Broadcasting Cable reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a Second Circuit ruling on a First Sale Doctrine case that could expand its protections beyond U.S. borders. The court ruled that the Second Circuit court erred when it ruled that First Sale Doctrine did not apply to work legally made abroad and imported into the United States.

If you own a smart phone, an Android or iOS-based device or even a hand-held gaming system or a laptop, you no longer have to worry about having the device searched by a border patrol officer when entering the United States without some sort of reasonable cause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that allowing border agents to search such devices violates Fourth Amendment protections.

Nintendo has lost a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Tomita Technologies and has been ordered to pay $30.2 million. The patent relates to glasses-free 3D displays, which Sejiro Tomita claims Nintendo used to develop its 3DS hand-held after a 2003 meeting with the plaintiff where he introduced his technology to engineers within the company. Nintendo has been ordered to pay $30.2 million in damages to Tomita Technologies after a jury found that the company infringed on a patent for glasses-free 3D displays.

The Associated Press is reporting that 38 Studios founder and former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has asked a Rhode Island superior court judge to throw out a lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation.

It looks like Apple has just gotten its hand slapped away from Samsung's cookie jar - according to a report this morning on AllThingsD. Judge Lucy Koh, the judge overseeing the Apple-Samsung patent trial threw out part of the billion dollar verdict Apple had previously won in the long-running case and ordered a new trial to determine damages for patent infringement.

Nintendo is the target of a patent infringement case that claims its use of 3D technology in the 3DS violates the patents held by 58-year-old inventor Seijiro Tomita. Opening arguments in the case began today, according to Destructoid. Tomita claims that he presented his glasses-free 3D technology to seven Nintendo officials at their Kyoto headquarters in 2003. At the time, claims Tomita, he was looking for licensing partners as he awaited his patent application to be approved.

GameSpot is reporting that three game companies have signed onto an amicus brief opposing the Defense of Marriage Act. The law is being challenged by groups that want the court to strike down the law that defined marriage as being between "a man and a woman."

Apple has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit related to children inadvertently making purchases in the Apple Store for iOS devices, according to Reuters. The class action lawsuit concerned customers who were charged when their children downloaded applications from the company's online store.

At a hearing yesterday US District Judge Lucy Koh told Apple and Samsung that both sides need to limit their cases to 25 patent claims each, and no more than 25 allegedly infringing products could be listed. Judge Koh threatened to put the whole case on hold unless both sides narrow the case down and accused them of overbroad accusations.

"As this case as it is currently framed, I'm refusing to go forward," Koh said.

Just take your best shots," Koh said. "I don't want a lot of sausage filler."

Happy President's Day! You know, the made-up holiday where we honor two presidents with one half-assed holiday. Don't President Lincoln and President George Washington deserve separate days to be honored properly? Apparently not. Anyway.. on this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the file-sharing case headed to the Supreme Court, the President's executive order on cybersecurity, the latest poll results, and more. Let freedom ring.

AllThingsD is reporting that Electronic Arts and Zynga have quietly settled their long-running lawsuit concerning their respective Facebook games The Sims Social and The Ville.

The United States government has weighed in on the Jammie Thomas-Rasset v. Capitol Records file-sharing case, siding with the RIAA and the recording industry and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Thomas-Rasset the Writ of Certiorari she seeks. The case is the longest running file-sharing case to date, and the first to be heard by the Supreme Court (previously the Court refused to hear two cases related to file-sharing damages).

Former Guns N' Roses front man Axl Rose has lost his 2010 lawsuit against Guitar Hero III maker Activision, reports GameSpot (by way of the The San Marino Tribune). In his original complaint, Rose claimed that the publisher duped him in several ways in order to get the band's popular "Welcome to the Jungle" song into the game.

Google’s Motorola Mobility division was dealt a serious blow in its ongoing legal battle with Microsoft over patents after a judge ruled that 13 of the patent claims it had asserted against the Windows and Xbox maker were not valid.

The Tetris Company announced that the New Jersey District Court has delivered the company final judgment in its case against game maker Xio. The company filed the lawsuit in 2009 alleging that Xio's game Mino for iOS infringed on the copyrights and trade dress rights of Tetris. The court ultimately sided with The Tetris Company, which owns the licensing rights to the popular franchise.

Bohemia is changing the name of the main island in its upcoming military shooter simulation, Arma III, GameSpot reports. The name change for the island from Lemnos to Altis is in direct response to the espionage charges two of its employees faced in Greece. The duo were recently released after spending 129-days in a Greek jail.

