said again are a “fiction.”

He declined to show me any texts or emails between the two, but did recount the relationship in a blog post on Tumblr earlier today.

Richard Curiale, outside counsel for Square and also Rabois, said that the company had been approached about two weeks ago by New York lawyer Steven Berger, claiming the company knew of and did nothing to stop sexual harassment by Rabois and demanding a multi-million dollar settlement.

Curiale said he found no evidence in his investigation so far of anything except a “welcome” relationship that ended. He had even agreed to make Rabois available for a deposition with Berger, but the offer was refused.

I have an email into Berger for comment, which has thus far been unanswered. But Square has said it will fight any lawsuit filed and is currently supporting Rabois.

“I have not as yet found any conduct that is illegal and therefore there is no adverse relationship between Keith and Square,” said Curiale. “We don’t pay for claims that have no merit to them, because it amounts to extortion.”

Perhaps so, but it also amounts to a very juicy story — the second such major blowup in Silicon Valley in a year. The other — now a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination and retaliation, and a countersuit — between the well-known venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and former partner Ellen Pao, is ongoing.

The particulars of the Rabois situation, per his side of the story, which he claims is supported by much evidence, is of a social and physical relationship with a man he met several years ago.

While he would not call their relationship dating, it was close and personal, including taking this man out with him to social events.

The problem came when he recommended this man for a job at Square and he was hired. The company was much smaller then, about 30 people, but as it grew Rabois insists he had no direct oversight of the employee and also did not treat him differently from others he managed at the company.

Rabois claims he gave him advice, as he did other employees, but neither helped or hindered the man in his efforts to advance.

The man and Rabois were still seeing each other socially until December, when the relationship cooled.

And then came the lawsuit threat two weeks ago, which Rabois said “stunned” him.

Square says that it was not aware of the personal relationship until the threat of the lawsuit; the employee has never made any complaints about Rabois to management.

Spokesman Ricardo Reyes said that “what we have here at most is bad judgement and we will defend ourselves.”

In this Rabois agrees, as he fields emails of support from his wide range of friends and colleagues in tech, where he is well known as an entrepreneur and angel investor.

“I have several good ideas of what I want to do next,” he said.

I am meeting with former COO Keith Rabois right now about the developing situation at Square, which involves a sexual harassment claim from a male employee still at the payments company.

The issue was first reported in The Wall Street Journal, just as Rabois posted his own account on the situation.

I’ll have more in a bit, but here is a pretty stunning statement he just gave me that also just published on his Tumblr blog, describing a personal relationship with an employee that went badly awry.

Rabois resigned yesterday as COO of the high-profile and heavily funded San Francisco startup:

The past few days have been the toughest, saddest, most frightening, and emotionally draining of my life. They have deeply affected me, both personally and professionally.

In May 2010, I met someone via mutual friends. With increasing frequency, we hung out, drank wine, and I helped prepare him for interviews with tech startups. As our friendship deepened, we spent more time together, and our relationship became physical. We regularly worked out at the gym, occasionally hung out at my home, and exchanged intimate, personal information, as people in similar relationships often do.

Several months after our relationship began, I recommended that he interview at Square. He went through the interview process and was ultimately hired. I did not interview him. I had no impact on his potential success at the company. At no point did he ever report directly to me, and I have seen his work product less than a handful of times.

Last week, a New York-based attorney threatened Square and myself with a lawsuit. I am told this lawsuit would allege that the relationship was not consensual, and would go on to accuse me of some pretty horrible things. I was told that only a payment of millions of dollars will make this go away, and that my career, my reputation, and my livelihood will be threatened if Square and I don’t pay up.

I realize that continuing any physical relationship after he began working at Square was poor judgment on my part. But let me be unequivocal with the facts: (1) The relationship was welcome. (2) Square did not know of the relationship before a lawsuit was threatened; it came as a complete surprise to the company. (3) He never received nor was denied any reward or benefits based on our relationship. And (4), I did not do the horrendous things I am told I may be accused of. While I have certainly made mistakes, this threat feels like a shakedown, and I will defend myself to the full extent of the law.

I decided to resign from Square so my colleagues could continue to do great work without the distraction that a lawsuit would most certainly bring. I deeply regret that I let my personal and professional lives to become intertwined, and I apologize to my colleagues and friends (at Square and elsewhere) who I’ve let down, and who will bear the brunt of some of the unnecessary, negative attention this situation will likely bring.

