Troubled Finnish phone giant Nokia is increasingly troubled, unicorns be damned.

The latest bad news for the phone maker: along with high-ranking executives Stephen Elop (CEO) and Timo Ihamuotila (CFO), the company has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by an angry shareholder (IntoMobile also picked up on it).

Update: Nokia has (not really) responded to the filing.

Nokia’s fall from grace has been well documented, but plaintiff Robert Chmielinski claims the company and the aforementioned executives willfully misled and defrauded shareholders between October 2011 and April 2012 by making false statements about a potential turn-around thanks to strong Lumia sales.

The switch to the Windows Phone platform did nothing to stop Nokia’s position in the smartphone market from deteriorating, says Chmielinski, and this ultimately led to significant economic losses for thousands of Nokia shareholders.

They have pitchforks, and they’re not afraid to use them.

The money quote from the complaint, which is embedded at the foot of the post:

Nokia provides telecommunications infrastructure hardware, software, and services worldwide. During the Class Period, defendants told investors that Nokia’s conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market. It did not.

This became apparent on April 11, 2012, when Nokia disclosed that its first quarter performance would be worse than expected. Nokia expected its first quarter 2012 non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin to fall by 3%, and projected first quarter 2012 Devices & Services net sales of €4.2 billion.

It also disclosed a glitch in its newest Windows offering – the Lumia 900. Nokia had to immediately offer customers an automatic $100, making the phone essentially free.

As a result of this disclosure, the price of Nokia’s American Depositary Shares (“ADRs”) dropped over 16% in a single day.

And the actual gist of Chmielinski’s complaint:

During the Class Period, defendants had both the motive and opportunity to conduct fraud. They also had actual knowledge of the misleading nature of the statements they made or acted in reckless disregard of the true information known to them at the time.

In so doing, the defendants participated in a scheme to defraud and committed acts, practices and participated in a course of business that operated as a fraud or deceit on purchasers of Nokia securities during the Class Period.

Chmielinski digs up quotes from press releases and conference talks to make his case, and then tears them by adding that the statements were “materially false and misleading because Nokia’s migration to a Windows platform was not going as well as represented”. The plaintiff also claims Nokia, Elop and Ihamuotila “engaged in a scheme to deceive the market”.

Ouch. Again.

Nokia investors have seen the value of their holding drop about 90 percent in less than five years, and the outlook for the future looks equally bleak.

Nokia, which just filed patents lawsuits against rivals HTC, RIM and Viewsonic over 45 of its patents in the US and Germany, plans to debut a new series of tablet computers and “hybrid” smart mobile devices this year to help with the turn-around.

A man named Robert Herskowitz has filed a federal class action suit against Apple, alleging that the company ‘double-bills’ for purchases made on iTunes with “troubling regularity” and that the company’s “illegal” policies also apply to other digital stores like the App Store, the iBookstore and the Mac App Store.

Herskowitz seeks an injunction and punitive damages of more than $5 million for a national class, alleging breach of contract, breach of faith, unjust enrichment, unfair competition and business law violations.

Apple violates its own terms of agreement as well as California state and common laws, according to the complaint.

The man claims he bought a single (admittedly crappy) song from the iTunes Store for $1.29, for which Apple charged him twice. He claims that he received the following response from Apple after he lodged a complaint:

“Your request for ‘Whatya Want from Me’ was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes store are ineligible for refund.

This policy matches Apple’s refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.”

According to the complaint, Herskowitz asserts that the agreement governing use of Apple’s digital stores “says no such thing.” He claims the policy has “resulted in substantial numbers of Apple customers throughout the country having been double-billed by Apple.”

Apple’s refund policy states that Apple does not provide refunds in the event of a price reduction or promotional offering. Charging twice for a digital song, book or movie does not fall under that policy because its own terms limit it to price discount events only, Herskowitz asserts.

To be continued, no doubt. You can see the full complaint embedded below:

Herskowitz v Apple, Complaint

It’s been two weeks since the Department of Justice arrested seven employees of Megaupload and shut it down. After all of the back and forth discussion about how this landmark case affects our online rights, the actual users of the site have been forgotten.

While the story of Megaupload conjures up thoughts and feelings of the Napster downfall, the site had over a million users, and surely not all of them were downloading or storing “illegal” files. With rumors that all Megaupload data would be wiped this Thursday, the site’s lawyer tweeted that the data would be held onto for an additional two weeks:

Carpathia and Cogent agreed to preserve consumer data for additional time of at least two weeks so #Megaupload can work with US on proposal

— Ira Rothken (@rothken) January 30, 2012

Whether you believe that Megaupload carried out an elaborate and illegal scheme to make money, as the DoJ contests, innocent users of the site have lost information that they currently can’t access. Not only is that a scary thought if you relied on the site, but it’s a black mark for future cloud services and the industry in its entirety.

In hopes of representing these users, the Electronic Frontier Foundation along with support from hosting provider Carpathia, has set up a website for those who are seeking legal representation to get their legitimate Megaupload files back.

The site is called MegaRetrieval, and is offering free legal assistance to Megaupload users:

When the United States Government shut down access to Megaupload, a multitude of innocent users who stored legitimate, non-infringing files on the cloud-storage service were left with no means to access their data.

