Facebook seeks to raise $5 Billion in its initial public stock offering, making it the largest Internet IPO on record.  It is believed that its stock offering will value the company $75 and $100 billion.  Mark Zuckerberg, however, will maintain his control over Facebook with voting power of almost 60 percent of total shares.  Meanwhile, Facebook is coming under a siege of patent lawsuits.  In 2011, Facebook was named as a defendant in 22 patent infringement suits.

Google announced its new privacy policy, which is set to become effective on March 1.  The new policy will allow it to track users’ activities across YouTube, Gmail, its search engine, and nearly all of its other sites.  Users will not be able to opt out, which may trigger more scrutiny from federal regulators.

On January 23, the Supreme Court held that attaching a GPS device to track a vehicle constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant.  The ruling is considered a victory for privacy rights in the age of advanced technology, but some argue it was too narrowly reasoned on the basis of the physical intrusion of attaching the device.

Congress indefinitely shelved the controversial antipiracy bills SOPA and PIPA after over 7,000 websites, including Wikipedia and Google protested the bills, handing a crushing blow to the traditional media industry.

Following the shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload last month and arrest of 7 company employees, Federal prosecutors announced that Megaupload user data would be deleted as early as Thursday (Feb. 2).  However, a nonprofit group stepped in at the last minute, announcing on Wednesday that it would work with data-storage providers to create a website that will allow legitimate Megaupload users retrieve their data.

• The FCC has filed its finalized net neutrality rules, set to take effect on November 20. The rules will almost certainly face legal challenges from Verizon and MetroPCS over the extent of the FCC’s jurisdiction.
• David Ignatius writes on legal uncertainty and difficult questions facing the future “rules of war” for drone strikes. The debate has gotten fresh attention over last week’s report that the Obama administration’s legal team is split on the extent of our ability to use lethal force in countries like Yemen and Somalia.
• In contrast to Sprint’s approach to AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, Verizon’s CEO has stepped up and defended the deal as a necessary outcome – “like gravity”.
• Samsung is seeking to ban iPhone 5 sales in South Korea for violating Samsung’s wireless technology related patents. The move comes on the heels of Apple’s latest success in banning Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Germany and an escalating international patent battle between the two tech giants.
• With an eye toward stock market volatility, the troubled GroupOn IPO is back on track with a late October-early November goal for going public.
• Three Boston University researchers have estimated that patent litigation by non-practicing entities, aka “patent trolls”, have cost publicly-traded defendants half a trillion dollars since 1990.

• Last week, the Justice Department filed suit in DC District court to block AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, arguing that the merger violates antitrust laws. Sprint has since filed its own lawsuit in DC District court to block the proposed deal.
• The Senate debates the America Invents Act on Patent Reform (H.R.1249). These proposed reforms to the patent system are expected to be passed and signed by President Obama within the next two weeks. Many argue that the new laws will harm small inventors and venture capital funded companies.
• TechCrunch reports on Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s own take on improving the quality of issued patents through crowdsourcing.
• Groupon is considering delaying its initial public offering due to recent public market uncertainty.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation provides analysis on the recent Capitol Records v. MP3Tunes opinion issued by the New York Southern District.  The court held that file de-duplication on cloud-based music services falls within the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.  The decision will lead to reduced costs for online music locker service providers.

• The Copyright Office released its latest group of exceptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provision. Wired and cnet news report on the exception for jailbreaking mobile phones.

• Also in DMCA news, Ars Technica discusses the Fifth Circuit decision that bypassing technological protections to access software for a fair use does not violate the DMCA anti-circumvention provision.

• The Supreme Court ruled on patentable subject matter in Bilski v. Kappos. Cnet, The MTTLR Blog, and IP Watchdog give their takes on the decision.

• Patent Docs reports on the memo issued by the USPTO to its examiners in the wake of Bilski. In a similar vein, Patently-O takes a look at the first post-Bilski test cases.

• The case between Joel Tenenbaum and the RIAA has taken another turn as U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner slashed the jury verdict by 90%, calling it “unconstitutionally excessive.” See the coverage from Wired and Eric Goldman.

