Legal briefs
Kayak Software Corp. has sued a competing travel website company called Travelzoo Inc., claiming that after Kayak acquired a German travel site called Swoodoo AG, Travelzoo created a TV ad campaign that copied many elements of one run by Swoodoo.
Norwalk-based Kayak”™s free search engines help consumers compare travel rates from hundreds of websites, covering airlines, hotels, cruises, rental cars and other options. The company makes money from advertising revenue.
Travelzoo is based in New York City, and earned $3.2 million in the second quarter as ad revenue rose 19 percent to $28 million. Only in late August it trumpeted that it had surpassed 1 million subscribers in Germany.
Kayak reached a deal to acquire Swoodoo in February, less than two weeks after a deal fell apart between Swoodoo and Travelzoo, according to its lawsuit. In July, Travelzoo began running ads for its Fly.com website on the Travel Channel and other U.S. cable networks “so substantially similar to the Swoodoo commercial that it could not have been created independently,” Kayak said.
Kayak also accuses Travelzoo of copying the look of its website.
At deadline, Travelzoo had yet to respond to the lawsuit in court.
Conn. BBB under investigation by AG
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal confirmed he is investigating the Connecticut Better Business Bureau, which was recently sued on claims it unfairly penalizes companies that do not sign up for paid membership, by assigning them a poor rating.
“BBB ratings should be based exclusively on performance, honesty and responsiveness,” Blumenthal said, in a prepared statement. “Rankings should not be affected by membership in the BBB. Any suggestion or appearance of ”˜pay-to-play”™ threatens to undermine the accuracy and credibility of the BBB”™s ratings, potentially misleading consumers and unfairly tainting nonmember businesses.”
Former IBMer given six years in prison
A former IBM Corp. executive who lives in Ridgefield reportedly was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in the Galleon Group insider trading case.
Robert Moffat, 54, pleaded guilty in March to relaying inside information concerning Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM, Lenovo Group Ltd. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Of 21 people indicted in an ongoing probe of Galleon Group L.L.C. and New Castle Funds, Moffat is among a dozen who have pleaded guilty. He was not accused of profiting from the crime.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts rejected Moffat”™s attorneys request for a sentence of probation, according to Bloomberg News, but allowed him to surrender himself for incarceration next June so he could attend a child”™s graduation ceremony.
“Why the defendant betrayed the only employer he has had for his entire career has not been addressed,” Batts said, as quoted by Bloomberg News. “His astounding breach of his fiduciary duty to his employer is why he is here.”
Ridgefield named safest in Fairfield County
Violent crime and misdeeds involving property dropped 5 percent in Fairfield County between 2008 and 2009, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Justice, in line with declines statewide and nationally.
On a per capita basis, Ridgefield was the safest community in Fairfield County in 2009, with just one crime committed for every 339 residents. That easily bested Redding”™s rate of a crime for every 181 residents; Redding suffered the fewest crimes last year overall at just 49, only one of them violent and most of the rest cases of theft.
Bridgeport remains Fairfield County”™s most crime-riddled city, with more than 7,100 cases or one for every 19 residents.