Fraud lawsuit rocks Bank of America

The market value of Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Global Broad Market Index has increased $132.4 billion since the end of July to $42.1 trillion, the most in data going back to 1996. The index, containing more than 19000 bonds sold by governments,

Over the past three years, Bank of America's stock has fallen 80 percent to $6.51 from $32.25. The KBW Bank Index has fallen 46 percent, to $36.99 from $68.31. According to SNL Financial, there are only six other days in Bank of America's history where

Among major Massachusetts employers, Bank of America was the biggest loser as 20 percent of its stock value evaporated in the meltdown — partly due to the deb.

Bank of America Corp. (ticker: BAC) tumbled $1.66, or 20.3 percent, to $6.51 after insurer AIG sued the bank over mortgage-backed securities, saying it was cheated and seeking to recover more than $10 billion. Verizon Communications ( VZ) fell $1.93,

Among major Massachusetts employers, Bank of America was the biggest loser as 20 percent of its stock value evaporated in the meltdown — partly due to the debt crisis and recession fears, but mostly because it was slapped with a $10 billion lawsuit by

View the original article here

Google Wants to Redact Email In Android Lawsuit

Google asks the judge in charge of the lawsuit that Oracle filed against it to redact an email written by one of its employees. The search giant said that it is a confidential document and Oracle should not have revealed it in the court.

Oracle filed the lawsuit last August 2010 and claimed that Google’s Android platform violated several patents that Oracle owned through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The email in question came from Google engineer Tim Lindholm and was sent in August 2010. In the email he said that they were asked to investigate alternatives to Java for Chrome and Android to which he said that there is none and that Google should negotiate for a Java license.

The contents of the email were disclosed last week during a hearing. Judge William Alsup told Google’s lawyers during the hearing that the company they represent will be at the losing end if the contents were revealed to a jury. He said to Oracle’s side that the email is good evidence against the search giant.

Google doesn’t want the email to be made public, especially not in front of a jury. The company maintained that the document was highly confidential and the protective order says that parties involved should give other parties notice when the proceeding will include protected material.

View the original article here

New Patent Lawsuit Against Hulu Could Derail Efforts to Secure a Buyer

Hulu ‘for sale’ valuation of $2 billion may very well have to be readjusted.

Just last week, Hulu learned that its users will have to start paying for what was previously free content, courtesy of a new pricing policy from Fox. The company now has to contend with a patent lawsuit, filed by interactive programming guide vendor, Rovi. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District court of Delaware, alleges breach of patents related online TV program guides, as well as products dealing with online search. Rovi is asking for unspecified damages as well as legal costs.

According to media analysts, Rovi has penchant for suing over patents, and Hulu can probably not expect much to come from the filing. In the past Rovi has sued Toshiba, Amazon and others over patent infringement. But even if the Rovi lawsuit comes to nothing, Hulu will surely have concerns over its operations.

Much of the ‘asking power’ that Hulu has is based on the perception that the company has all the necessary licensing and patent issues all sorted out. If Hulu now has to start announcing pricing adjustments for content, deal with patent lawsuits, it could easily make potential buyers nervous.

The lists of suitors for Hulu include Yahoo, Google, and even Apple. Clearly these are not the sort of buyers that will part with $2 billion without confidence. It’s now up to the people who run Hulu to make sure their mammoth asking price is justified.

Do you think Hulu is worth $2 billion? Leave your thoughts below in the comments.

View the original article here