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1) Consumers Display Erratic Spending Patterns in May
ShopperTrak's National Retail Sales Estimate (NRSE) reported that U.S. retail sales for the month of May grew by 3.2 percent as compared to the same month in 2002. The increase came despite somewhat volatile shopping patterns by consumers throughout the month. Although the NRSE reported healthy retail sales gains during the last week of May, ending May 31, with a 5.6 percent increase on a year-over-year basis, and 4.8 percent growth as compared to the previous week, ending May 24, consumers still displayed erratic spending patterns.
http://www.shoppertrak.com
2) Lawsuit Says Major Credit Card Companies Profit from Net Fraud
The Triangle Law Center, PLLC law firm said it commenced a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on behalf of all Internet, telephone and mail order merchants against Visa U.S.A., Inc., MasterCard International, Inc., American Express Company and Discover Financial Services, Inc (collectively, the "Defendants"). The suit alleges that the credit card companies fail "to take appropriate measures in addressing fraud and theft in the Internet, telephone and mail order industry. The complaint further alleges that Visa and MasterCard failed to disclose certain supra competitive transactional and penalty fees to Internet, telephone and mail order merchants and forced such merchants to pay such supra competitive fees with the abuse of their monopolistic powers,...As a result of these unlawful acts, according to the complaint, Internet, telephone and mail order merchants have paid virtually all of the costs associated with fraud and theft in their industry while Defendants made millions of dollars from their supra competitive transactional and penalty fees.
http://www.ishmanlaw.com/classaction.htm
3) NetRatings Launches Nielsen//NetRatings AdRelevance 4.0
Nielsen//NetRatings, the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis, launched AdRelevance 4.0, providing the advertising and media buying and selling communities with powerful new tracking tools to help more effectively measure and research online advertising campaigns.
http://www.netratings.com
4) eBay Fined $35 Million in Patent Infringement Lawsuit
A federal jury in Virginia found eBay guilty of patent infringement and ordered eBay to pay $35 million in damages. MercExchange LLC sued eBay in September 2001, declaring its founder Tom Woolston began applying for online-auction related patents in the spring of 1995, about five months before Pierre Omidyar launched the original eBay Web site. Jurors found eBay had acted "willfully," meaning U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Friedman can triple the damages. MercExchange has already gotten other companies to license its auction patents, including ReturnBuy and AutoTrader, which ended its agreement with eBay and launched auction listings for automobiles on its own site. eBay will file motions to overturn the verdict, vacate the decision and dispute the damages.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abn/y03/m05/i30/s01
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