• Holman’s Biotech IP Blog looked at the recent limits that the EU Court of Justice has placed on patent protection for gene sequences.

• IP Watchdog has some thoughts on the early stages of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed against PayPal by XPRT Ventures, Inc.

• Authorities in San Mateo, California, contemplate filing criminal charges in connection with the sale of an Apple prototype (of a new iPhone), lost by and possibly stolen from an Apple software engineer and bought for $5,000 by the website Gizmodo.com, the New York Times reports.

• From the San Francisco Chronicle: citing a desire to help fight censorship, Google has launched a tool that discloses requests the company receives from governments for content removal and user data.

• India’s new copyright proposals, which include both fines and jail time for offenders, are still not strict enough for the RIAA, MPAA, and other organizations that lobby for greater intellectual property enforcement, Ars Technica explains.

• From CNET, a summary of the recent Supreme Court decision declaring unconstitutional a law banning Internet videos of animal cruelty, while leaving open the possibility that a narrower law would be permissible.

• A new study funded by net neutrality opponents claims that the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules would cost the telecommunications industry over 340,000 jobs in the next ten years, PC World reports.

• PatentlyO notes that the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case on international copyright exhaustion, and gives a summary of the case.

• Also from PatentlyO, links to videos of patent attorney Kevin Noonan defending genetic patents on 60 Minutes and the Colbert Report.

• Ephemeral Law takes a look at the court documents in Microsoft’s challenge to the Waledac botnet, which it describes as on the “cutting edge of legal efforts to shut down hacking operations.”

• The Wall Street Journal reports that the US Department of Justice is stepping up its antitrust investigation into technology firms’ “no-poach” policy and salary fixing.

• Eric Goldman reports on a decision of the California Court of Appeals rejecting an argument that a California statute prohibiting eavesdropping precluded admitting Yahoo! chat logs in evidence.

• Why the anti-commons aren’t so tragic, from Patent Docs.

• The MTTLR Blog writes about falsely-convicted victims of DNA forensics errors.

• Wired: a new malware scam threatens BitTorrent with copyright infringement suits.

• Spicy-IP blogs about BioPiracy – the practice of mining the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities for biological and medicinal patents – in Africa.

• Feature from The Register: the Russian Association of Electronic Communications promises to crack down on spam and cybercrime.

• British Election special: the mother of British hacker Gary McKinnon, who was at the heart of a recent UK-US extradition battle, has announced that she will run against Chancellor Jack Straw in the upcoming parliamentary elections, from bbc.co.uk.

• The British Parliament has approved a law authorizing temporary suspension of internet access for those accused of repeated copyright infringement, reports the New York Times. Opponents of the law, such as the Open Rights Group, promise to turn this into an election issue in Great Britain.

• Canadian company Wi-Lan has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against 19 high-tech companies—including heavyweights Apple, Dell, Motorola, Acer, and others—for allegedly violating its Bluetooth patents, reports Business Week.

• From Wired: a U.S District Court judge has given a lawyer a 30-day sentence for contempt of court for encouraging people to flood the judge’s e-mail account, to persuade him to side with the lawyer’s client in a civil suit. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing whether the judge had the authority to impose a contempt sentence for conduct outside the physical courtroom.

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a 30 year computer ban for a sex offender, saying that the ban is “substantively unreasonable” and “aggressively interferes with the goal of rehabilitation,” reports Wired’s Threat Level.

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauds the 2nd Circuit’s decision in Tiffany vs. eBay, finding the online auction company not liable for contributory trademark infringement on the basis of users selling items in Tiffany’s signature blue boxes, but the digital rights organization worries about the lack of a statutory “put back” procedure in trademark law.

• The New York Times has a detailed article explaining China’s internet censorship methods.

• After a federal court held that the FCC cannot impose network neutrality on ISPs (as PC World discusses), the FCC declared its intention to pursue its National Broadband Plan nevertheless. CNET reports that the FCC considers the court’s ruling to have forbidden one technical mechanism for achieving the FCC’s goals, but not the goals themselves.

