Epinions Settles Stockholder Lawsuit

Epinions has settled the lawsuit brought against it by common stockholders frozen out in the DealTime/Shopping.com acquisition. Financial terms were not disclosed. Alas, because this was not a class action lawsuit and I did not individually participate, the settlement has…

Two Recent Items About Preferred Stockholder/VC Liability

A couple of items came across my desk that may be apropos of the lawsuit over the Epinions/DealTime merger. First item: Jesse M. Fried and Mira Ganor, Common Shareholder Vulnerability in Venture-Backed Startups, UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No….

Shopping.com Stockholders Approve eBay Merger

A few details here. The deal already cleared the FTC. Deal announcement.

eBay/Shopping.com Merger Clears FTC

The eBay acquisition of Shopping.com cleared the Federal Trade Commission’s Hart-Scott-Rodino review. This probably isn’t all that surprising, but still it removes one potential snag.

Ravikant v. Tolia–Motions to Dismiss Granted

Red Herring is reporting that some motions to dismiss (with leaves to amend) were granted in Ravikant v. Tolia. Previous coverage.

eBay to Buy Shopping.com

Interesting. Forbes (this is the best of the early articles). NY Times article. AP Story. Internetnews.com Story. I’m sure we’ll hear more about the strategic implications of the deal over the next few days. UPDATE: Text of letter from eBay…

BusinessWeek on Ravikant v. Tolia

BusinessWeek runs an AP story on the Ravikant v. Tolia lawsuit over the Epinions-DealTime merger. Defendants’ motion to dismiss is scheduled for May 24.

In-House Lawyers in Cubicles

New York Law Journal (registration required) reports on in-house lawyers sitting in cubicles rather than offices, reporting on a survey finding that “7 percent of law departments use cubicles exclusively, another 16 percent have a mix of cubicles and offices…

GQ Article on Google, and the Challenge of Boy Entrepreneurs

GQ article on Google by John Heilemann. This article has a ton of great behind-the-scenes stories about Google and the Silicon Valley VC community generally. My favorite dirt was the story about Larry sitting in a plate of crème fraîche…

Dzienkowski on VLG

John Dzienkowski has an interesting post about the former Silicon Valley law firm Venture Law Group. John ponders if the demise of VLG as a standalone firm has any lessons about the viability of its unique business model. I competed…