Daily News Briefs: March  28, 2000
Date: Tuesday 28 March 2000 12:50:33 -0800

Table of Contents

Subject: NEWS
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 12:50:33 -0800

Top News
Cal. Jury Gives $20 Million to Ex-Smoker
Justices won't restore food stamps for immigrants
Progress Could Delay Microsoft Ruling

Cyberlaw News
Mattel Suit Takes GNU Twist
Judge hears case of recording industry against makers of music
trading software
Should 'e-words' be trademarked?

Entertainment Law
Brockovich's Work Is Just Beginning

Criminal Law
Effort to Let State Identify Sex Offenders on Internet

Unusual Legal News
Anti-Drug Czar Wants Tickets Tested for Heroin
Iowa's prison porn rules stand

Top News

Cal. Jury Gives $20 Million to Ex-Smoker
FindLaw News

A California jury on Monday ordered two major tobacco companies to pay a
dying ex-smoker $20 million in punitive damages - the first such award
to someone who started smoking after health warnings appeared on
cigarette packs in 1969. In a fresh legal setback for the embattled
tobacco industry, the 12-member San Francisco Superior Court panel
ordered Philip Morris Cos Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc.
each to pay $10 million to Leslie Whiteley, a California woman who
developed lung cancer after smoking for 25 years.

http://news.findlaw.com/News/s/20000327/tobaccotrial.html

Justices won't restore food stamps for immigrants
FindLaw News

The Supreme Court today refused to force the government to restore food
stamps and other benefits for legal immigrants cut off in a massive 1996
welfare overhaul. The court, without comment, rejected an appeal by
Chicago officials and a group of noncitizen residents who said the 1996
law violated their equal-protection rights.

http://news.findlaw.com/News/s/20000327/usscwelfare.html

Progress Could Delay Microsoft Ruling
ABC News

Microsoft's latest offer to settle its antitrust lawsuit may not totally
satisfy the government, but the last-minute proposal by the software
company could be enough to postpone a verdict that was expected as early
as today. Sources close to the case say sufficient progress between the
two sides and a court-appointed mediator is likely to persuade the
federal judge overseeing the case to hold back plans for delivering a
verdict.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/microsoft000328.html

Cyberlaw News

Tech-Deals - Internet Contracts - The Details
http://techdeals.findlaw.com
Meg Whitman & eBay, Dr. Koop's deal with drkoop.com & more
Amazon, AOL, eBay, Excite, iVillage, Netscape, TheStreet.com, Yahoo!
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Mattel Suit Takes GNU Twist
Wired News

Mattel's claim of victory Monday in a lawsuit over its Cyberpatrol
filtering software may be premature. The toy giant said during a court
hearing here that it had acquired intellectual property rights to a
program that reveals Cyberpatrol's secret list of off-limits websites
and settled the case. Mattel said it planned to use its new copyright in
court to ban Internet copying of the "cphack" utility. But cphack's
authors released it under the GNU General Public License, which appears
to permit unlimited distribution of the original cphack program, even if
Mattel now owns the copyright.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35226,00.html


Judge hears case of recording industry against makers of music trading
software
San Jose Mercury News

Lawyers for a company that makes software to trade music over the
Internet are seeking some protection from copyright liability in federal
court, trying to defend the firm from a lawsuit brought by the recording
industry. San Mateo, Calif.-based Napster Inc. is accused by the
Recording Industry Association of America of encouraging users of the
company's software and computer servers to trade copyrighted music
online without permission.

http://www.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/010025.htm

Should 'e-words' be trademarked?
ZDNet

Software entrepreneur Philippe Kahn fought many battles with Microsoft
Corp. while at the head of the once-scrappy Borland International, now
known as Inprise Corp. Now Kahn has a new quest - to keep commonly used
``e-words'' such as e-ticket and e-commerce - in the public domain.
Kahn's third company, LightSurf Inc., is filing a lawsuit in U.S.
federal court against Belgian imaging giant Agfa-Gevaert Group for
trademarking the term "e-photo."

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2475472,00.html?chkpt=zdnntop

Entertainment Law - Legally Entertaining

FindLaw Entertainment
http://e.findlaw.com/
News, TV, Movies, Music and Law
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Brockovich's vs Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
ABC News

In the No. 1 hit Erin Brockovich, many moviegoers are seeing how a brash
young legal secretary forced Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to pay a record
$333 million settlement for poisoning the water in a small California
desert town. But the movie's story of environmental villainy is only the
beginning of the legal and public relations nightmare Brockovich has
created for the utility company. A bigger, broader lawsuit is headed to
trial in November against San Francisco-based PG&E and one of its main
suppliers.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/brockovich000327.html

Criminal Law

Effort to Let State Identify Sex Offenders on Internet
New York Times

Frustrated that New Jersey courts have prevented Megan's Law from
reaching into cyberspace, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman introduced
legislation today that would amend the State Constitution to allow
officials to post convicted sex offenders' names on an Internet site.

http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/nj-megan-web.html

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Weird Legal News
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Anti-Drug Czar Wants Tickets Tested for Heroin
Reuters/Excite! News

Air passengers flying into Britain may have their tickets tested for
traces of heroin under a controversial new plan, the Sunday Times
newspaper said. The plan followed research that showed 80 percent of
banknotes circulating in central London had traces of cocaine on them,
the paper added. Britain's anti-drugs coordinator Keith Hellawell is
organizing trials for a machine which can check tickets for heroin,
cocaine, cannabis and ecstasy, the Sunday Times said.

http://news.excite.com/news/r/000327/12/odd-britain-heroin

Iowa's prison porn rules stand
Des Moines Register

Hard-core pornography is off limits for Iowa prison inmates, but they
can keep their Playboy magazines. Iowa Corrections Director W.L. "Kip"
Kautzky said he will retain the state's policy on sexually oriented
material in prisons. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week allows tight
restrictions on inmate reading materials in one Arizona case.

http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4788993/10873101.html      

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