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"J.K. Rowling has been named in a lawsuit alleging she stole ideas for her wildly popular and lucrative "Harry Potter" books from another British author. The estate of the late Adrian Jacobs added Rowling as a defendant in a lawsuit it filed in June against Bloomsbury Publishing PLC for alleged copyright infringement, according to a statement released by the estate's representatives, who are based in Australia."

"RealNetworks Inc. said it will pay $4.5 million and drop its appeal of a court order barring sales of its DVD-copying software to settle a lawsuit by Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood movie studios claiming the technology violates copyright-protection laws. RealNetworks also will refund about 2,700 customers who bought RealDVD, a $30 software program that allows users to save one backup copy of a movie to a computer hard drive."

The Supreme Court on Tuesday resurrected a possible settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by freelance writers who said that newspapers and magazines had committed copyright infringement by making their contributions available on electronic databases. The proposed settlement was prompted by a 2001 decision from the Supreme Court in favor of six freelance authors claiming copyright infringement in The New York Times Company v. Tasini. After the Tasini decision, many freelance works were removed from online databases. Most publishers now require freelance writers to sign contracts granting both print and online rights. After the decision, the authors, publishers and database companies who were parties to several class-action lawsuits negotiated a global settlement that would pay the plaintiffs up to $18 million.

RealNetworks has agreed to kill its DVD-copying software and pay $4.5 million in settling a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by Hollywood studios. As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, the provider of online entertainment services also agreed to drop its appeal of a San Francisco federal court ruling that barred RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of the studios' copyrighted content. The 2008 lawsuit filed by Viacom and the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that RealDVD illegally circumvented the anti-piracy technology embedded in DVDs. The DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses Hollywood-sanctioned copyright-protection technology, joined the suit later, claiming RealNetworks was also in violation of its DVD CCA license.

Science fiction writer Zhou Shaomou has filed a lawsuit with the People's Court of Beijing for copyright infringement. Zhou claims in his suit that 80% of "Avatar"'s key elements and plot are the same as his novel, "Tale of the Blue Crows," which was written in 1997.

The federal judge overseeing the proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed against Google by groups representing authors and publishers heard from a handful of supporters and a parade of objectors to the deal at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan.

Google's plan to digitize the world's books into a combination research library and bookstore has hit another snag, in the form of a U.S. Justice Department statement that "despite substantial progress made, issues remain" with the proposed settlement agreement of the class action lawsuit The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.

"In a lengthy article in New York magazine that hit the Web late on Sunday, writer Gabriel Sherman quotes a source high up in the media industry echelon who says Murdoch is "pretty tightly wound up over Google and has been ready to sue them...He doesn't trust them at all." The lawsuit, presumably, would come if Google refused to stop indexing News Corp. search results without paying a fee for them."

"The Supreme Court on Tuesday resurrected a possible settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by freelance writers who said that newspapers and magazines had committed copyright infringement by making their contributions available on electronic databases. "

Google's plan to digitize the world's books into a combination research library and bookstore has hit another snag, in the form of a U.S. Justice Department statement that "despite substantial progress made, issues remain" with the proposed settlement agreement of the class action lawsuit The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc.

Emil Malak has sued James Cameron writer for copyright infringement, claiming that Avatar is based on a screenplay he wrote called Terra Incognita in 1998. Malak has said that Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, bears a striking resemblance to his Terra Incognita, a screenplay he wrote and first copyrighted in 1998.

Video games are becoming more like movies every day, so it's not surprising to see publishers facing the same kinds of idea theft lawsuits that frequently irritate Hollywood.

Facebook has a patent on "news-feed" style social networking. Uh oh.

Google and Viacom file new motions in $1 billion copyright infringement suit.

Erik Estavillo, the litigious gamer who has gone after Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Activision Blizzard (among others), has turned his sights on the gaming press.

"Escalating its efforts to crack down on DVD piracy, Twentieth Century Fox on Thursday filed six lawsuits against several dozen people that the company said had sold DVDs containing an unfinished version of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and other counterfeit Fox titles."

"Court documents in the $1 billion lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube were unsealed today, finally shedding some light on key questions: did Viacom have "smoking gun" evidence that YouTube was deliberately profiting from 62,637 Viacom clips that were watched more than 507 million times on the site? Was Google aware of the copyright infringement problems when it purchased YouTube in 2006? Were YouTube's own founders involved in uploading unauthorized materials?"