by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate Governance, News
MELBOURNE (IANS) : An Indian businessman and his wife on Monday launched the largest legal action in the state of Victoria, seeking more than $1 billion in compensation from an Australian bank.
Pankaj and Radhika Oswal accused the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) of underselling shares in their West Australian fertiliser company after it was seized by receivers, Xinhua news agency reported.
Opening the case in Victoria’s Supreme Court on Monday, senior counsel for the Oswals, Tony Bannon, said his clients’ 65 percent stake in Burrup Fertilisers was sold for $400 million in 2010. Bannon said he will demonstrate to the court that the true value of the couple’s shares was in fact $990 million.
“Our evidence will demonstrate the current value is in the order of 2.36 billion Australian dollars ($1.68 billion),” he said.
Oswal claims he was bullied by ANZ executives during the sale six years ago, alleging that one executive put him in a headlock and threatened to “destroy” him before Burrup went into receivership.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance
New York, (IANS) In a much-awaited decision, a jury in California’s Northern District federal court declared on Friday that Google’s use of copyright-protected code in Android was a fair one and freed the tech giant of any liability.
Global software major Oracle, which controls the copyright on the code, had sought $9 billion for the use of the code, accusing Google of software copyrights infringement, technology website The Verge reported.
Oracle claimed that it should receive $475 million in damages in addition to $8.8 billion relating to “profits apportioned to infringed Java copyrights” and crushing Java’s chance of success in smartphones, tablets and other products.
The two companies have been at odds over whether Google improperly used so-called APIs (application programming interfaces) related to the Java programming language to create its Android operating system.
Oracle said that Google has not paid the company for its use of Java which was developed by tech company Sun Microsystems acquired by Oracle in 2010.
Back in 2012, the companies took the issue to court but the jury was unable to determine whether Google used Java APIs fairly.
In April, Oracle CEO Safra Catz and Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai attended the talks in a court in April for six hours and discussed the lawsuit that Oracle had filed, however, they failed to make any settlements.
Google had been denying any wrongdoing and argued that its use of Java is protected by the legal doctrine of “fair use”, which permits copying in some circumstances.
In 2012, the companies took the issue to court but the jury was unable to determine whether Google used Java application programming interfaces (APIs) fairly.
Both Google’s Go and Apple’s Swift are licensed in a way that would close off the possibility of such a suit in the future, the report added.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
New York (IANS) A San Francisco federal judge on Friday ruled against a request by Facebook to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the social networking giant’s photo tagging system violates user privacy.
The lawsuit alleges that Facebook’s biometric software violates Illinois’s biometric information privacy act by violating user privacy as it creates faceprints without explicit consent, The Verge reported.
The digital faceprints are used to identify users to suggest tags for uploaded photos.
The photo-tagging system is disclosed in the company’s privacy policy.
User can opt out of it but it is unclear whether those measures will satisfy the legal definition of consent, the report added.
“The court accepts as true plaintiffs’ allegations that Facebook’s face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs’ consent,” the judge ruled.
“This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a Facebook spokesperson had earlier said.
But with the fresh decision, the plaintiffs — Carlo Licata, Adam Pezen and Indian-origin Nimesh Patel — have a valid claim under the Illinois biometrics law and the case can proceed.
This is not the first time Facebook’s photo tagging policy has faced criticism.
According to a report in the Tribune, this feature is unavailable in Europe as privacy concerns forced Facebook into deleting the geometric face data of its European users from its database.
Facebook had launched the photo-tagging system six years back.