I am already working on something new and hope to announce that in February.

Here is a statement from Square about the developing situation:

“The first we heard of any of these allegations was when we received the threat of a lawsuit two weeks ago. We took these allegations very seriously and we immediately launched a full investigation to ascertain the facts. While we have not found evidence to support any claims, Keith exercised poor judgment that ultimately undermined his ability to remain an effective leader at Square. We accepted his resignation.”

The reversal was important because the previous decision had effectively censored Jane Perez’s Yelp review of contractor Christopher Dietz without a court finding that what she wrote was actually false and libelous.

Previously, a judge had told Perez that she had to rewrite her posts to remove a reference to jewelry missing from her home, and to recharacterize the dispute between her and Dietz over nonpayment.

But an appeal by Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union led to the court determining just two days later that “the preliminary injunction was not justified and that the respondents have an adequate remedy at law.”

“It shouldn’t be easy to take down speech that you don’t like,” said Paul Alan Levy, an attorney for Public Citizen. “You can’t get injunction against defamation. If it’s really defamation, you get damages.”

Yelp and Angie’s List were not directly involved in the case in their role as online forums for user content. However, Yelp provided the following statement:

Consumer freedom of speech provides an important public service, protected by law. Yelp provides a valuable contribution to this dialogue by providing a two-way platform for consumers to share their experiences and for businesses to respond to their customers. Courts have consistently ruled that consumers have the right to share their truthful experiences. As a result, businesses that choose to sue their customers to silence them rather than address their comments, rarely prevail and often bring additional unwanted attention to the original criticism.

Theodore F. Schroeder of Ocean City, N.J., filed a lawsuit yesterday in New York district court, alleging misappropriation, unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty against Pinterest and its early investor Brian Cohen.

“The lawsuit against Pinterest is baseless and we will fight it aggressively,” a spokesman for Pinterest said today.

Update: Schroeder’s attorney, Richard Scheff of Montgomery McCracken, emailed the following comment: ”The bottom line is that it’s illegal to steal an idea for your own benefit without regard to the originator of that idea. Here, Mr. Cohen joined an existing enterprise in which Mr Schroeder had a majority interest, and then took without permission or right Mr. Schroeder’s ideas, concepts, web application and technology.”

Cohen did not reply to a request for comment.

Schroeder’s complaint says that he and Cohen worked together in 2007 and 2008 on a start-up venture that was an antecedent to Pinterest. According to Schroeder, the ideas he built for that project — called Rendezvoo, and later, Skoopwire — were incorporated into Pinterest, which Cohen provided early funding for in 2009.

Rendezvoo was a “a Web site where people meet to share opinions, views, items and tastes on a variety of subjects — product, services, events, politics, economics — nearly anything of human interest” with about 5,000 users. It included two “linchpin” concepts that later found their way into Pinterest: “Boards” for posting content and so-called “infinite scrolling,” where users don’t have to load another page to view more content.

Plus, Schroeder said, Rendezvoo had a “pink and purple color scheme to attract female users,” and Pinterest is now well-known for its appeal to women.

Schroeder and Cohen, who is a public relations entrepreneur and chairman of the New York Angels investing group, had worked together on Rendezvoo as well as a later pivot called Skoopwire, which was a free press-release service for new products. Cohen, who served as chairman and CEO, apparently pushed the team away from its more Pinterest-like ideas for Rendezvous, and then later he and Schroeder had a falling out over equity and roles.

The lawsuit accuses Cohen of striking a “Faustian deal” with the founders of Pinterest. “In 2009, a year after Cohen had caused a deadlock … Cohen had given Plaintiff’s ideas and applications to young entrepreneurs.”

One particularly oddball aspect of the case is that, outside of the lawsuit, I wasn’t able to find much of any information about Schroeder. He is apparently a Columbia Law School graduate and Internet entrepreneur who has virtually no online presence — unless perhaps he is the Ted Schroeder of Ocean City, N.J. who owns a gluten-free taco shop.

Update: According to Scheff, Schroeder is not the taco shop owner; he is a young practicing lawyer and “self-taught computer genius” working in the Philadelphia region at a company that he does not want to disclose.

Here’s the full lawsuit:

Pinterest lawsuit

Now, not a week later, the first hard numbers from the deal are emerging. According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, RIM’s first payment to Nokia — the one made up front — totaled in excess of $50 million.

