Automated Transactions LLC (ATL) is a small firm known for its aggressive enforcement of broad patents related to automated teller machines. Numerous critics labeled ATL a patent troll, and in 2016 the firm sued several of them in New Hampshire state courts, arguing that the label was defamatory.

New Hampshire's Supreme Court ruled that calling someone a "troll" was just such a statement of opinion—and so it can't be defamatory.

In the 1990s, ATL founder David Barcelou invented a machine for automated gaming that made cash payouts to winners. While his invention never became commercially successful, he patented some of the underlying concepts—including patents related to the process of paying out cash to customers.

The unfortunate truth is that this road is in such a poor state, it isn't even worth repairing. Last May, a 100-meter stretch had deteriorated to such a state that it had to be demolished.

Despite costing up to roughly $6.1 million, the solar road became operational in 2016 — 75% of the panels were broken before being installed, it doesn't generate any energy, it can't be driven on, and 83% of its panels are broken, according to Daily Caller.

WeWork's corporate parent We Company revealed in documents for its upcoming initial public offering that the office-share company lost more than $1.3 billion from its operations in the first half of this year.

"It is an interesting parallel with the dotcom companies," said Greg Kyle, director at the Bates Group who helped publicize the staggering losses being run-up by Internet start-ups during the late 1990s dotcom craze. "They're following the same pattern, in terms of spending to acquire customers. For some, like Amazon and Ebay, it worked out, but for many others much less so."

Over more than a decade, Pakistani provinces have repeatedly imposed bans on single-use plastic bags made out of polyethylene (also called polythene), but those bans have faltered.

When the ban takes effect on Aug. 14, residents may be fined about $70 for being caught using a bag — nearly a month's wages for a laborer. Manufacturers will face larger fines for making plastic bags, as will shops for distributing them.

By late last year Verizon was forced to acknowledge that its Oath entity was effectively worthless. And this week, Verizon issued a statement saying that it would be selling Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic after a rocky ownership stretch.

Companies like Verizon are good at two things: running networks, and lobbying government to hamstring broadband competition. Every time Verizon has tried to stumble outside of its core competencies (whether it's running its own app store, its VCast apps, or the Go90 fracas), Verizon has fallen flat on its face, because as a government-pampered telecom monopoly, innovation, disruption, and pleasing customers are alien phrenology.

Panama disease Tropical Race 4—or TR4—is an infection of the banana plant by a fungus of the genus Fusarium.

Banana agriculture is itself partly to blame for the potential of the fungus to spread. Commercial plantations grow almost exclusively one clonal variety, called the Cavendish; these plants’ identical genetics mean they are also identically susceptible to disease.

Regardless of the method used, creating just one viable replacement is not a long-term solution. “We need to deploy the rich biodiversity by generating a suite of new banana varieties, not just one,” says Kema. “Monoculture is by definition unsustainable.”

Droogie registered a vanity California license plate consisting solely of the word "NULL" — which in programming is a term for no specific value — for fun. And, he admitted to laughs, on the off chance it would confuse automatic license plate readers and the DMV's ticketing system.

It seemed that a privately operated citation processing center had a database of outstanding tickets, and, for some reason — possibly due to incomplete data on their end — many of those tickets were assigned to the license plate "NULL."

Thankfully, the DMV contacted the private citation processing company, which then erased the $12,000 in fines. However, and this part is key, they didn't actually fix the problem with their system.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but an Axios article said the sale price is "well below" $20 million.

Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in 2013. Verizon bought Yahoo's operating business, including Tumblr, for $4.48 billion in June 2017.

"Mr. Mullenweg said his company intends to maintain the existing policy that bans adult content," today's Journal article said. "He said he has long been a Tumblr user and sees the site as complementary to WordPress.com.

Amazon constantly scans rivals’ prices to see if they’re lower. When it discovers a product is cheaper on, say, Walmart.com, Amazon alerts the company selling the item and then makes the product harder to find and buy on its own marketplace -- effectively penalizing the merchant.

Antitrust experts say the Amazon policy is likely to attract scrutiny from Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, which recently took over jurisdiction of the Seattle-based company.

Merchants have long complained that Amazon wields outsize influence over their businesses. Besides paying higher fees, many now have to buy advertising to stand out on the increasingly cluttered site. Some report giving Amazon 40% or more of each transaction, up from 20% a few years ago.

The goal was to get critical mass of new subscribers to boost profits, with the hope that a majority of users wouldn’t see more than one movie a month.

Employees say Lowe demanded they change the passwords of “a small percentage of power users” ahead of those releases to prevent them from ordering tickets through the app, telling people that it was a “technical issue.”

The company also implemented a “trip wire,” which would cut off users once the company reached a certain monetary threshold each day. Users were told “there are no more screenings at this theater today,” when in reality MoviePass was disabling its services to prevent it from burning through too much cash.