Amazon.com Inc was named in a lawsuit involving super-specific targeted advertising on the popular social media platform, Facebook. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of trying to show ads to a certain age group, those younger than 38, which is within Facebook’s targeting capabilities. While Facebook is not named in the lawsuit, this has been seen as an example of age discrimination, limiting the number of “older” people who would be able to apply for those open positions. Many ad platforms allow segmented targeting options, including age and gender. Also named in the lawsuit were 2 large scale internet/TV/phone providers, T-Mobile and Cox Communications. Read More
Tag Archives: Amazon
Amazon Workers Subjected to Short Lunch Breaks
A lawsuit was filed in federal court last week against the popular online retailer, Amazon. The details of the suit claim, “company’s workplace policies don’t leave them with reasonable time to eat their lunches”. South Carolina employees state they were required to continue working, even when their scheduled 30 minutes break began. Once they got through the mandatory security screen and sat down with their lunch, they were left with all of 18 minutes or less to enjoy their lunch breaks. The complaint states that workers are unable to have a comfortable mealtime. Read More
Department of Justice Settles With Macmillan Over E-Book Price Fixing Lawsuit
Back in April of 2012, the United States Government sued 5 different publishers for their involvement in fixing e-book prices. These publishers included Penguin, Simon and Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins. The first four publishers were able to settle with the government and now the tally is up to 5. Macmillan Publishing was the last publishing company to settle with the Justice Department, but the government is now looking for bigger fish to fry. The wildly popular tech company Apple is under the microscope for conspiring with these 5 publishing companies that have now all settled. Apple will be in trial starting this June. Read more
Apple and Amazon Urged to Reach Settlement
Think of this as a teaser for a heavyweight match that will take place in a few months. A judge has ordered that Apple and Amazon attempt to reach a settlement over use of the word “Appstore” before their big court date in the summer. Apple, the technology giant, claims that they own rights to the phrase and had already sued the e-commerce site Amazon.com. A judge had ruled that Apple had no claim to the fictional phrase. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte has urged the two companies to gather this spring in attempts to avoid a later clash over the intellectual property, copyrights, or trademarks. If no settlement is reached, Apple and Amazon will soon go before a judge in Southern California over using “Appstore”. Read more
A Kodak Moment: Patents To Sell for $525 Million
It seems that film isn’t the only thing Kodak has been developing recently. The famous digital imaging and photography company agreed to sell their patent portfolio to a large group of companies including Google, Apple, and Facebook. Eastman Kodak, based in Rochester NY, is monetizing their patents to help recover from a recent bankruptcy. Economists are predicting that the $525 million agreement will help Kodak re-emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013. Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft are also members of the 12-company group of licensees. Read more