If you believe you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help to retrieve your data, please email the best contact information for you to the EFF at:

Megauploadmissing@eff.org

Please do not send us the details of the materials you have uploaded. Also, please note that EFF is a small donor-supported nonprofit and does not charge for its legal services. It may not be able to represent everyone who inquires.

With the two-week stay of deletion for the Megaupload files, the EFF hopes that it can come to some agreement with the US government to help some of these users access their files and information. Imagine how you’d feel if you stored personal things like photos or business files on the service. It’s easy to cast judgement on the service after reading media reports, but until Megaupload’s employees are found guilty, it’s unfair to withhold data from its rightful owners.

➤ MegaRetrieval

Tell us what you think in the comments, should Megaupload users be able to get their files back?

Megaupload is clearly gearing up for legal warfare amidst its takedown and indictments this week.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, as it prepares for those legal proceedings, the company has dropped its lawsuit against Universal Music Group over the takedown of its horrendous, yet somehow catchy, “Megaupload Mega Song”. That was the promo song that featured such stars as Will.i.am, Diddy, Lil John, Kanye West, and Kim Kardashian which we wrote about in December.

The video, which has over 14 million views on YouTube, was taken down due to a complaint by UMG, and left Megaupload not so happy about it. The company was so unhappy, it decided to sue over it. While the lawsuit has been dropped at the moment, The Hollywood Reporter says that it could be back in full swing soon:

Megaupload’s lawyers filed a notice in California federal court to dismiss the claims against UMG without prejudice, but also told the judge that the claims against anonymous John Does who participated in the takedown of the viral video continues. Megaupload also wants to pursue further discovery in the case and is attempting to get Google to cooperate on this front by preserving records.

What this means is that Megaupload might still go after the parties who participated in the takedown on both UMG and YouTube’s side. This whole Megaupload saga has more twists and turns than an off-road race track.

In case you haven’t seen the Megaupload Mega Song, take a look for yourself. It points out the site’s user numbers, all of whom aren’t so happy about losing all of their files during the DoJ raid:

Whether this lawsuit ever comes back or not is anyone’s guess, but something tells me that the company has more important things to deal with right now.

This morning, we reported on a lawsuit directed at music streaming site Grooveshark by Universal Music Group, one of the top record labels.

In the lawsuit, Universal claims that top executives at Grooveshark, including the CEO, have uploaded 100,000 tracks to its database illegally.

Grooveshark has fired back, saying Universal is mischaracterizing information it found in a comment on a blog post:

We have reviewed the Complaint that Universal Music Group filed last Friday against Grooveshark in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Universal’s claims rest almost entirely on an anonymous, blatantly false internet blog comment and Universal’s gross mischaracterization of information that Grooveshark itself provided to Universal. While Universal has deliberately engaged the media prior to serving a copy of the Complaint on Grooveshark, Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press. Grooveshark welcomes the opportunity to present the facts to the Court and has full confidence that it will prevail in the litigation.

Regards,
Marshall Custer
Grooveshark
General Counsel

The anonymous blog comment that Grooveshark is referring to is this one, found on the Digital Music News blog:

We are assigned a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and get a small extra bonus if we manage to go above that (not easy).The assignments are assumed as direct orders from the top to the bottom, we don’t just volunteer to ‘enhance’ the Grooveshark database.

Since the quote is anonymous, you have to come to your own conclusion on whether it comes from an inside source, perhaps a former or current Grooveshark employee, or was planted to make the service look bad.

Regardless of the he-said, she-said, if Universal can prove that the executive team uploaded tracks illegally to its own service, the music streaming will surely die for Grooveshark.

Universal contends that CEO Samuel Tarantin uploaded more than 1,791 copyrighted songs, SVP Paul Geller 3,453 songs and VP Benjamin Westermann-Clark 4,600 songs, respectively.

As Grooveshark’s General Counsel points out, the company is prepared to fight the court battle and leave the press out of it. Considering that this remark was made to the press, it’s not a good start for Grooveshark’s plan of defense. We’ll keep an eye on this story for you as it continues. I’ve reached out to the company but haven’t gotten a response as of publishing this piece.

UPDATE: Grooveshark responded to me with its initial statement.

You may have read the stories about the recent lawsuit against Facebook in which Timelines.com claims the company infringes upon its “Timeline” trademark.

Here is a section from the court complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Chicago:

Facebook’s use of the term “Timeline,” and its redirection of Internet traffic from Timelines’ Facebook page to Facebook’s new “Timeline” offering, infringes on Timelines’ federally registered trademarks in that it causes confusion as to the source of the services offered to users of the Internet. Indeed, Facebook’s “Timeline” offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s “Timeline” offering.

There have been other reports today that Facebook is “delaying” its release of the Timeline feature, and that the root cause of that could be this particular lawsuit. See Mashable’s report:

The public launch of Timeline is now at least delayed until Tuesday, when representatives from Facebook and Timelines.com will meet again in front of another federal judge to debate whether an injunction should be issued against Facebook.

However, if you pay attention to the actual filing of the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), you will see that Facebook contests that it has not changed any public release plans or dates for Timeline, as Mark Zuckberberg himself said at f8 that the company would release Timeline “in the coming weeks”, therefore the TRO was rejected by the judge and Facebook has delayed nothing.

You can read the full document here:

Timelines v Facebook

This is a developing story, check back for updates.