A Philadelphia law practice recently ranked among the nation's top 200 firms has been accused by a software industry group of stealing business applications made by Adobe, Symantec, and other vendors, InformationWeek has learned.

In a lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the vendors by the Software Information Industry Association, the firm of Fox Rothschild is alleged to have "engaged in the unauthorized reproduction and use" of software made by Adobe, Corel, Sonic Solutions, and Symantec.

The vendors claim that Fox Rothschild's alleged "copyright infringement" is causing them "repeated and irreparable injury." The suit, filed in federal court in Northern California, does not specify which specific software products the firm is alleged to be using without authorization, or their estimated value.

Fox Rothschild chief information officer Brook Lee did not immediately return a message left on his voice mail seeking comment.

Adobe, Symantec, Corel, and Sonic are asking the court to prohibit the firm from continuing to use their software, and are seeking unspecified damages. They're also asking the court for an order that would prohibit Fox Rothschild from erasing the software from its networks or destroying any electronic documentation related to its use or installation.

SIIA litigation counsel Scott Bain said Fox Rothschild's alleged software misappropriation came to the group's attention through a whistleblower program it operates.

Talks aimed at settling the matter out of court went nowhere, Bain said. "They took a particularly aggressive stance toward us so we decided to sue," said Bain. "We were disappointed. You'd think that a law firm would know better."

Fox Rothschild appeared last year on American Lawyer magazine's list of the nation's top 200 firms.

The proposal by City Attorney Rick Doyle states that "no claim may be filed on behalf of a class of persons unless verified by every member of that class."

Doyle said the new claims policy "is not really related to" the McManis claim or to class-actions in general. Instead, he said it's an attempt to help the city council better calculate the city's potential exposure to damages. Requiring all participants in a class-action to approve the claim filing, Doyle said, makes sense so that the city can determine in advance who has a valid claim.

McManis filed his claim on behalf of San Jose motorist Jorge Luis Ramirez and "others similarly situated." The claim says thousands of motorists paid fines ranging from $99 to $350 under the city's now-defunct Neighborhood Automated Speed Compliance Program, or NASCOP.

The program involved a city traffic engineer who sat in an unmarked van with a radar gun and digital cameras to snap speeding motorists as they drove past. The registered owner of the vehicle would then receive a ticket in the mail.

City officials saw the program as a way to curb speeding without further taxing San Jose's thinly stretched police force. The city sent 7,000 violation notices in 2006 alone.

The program also proved popular with many residents frustrated by speeding on neighborhood streets. City officials claimed the program reduced speeding 8 percent overall and cut the number of motorists who exceeded the posted limit by more than 10 mph by 62 percent.

But Police Chief Rob Davis and the city's transportation director in February advised the council to convert the program to a warning-only system, citing growing concerns that the tickets could not stand up in court. They noted that since the program was enacted, the state Legislature had declared that photo radar could not be used for speed enforcement.

Ramirez said he got two tickets for driving 28 mph and 30 mph in a 25 mph zone. He paid the fines but later was told by police officer friends that it is highly unusual to be ticketed for driving less than 5 mph over the posted limit.

Claims are a step toward filing a lawsuit against a government agency. The purpose is to give the government a chance to pay the claim without being dragged into court.

Peter Keane, a law professor at Golden Gate University, said Doyle's proposal "seems to go against the whole nature of what a class action suit is all about." He added that the purpose of such lawsuits is to appoint a representative for the entire class because it's virtually impossible to gather the whole group.

"Whether the courts would look at it as something the city can or cannot do, I just don't know," Keane said.

The Supreme Court restored federal judges Monday to their traditional central role in criminal sentencing.

In two decisions, the court said U.S. district judges have broad discretion to impose what they think are reasonable sentences, even if federal guidelines call for different sentences.

One decision was particularly emphatic in saying judges are free to disagree with guidelines that call for much longer sentences for offenses involving crack cocaine than for crimes involving an equivalent amount of cocaine in powdered form.

Monday's decisions include an important racial dimension: A 2002 report noted that 85 percent of defendants convicted of crack offenses were black, a fact the U.S. Sentencing Commission warned was leading to a loss of confidence in the fairness of the system.

