Michael Liedtke

December 13, 2004 | Legaltech News

Oracle has brought an end to the hostilities in its bid to acquire rival PeopleSoft by sweetening its all-cash offer to $26.50 per share, up from a $24 bid that PeopleSoft's board had rejected as inadequate. The $10.3 billion deal will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. The truce came just before the rivals were set to renew their battle in a Delaware trial focusing on an anti-takeover defense known as a poison pill.

By Michael Liedtke

6 minute read

October 04, 2005 | Law.com

Google's constant presence in the news and on pundits' lips has the competition -- including Microsoft Corp. -- watching closely. Analysts speculate the firm may be working on ambitious projects, including free nationwide wireless Internet access and a Web-hosted alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system. Time will tell whether Google succeeds at its plan "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" -- or fail on a scale reminiscent of the dot-com years.

By Michael Liedtke

6 minute read

October 04, 2005 | Law.com

Google's constant presence in the news and on pundits' lips has the competition -- including Microsoft Corp. -- watching closely. Analysts speculate the firm may be working on ambitious projects, including free nationwide wireless Internet access and a Web-hosted alternative to Microsoft's Windows operating system. Time will tell whether Google succeeds at its plan "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" -- or fail on a scale reminiscent of the dot-com years.

By Michael Liedtke

6 minute read

August 10, 2004 | Law.com

Online search engine leader Google Inc. will surrender more than $300 million of its stock to Yahoo Inc. in a settlement that removes a legal threat hanging over its IPO at the expense of enriching a nettlesome rival. The agreement announced Monday gives Yahoo an additional 2.7 million shares of Google stock in exchange for dropping a patent lawsuit involving a crucial piece of online advertising technology.

By Michael Liedtke

5 minute read

January 31, 2005 | Law.com

California utility regulators on Thursday suspended an 8-month-old crackdown on abusive practices in the wireless telephone industry, rebuffing the protests of consumer activists and the state's top law enforcement officials. The California Public Utilities Commission's 3-1 decision represented a dramatic about-face from last May, when the same agency passed the nation's toughest wireless phone regulations, known as the Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights.

By Michael Liedtke

4 minute read

March 08, 2006 | Law.com

A group of Hewlett-Packard shareholders are suing the company, alleging its board broke its own rules by awarding more than $42 million in cash, stock and other benefits to Carleton "Carly" Fiorina after she was dumped as CEO last year. The complaint, filed Monday in federal court in California, depicts the payments to Fiorina as a blatant violation of a board policy adopted in 2003 so the company's severance payments would be limited to 2.99 times an executive's combined salary and annual bonus.

By Michael Liedtke

3 minute read

November 15, 2006 | Law.com

Google has set aside 12.5 percent of the stock owed to YouTube, worth more than $200 million, in its just-completed takeover of YouTube to cover possible losses on the deal. The reserve could signal that Google is trying to insulate itself from a possible onslaught of lawsuits aimed at pirated videos posted on YouTube. But the escrow account's existence means YouTube's former owners may never receive a substantial portion of the Google stock if YouTube runs into legal trouble or incurs other losses.

By Michael Liedtke

3 minute read

September 28, 2006 | Law.com

Veteran lawyer Larry Sonsini is one of Silicon Valley's most influential figures. So when he assured Hewlett-Packard executives about the legality of their boardroom spying probe, the opinion must have carried considerable weight. But now he's scheduled to testify Thursday before a congressional panel investigating HP's pretexting scandal. Sonsini also served on the board of Pixar, which some analysts suspect may have mishandled its stock options before its sale to Walt Disney earlier this year.

By Jordan Robertson and Michael Liedtke

5 minute read

March 23, 2007 | Law.com

Oracle on Thursday accused SAP AG of hacking into its computers to heist secret product information in a lawsuit that escalates the animosity that had already been building between two of the world's largest business software makers. The complaint, filed in a San Francisco federal court, alleges that Germany-based SAP resorted to high-tech skullduggery in a desperate attempt to maintain its leadership in business applications software.

By Michael Liedtke

3 minute read

November 14, 2006 | Corporate Counsel

Silicon Valley business leaders have long served on each other's boards, giving bright minds a way to share their collective wisdom and fostering a climate of corporate clubbiness that prizes personal networks as much as computer networks. But what happens when bad ideas seep into chummy boardrooms? An answer may be emerging as federal prosecutors and regulators dig deeper into a stock options scandal that has already forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out more than $5 billion in profits.

By Michael Liedtke

7 minute read