Tech Law: Tech Exec Sentenced, EchoStar Gets Stay, Psystar Back, More

(MoneyWatch)  A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits.

Ex-AMX exec sentenced for corporate espionage -- A New Jersey state court sentenced a former AMX executive to three years probation and psychological counseling after he pled guilty to wiretapping and intercepting emails in a corporation espionage campaign. [Source: TWICE]

FCC getting tough on line sharing -- The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly fixing the process that carriers use to raise their prices for other telecos to have access to their networks. [Source: Ars Technica]

Laptop vendors may get sued for battery life -- Now that AMD has said how battery life claims of laptop vendors were under ideal conditions and that actual performance was often half of that, there may be a class action law suit. [Source: VentureBeat]

Usenet.com loses copyright infringement case -- Usenet.com lost the copyright infringement suit that the RIAA brought. The judgment could conceivably run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. [Source: CNET]

EchoStar gets stay -- In the extended patent dispute between TiVO and EchoStar, the latter got a stay of a contempt of court order. [Source: Barrons Tech Trader Daily]

Psystar comes back with new cloned Mac -- Mac clone manufacturer Psystar is emerging from bankruptcy with a new offering. [Source: AppleInsider]

Obama action boosts net neutrality -- In its guidelines for the broadband stimulus package, the Obama administration is requiring recipients to follow the FCC's Internet Policy statement, which translates in part into not deliberately blocking or slowing Internet traffic, effectively enforcing net neutrality. [Source: CNET]

Gavel image via Flickr user Thomas Roche, CC 2.0.