Shepard Fairey Sentenced for Comtempt Charge in "Hop" Poster IP Case

NEW YORK -- Shepard Fairey, the street artist who created the "Hope" portrait of Barack Obama that became the symbol of the President's 2008 campaign, was sentenced to community service by a New York court on Friday after admitting he had lied about which image he used.

The Los Angeles native became a celebrity for creating the red, white and blue image of Obama silhouetted above the word "Hope" on a poster. Fairey pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of criminal contempt in February for doctoring and destroying evidence once he realized the photograph of Obama he used for the poster belonged to the Associated Press (AP). "I'd like to apologize for violating the court's trust, which was the worst thing I've ever done in my life," Fairey said at his sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors had sought some prison time for Fairey, who faced up to six months in prison on the charge, but the Court sentenced Fairey to serve 300 hours of community service, the details of which were not immediately decided.

Although lawyers at Friday's hearing sparred for nearly an hour over what sentence Fairey should receive, the word "Obama" was not uttered a single time. The conclusion of the case coincided with Obama accepting his Democratic Party's nomination on Thursday night to run for re-election in November.

The dispute over the "Hope" poster began when Fairey pre-emptively sued AP in February 2009 seeking a ruling that his work was protected from AP's potential claims over the copyright of the original photograph of Obama. AP then countersued for copyright infringement. After it was discovered that some of Fairey's records had been improperly deleted, he admitted that he had intentionally lied about which photograph he had based his poster on. He was charged because deleting his files and altering them was a violation of an order by the federal judge overseeing the civil dispute with AP.

The judge said both parties must share all documents with the other side. In January last year, AP and Fairey settled their copyright dispute. AP said in a statement on Friday that it was "glad this matter is finally behind us." The photograph that Fairey based his poster on was taken by AP photographer Mannie Garcia at a panel discussion at the National Press Club in April 2006 when Obama was still a U.S. senator from Illinois.

The case is USA v. Shepard Fairey, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-180.

Court Tosses Multimillion-dollar verdict against RIM

TORONTO — A U.S. judge has overturned a multimillion-dollar patent-infringement verdict against BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

The judge determined that Mformation Technologies Inc., which makes software for managing mobile devices, failed to show that RIM infringed on a key patent in question.

A federal jury in San Francisco had awarded Mformation $147.2 million last month based on an infringement finding. The judge overseeing the case nullified the earlier decision Wednesday.

Mformation, of Edison, N.J., accused RIM in 2008 of infringing on its 1999 invention for remotely managing wireless devices. Mformation's software allows companies to remotely access employee cellphones to do software upgrades, change passwords or wipe data from phones that have been stolen.

FTC finalizes privacy settlement with Facebook

NEW YORK — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted Friday to finalize its settlement with Facebook, resolving charges that the social network exposed details about users' lives without getting the required legal consent.

Facebook agreed to submit to government audits of its privacy practices every other year for the next two decades. The company also committed to getting explicit approval from users before changing the types of content it makes public.

The settlement, announced in November, is similar to agreements the FTC reached separately with Google and Myspace.

The FTC approved the settlement Friday after a public-comment period. It came a day after the FTC fined Google $22.5 million to resolve allegations that Google didn't comply with the earlier settlement. more

Netflix CEO buys $1 million in Facebook stock

Netflix stock is on the rise in recent days as Reed Hastings, it's  co-founder and a Facebook board member, recently bought $1 million worth of shares in the beleaguered social networking site, Facebook, according to a regulatory filing submitted Wednesday. Hastings purchased roughly 47,800 shares at an average purchase price of $21.03 each.  Other investors were eager to jump on the bandwagon loading up on Facebook shares, which rose about 3.79% on the news of Hasting's buy. Facebook went public in May at $38 per share, but its stock  shed much of it's value, closing Friday at $21.81.

Facebook granted Hastings 20,000 restricted stock units when he joined the company's board in June 2011.