“On December 21, 2012, Nokia and RIM announced that they have entered into a new patent license agreement,” RIM explained in a 6-K filing. “The agreement will result in the settlement of all patent litigation between the companies and Nokia’s dismissal of all pending actions in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. The financial structure of the agreement includes a lump sum EUR50m (approximately $65m) one-time payment, which has been recorded in the Company’s consolidated statement of operations in the third quarter of fiscal 2013.”

The 6-K doesn’t specify what sort of arrangement the companies have made with regard to ongoing royalty payments. But it’s conceivable that their yearly total could run nearly as high as this first upfront payment, particularly if the agreed-upon royalty rate falls in the $2- to $5-per-handset range that some analysts expect.

Merry Christmas, Kevin Systrom!

The accusations leveled? Funes is mad about Instagram’s set of Terms of Service amendments made last week, which caused widespread furor among the app’s user base. The suit, which was first reported by Reuters, claims breach of contract based on “the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” along with a handful of other California civil code breach accusations.

“We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” a Facebook spokesman told AllThingsD.

In a nutshell: Instagram freaked everyone out last week when it updated its ToS, stating that the service had a right to introduce advertising products that accompanied user photographs. Along with the distaste folks had at the thought they may start seeing diaper ads plastered alongside pics of their kids’ faces, the uproar eventually made it seem like Instagram would sell the content created by users in their photos.

Eventually, Instagram dialed back the language, publishing an apologetic note to its site near the end of the week. But the damage had been done, as thousands of users had sworn to leave the service in favor of other photo-sharing applications — in particular, the recently updated Flickr app for iOS.

Funes and company’s biggest grievance with Instagram lies in that cancellation grey area; If users decide to delete their accounts, “customers forfeit all right to retrieve the Property that was previously entrusted to Instagram, which retains rights thereto in perpetuity,” the filing states.

The money quote: “In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us.’”

Bummer of a present for CEO Systrom on Christmas Eve. Here’s hoping the gifts left in his stocking fare better.

The proceedings won’t move much until 2013, so for now, head on over to McSweeney’s for another fantastic privacy policy update, courtesy of Santa Claus.

Oh, and here’s the filing if you want to check it out:

Instagram Lawsuit

It’s hard to say how serious this is right now, but Yahoo was ordered to pay $2.7 billion in a lawsuit related to a breach of contract and lost profits of a yellow pages listing service by Worldwide Directories and Ideas Interactivas.

In a statement and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Silicon Valley Internet giant said it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals.”

We lobbed a call into Yahoo to get more details about the “non-final” judgment from the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City — not that the company’s PR will actually call back on important multi-billion matters — but here is the company’s SEC filing:

SEC-YHOO-1193125-12-487828

According to the DOJ complaint, the agreement began no later than 2006 and lasted at least until 2009. The DOJ said the agreement for over a year also barred at least eBay from hiring any Intuit employees at all. EBay and Intuit directly compete for employees, including specialized computer engineers and scientists covered by the agreements at issue in the case, the department noted.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

If that’s the case, Uber is the current badge leader, racking up a citation from the California Public Utilities Commission and a class action lawsuit by San Francisco taxi drivers to add to its hefty pile of local disputes.

Ride-sharing services SideCar and Lyft confirmed they’d also been cited by the PUC yesterday to the tune of $20,000. Lyft COO John Zimmer said his company would appeal the citation and described it as a chance to accelerate a conversation about modernizing transportation laws. SideCar CEO Sunil Paul asked users to sign a petition supporting his company and urged them to “Ride on!”

The deal comes with a 10-year license agreement.

Here’s the press release. Our mobile maven Ina Fried will have more in a bit:

HTC and Apple Settle Patent Dispute

All Patent Litigation Between The Companies Dismissed

TAIPEI, Taiwan and CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — HTC and Apple have reached a global settlement that includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits and a ten-year license agreement.  The license extends to current and future patents held by both parties.  The terms of the settlement are confidential.

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC.

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” said Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.  ”We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

Apple declined to comment, but is expected to appeal. A VirnetX representative was not immediately available for comment.

VirnetX also has filed complaints with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Apple, alleging that its iPhone, iPad and Mac products violate the company’s patents. In addition, the company has cases pending against Cisco, Avaya and Siemens, with those cases set for trial in March 2013.

The patent holding company had previously won a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging several versions of Windows also infringed on its patents.