Tech Law: Gamer Sues Bungie, DOJ Eyes MicroHoo, K-Mart/Sears Spyware, More

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

Gamer sues over Halo 3 bugs -- A gamer is suing Bungie over bugs its popular Halo 3 game. At least he didn't show up in battle armor riding a warthog. [Source: GamePro]

DOJ scrutinizes MicroHoo -- The Department of Justice is expanding its review of the Microsoft-Yahoo search and ad partnership. The question? Does bigger really mean better? [Source: Bloomberg]

Microsoft escapes infringement fine -- for now -- The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that Microsoft doesn't have to pay $358 million for patent infringement to Alcatel-Lucent. The decision hinged on how the district court calculated the award. But the infringement judgment stands and the district court gets another crack at the calculator. [Source: AP]

K-Mart and Sears slammed for spyware -- The FTC hammered K-Mart and Sears, not normally two names that come up in the tech industry, for offering people $10 to run a "research" program that would watch their web browsing without making it clear that they were getting every detail, including "contents of shopping carts, online bank statements, drug prescription records, video rental records, library borrowing histories, and the sender, recipient, subject, and size for web-based e-mails." Was there a blue light special on snooping? [Source: Ars Technica]

Zynga Sues Playdom -- Social network gaming vendor Zygna is suing rival Playdom, among others, for a host of alleged anti-competitive actions because of luring employees away. OK, guys, play nice. [Source: TechCrunch]

Gavel image via Flickr user Thomas Roche, CC 2.0.