Both cases, each decided by the same 7-2 alignment, chided federal appeals courts for failing to give district judges sufficient leeway. In each case, the appeals court had overturned a sentence that was shorter than that provided by the guidelines. The two dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr.

Judges still may not impose sentences above the range written into law by Congress or state legislatures.

But the decision Monday gives judges broad discretion to impose sentences higher or lower than the federal guidelines, which are not statutes and are issued by the Sentencing Commission.

The two decisions answered questions left hanging in 2005, when the court ruled that federal sentencing guidelines could be constitutional only if advisory rather than mandatory. Appeals courts were to review sentences for "reasonableness," the court said then. But the court did not say what it meant by either advisory or reasonableness.

"The guidelines should be the starting point and the initial benchmark," Justice John Paul Stevens said in one of the decisions Monday, Gall vs. United States.

But Stevens went on to say that the guidelines are just one factor in the "individualized assessment" that a judge must make in every case.

In that case, Brian Gall, who had briefly been involved in an ecstasy distribution ring while a college student, received a sentence of three years' probation rather than 30 to 36 months in prison called for by the guidelines.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in St. Louis, ruled that such an extraordinary variance from the guidelines range required an equivalently extraordinary justification.

That judgment was erroneous, Stevens said, in failing to give due deference to the district judge's reasoned and reasonable decision.

The defendant in the crack cocaine case, Derrick Kimbrough, received 15 years instead of 19 to 221/2 for several cocaine and gun-related offenses.

The trial judge said the higher guidelines term would be inappropriate for Kimbrough, a Marine veteran of the Persian Gulf War with an honorable discharge.

The judge also disagreed with the relative treatment of crack and powdered cocaine, a disparity that he said led to disproportionate and unjust results.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., overturned the sentence on the grounds that it was unreasonable for a judge to depart from the guidelines "based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses."

The Supreme Court took the unusual step of reinstating the original lower sentences, rather than simply instructing the appeals courts to reconsider the cases under an appropriately deferential standard of review.

In her majority opinion in Kimbrough vs. United States, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took account of an important policy development since the case was argued Oct. 2. On Nov. 1, amended guidelines for crack cocaine that the U.S. Sentencing Commission had long advocated took effect when Congress, which had the power to block them, let the moment pass without acting.

Ginsburg said acceptance of the amendment by Congress undermined the government's position that judges should not have discretion to depart from the guidelines themselves. The amendments put into effect a relatively modest change that will reduce sentences for crack by about one-quarter.

The Sentencing Commission was limited in what it could accomplish on its own. A 1986 federal law, enacted at the height of public concern about crack, incorporated a 100-to-1 ratio into mandatory minimum sentences - that is, the same sentence was imposed for a given amount of crack and 100 times that amount of powder.

Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress to address the disparity. Today, the Sentencing Commission will vote on whether to make the Nov. 1 amendment retroactive to the 19,500 inmates imprisoned for crack offenses.

The justices, without comment, refused to disturb lower court rulings dismissing Public Citizen's lawsuit contesting the validity of a $39 billion deficit-reduction bill that passed the House and Senate in slightly differing versions.

The controversy arose in February 2006 after the House passed a version of the bill that was not identical to the Senate-passed measure. Both houses of Congress were under Republican control at the time.

Ordinarily, one chamber would vote again to eliminate the discrepancy. But the vote in the House was 216-214, too close to risk another vote.

Republicans who were in charge in the House refused Democrats' demands for a new vote. Instead, Republican leaders in the House and Senate signed off on the legislation and sent it to President Bush, who signed it into law on Feb. 8.

The provision at issue involved how long Medicare pays for renting some types of durable medical equipment. The Senate voted for 13 months, as intended by Senate and House negotiators, but a Senate clerk erroneously put down 36 months in sending the bill back to House for a final vote. That's what the House approved Feb. 1.

By the time the bill was shipped to Bush, the number was back to 13 months as passed by the Senate.

Lower courts dismissed Public Citizen's lawsuit based upon a 1890 case in which the court held that judges are obliged to accept as accurate legislation that has been signed by the leaders of both houses of Congress. An occasional mistake, or even fraud, is better than the uncertainty that would flow from routine questioning of bills passed by Congress, the court said then.