The German consumer advocacy group The Federation of German Consumer Association has filed an official complaint against Valve Software for its Steam's end-user license agreement because it does not allow consumers to resell digital content. The European High Court ruled last year that digital content games can be sold. The complaint against Valve filed with the German courts is directly related to that ruling.

Two U.S. lawmakers have asked federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice to answer a series of questions about the prosecution of Reddit co-founder and internet activist Aaron Swartz. In a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) want to DOJ to explain why federal prosecutors sought up to 50 years in prison and $1 million in fines for Swartz, who committed suicide prior to his trial. Swartz was arrested in 2011 for downloading 4.8 million documents from the academic archive JSTOR.

Electronic Arts announced that it has joined a coalition of businesses forming a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to end federal discrimination against legally married gay and lesbian couples via the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The company is taking part in the "The Business Coalition for DOMA Repeal" effort, which includes a number of Fortune 500 companies that seek marriage equality for everyone through what it calls "Respect for Marriage Act."

Germany's highest court has ruled that Internet is such an important part of modern everyday life that when someone gets cut off from it they deserve some sort of compensation. The German high court made this determination based on a case involving a German citizen who was disconnected from his DSL line in 2008 because of some unspecified technical error. The citizen was offline for two months and he was angry enough about it to sue the ISP for his expenses (he used his mobile phone instead of his wireline VoIP service) as well as €50 ($67) per day because he had no connection.

Update: The New York Daily News claims that "Local media" are reporting that the teen was a "home schooled teen [who] wasn’t allowed to play video games, and that his family never let him watch violent shows on television." We're not sure of the validity of that part of the NYDN story because it's a third-hand account. Thanks Andrew Eisen for passing that bit along.

Too Human and content associated with the action RPG from Silicon Knights has apparently been pulled from Xbox Live Marketplace. While Microsoft has not officially confirmed why the game and related content was pulled, some are speculating that it could be related to the lawsuit that Silicon Knights lost against Unreal Engine maker Epic Games. While the product page for the game remains, the game is no longer available for purchase from Games on Demand, nor is the demo, gamer pics, and themes.

Eurogamer reports that actor Jerry Lambert has settled a lawsuit with Sony over his part in a Bridgestone ad where he played an engineer playing a Wii video game. In 2012 Sony sued Bridgestone and the actor because they claimed that Lambert's engineer character in the ad was too much like its popular fictitious PS3 spokesperson Kevin Butler.

Ars Technica is reporting that AMD has filed a lawsuit alleging that four former employees who went to work for NVIDIA engaged in industrial espionage and violated no-solicitation of employees agreement.

After spending 128 days in a Greek prison for espionage charges, it looks like Bohemia Interactive developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have been freed. According to various media reports in Czechoslovakia compiled by Ivan Martin support site www.helpivanmartin.org, the two Arma developers had to post €5,000 ($6,686) bail each.

It looks like the U.S. Postal Service will have to rethink how it handles GameFly's mailers in the future. The Verge reports that the game rental service has won its appeal on a lower court ruling, forcing the USPS to rethink how it will deal with GameFly's mailers in the not-too-distant future.

While THQ would like nothing better than to hand off all of its assets to Clearlake Capital Group for $60 million, several creditors have voiced their opposition to the company's bankruptcy and takeover plans, calling them "unfair and unreasonable." The troubled publisher filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month and asked the court to approve a take-over of the company by investment firm Clearlake "within 30 days."

It looks like two Internet service providers accused of installing spyware on their customers' computers in order to serve up ads to them will not have to worry about a class action suit filed against them going any further, according to this Courthouse News report.

A jury has ruled in favor of MobileMedia and against Apple in a patent lawsuit involving the iPhone. The jury came to the conclusion that Apple's iPhone infringes on three U.S. patents and some claims of the '068, '075, and '078 patents. The '068 and '075 U.S. patents cover "rejecting incoming calls" and call-processing techniques - or how these functions are communicated wirelessly between base stations and landline telecommunications networks. The U.S. '078 patent relates to changeable keys. The judge overseeing the jury trial, U.S.

Following yesterday's ruling by U.S District Judge Lucy Koh that rejected Apple's motion for a ban on the sale of three older Samsung devices still being sold in the U.S. that infringed on the company's iPhone-related patents, Samsung has decided to withdraw all of its requests for injunctions against Apple products currently pending in European courts.