• From eWeek: an Arkansas woman faces misdemeanor charges for posting slanderous messages on her teenage son’s Facebook account.

• The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found that Google’s AdWords program does not infringe the patent for a bidding system determining pricing for ads on search results, Ars Technica reports.

• Mexico may disconnect millions of people’s cell phones for failure to register their identities with the government via text message. This is part of an attempt to fight crime by regulating cell phone use, Reuters reports.

• The Southern District of New York‘s decision in Association for Molecular Pathology and ACLU v. USPTO and Myriad (the “gene patents case”) handed down last Monday, has generated a lot of commentary this week. Here’s a selection: reports from Wired and On the Edges of Science and Law; IP Watchdog describes the ruling as “inane”; Patent Docs gives more detail on the patents at issue; Patently O thinks the Federal Circuit is likely to reverse the decision; and Holman’s Biotech IP Blog takes the investor’s perspective.

• British science writer Simon Singh (of Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Code Book and Big Bang fame) wins libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, from The Guardian.

• Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It comments on the iPhone developer license agreement, disclosed through a Freedom of Information Act request.

• From OutLaw, Google, Microsoft, eBay et al call for U.S. privacy law update.

• Salt Lake City jury rejects “copyright troll’s” claim to Unix - Wired reports.

• The European and FCC antitrust complaints against Google are not about Microsoft, opines The Register.

• US criticizes Australian internet filtering plan, from E-Commerce Times.

• The working text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement has been released. See Wired and The Register coverage of the story, and our post on the draft treaty here.

• The Federal Circuit rules on patent dispute Applera Corp v. Illumina, Inc. on the basis of Californian employment law, writes Patent Docs.

• Holman’s Biotech IP Blog discusses the patent law implications of the Federal Circuit’s ruling in Ariad v. Eli Lilly.

• Less than two months after hacker Max Vision was sentenced to thirteen years, the sentencing record is broken again as TJX hacker gets twenty years, from Wired.

• Ephemerallaw asks whether it is worth chasing cybercrooks (see our recent post on cybercrime here).

• The European Court of Justice rules in favor of Google in a challenge to its practice of selling trademarked keywords for its adwords paid results service to competitors. The Stanford Center for Internet and Society and the E-Commerce Times report.

• The Register reports that a twenty-five-year-old Frenchman has been arrested on suspicion of hacking President Obama’s Twitter account.

• Early in 2009, a settlement between Ireland’s leading internet service provider and four record companies looked set to put in place the world’s first three-strikes-you’re-out copyright violation rule. Tech law blogger TJ McIntyre reports on the latest.

• Spicy IP discusses proposed amendments to the Copyright Act and digital rights managements in India.

• The Department of State’s annual Human Rights Report turns the spotlight on internet freedom in China and Iran, from ZDNet Government.

• The US District Court in Delaware stays the patent litigations between Apple and Nokia, pending decisions by the International Trade Commission, says The Register.

• A California appeals court rules that cyberbullying threats are not protected free speech, reports Wired.

• Also from Wired, the Supreme Court agrees to review a Ninth Circuit decision on privacy rights in the context of background checks on government workers.

• The FCC announces that it will recommend the sale of 500 megahertz of spectrum to meet the needs of mobile broadband users, from the Washington Post.

• Programmers in trouble over financial misdeeds: two programmers who developed code for Madoff are charged with fraud (The New York Times, The Register) and the Securities Exchange Commission files a complaint against a one-man Russian investment company for hacking into online portfolios to “pump and dump” stocks (Switched, Wired).

• From E-Commerce Times: TiVo wins its long running patent infringement case against digital video recorder rivals.

• Spicy IP reports that Brazil seems set to invoke WTO intellectual property cross-retaliation provisions for the first time, against the US.

• The European Parliament threatens to bring a legal challenge against the European Commission if it fails to disclose details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), writes Outlaw (see our post on the controversial treaty here).

• Also from Outlaw: Net Neutrality in the UK: Ofcom to probe broadband providers’ management of web traffic.