The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Tiffany's in its ongoing suit against eBay, effectively closing the case in favor of the online auction house.

The original suit, filed in 2004 and heard in 2007, claimed that eBay was not doing enough to police its auctions for counterfeit goods.

Tiffany claimed that it purchased its own goods in random eBay auctions, and that 73 percent of the purchases were of counterfeit goods. eBay, meanwhile, had claimed that its Verified Rights Owners program satisfied the company's obligation to sell legitimate merchandise.

In 2008, eBay won the initial ruling, but Tiffany's appealed the case to an appellate court. After the court upheld the eBay decision again, Tiffany's only other recourse was an appeal to the Supreme Court.

"It is true that eBay did not itself sell counterfeit Tiffany goods; only the fraudulent vendors did, and that is in part why we conclude that eBay did not infringe Tiffany's mark," the appeals court opinion said. "But eBay did affirmatively advertise the goods sold through its site as Tiffany merchandise."

The Supreme Court denied the petition on Monday, appending a note that Justice Sotomayor took no part in the consideration or decision of the petition.

A $450 million class action is being launched on behalf of National Australia Bank shareholders who lost money during the global financial crisis because of NAB's exposure to toxic debt.

Legal firm Maurice Blackburn will lodge the claim in a Victorian court tomorrow.

The firm says NAB had bought $1.2 billion in collateralised debt obligations (CDO) in 2006 which had a heavy exposure to the US sub-prime housing market.

It will allege that between early January and late July that year, NAB failed to properly disclose to shareholders all material information relating to its CDO exposure.

From Caterpillar to Chevron to Google, some of the best-known names in corporate America are scooping up smaller companies, finally putting the piles of cash they've been sitting on to use and positioning themselves for a stronger economic recovery.

The volume of mergers and acquisitions is still running well below what it was in 2007 before the Great Recession, but the burst in activity is a sign of economic vitality and shows that companies are starting to shake off some of their caution.

"Our pipeline is bursting," says Robert Profusek, head of mergers and acquisitions at the law firm Jones Day, who advised Continental Airlines when it was acquired by the parent of United for $3.2 billion. "We are gearing up for an incredible M&A boom."

M&A volume reached $2.25 trillion in the first 10 months of the year, a 28 percent increase over last year. August was the highest month on record, with $307 billion in deals, more than double August 2009, according to Dealogic, which tracks such data. October remained strong with $202 billion deals, up 32 percent from last year.

Irving Picard, the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm, spent $26.9 million in the six months ended Sept. 30 while recovering $849,000 for victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, according to a report filed in Manhattan federal court.

Picard has recovered a total of about $1.5 billion for creditors of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, he said in a filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland made public Oct. 30. The trustee said he evaluated 14,030 investor claims as of Oct. 22 and approved 2,280. He has committed to paying $738 million on behalf of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., which is obligated to compensate cheated investors as much as $500,000 on most claims, according to the report.

The largest component of the expenses for the half-year period is $15.8 million in legal fees to Picard’s firm, Baker & Hostetler LLP. Most of the money recovered in the six-month period, $771,000, came from Madoff investors who received preferences, or payments, in the 90 days before the bankruptcy filing, according to Picard’s report.

Amazon and the state of North Carolina have been fighting in court as NC tries to get residents that purchased on Amazon to pay sales tax the state feels it is owed. NC has demanded that Amazon reveal all sorts of buyer information like names, addresses, and the exact products purchased so it can asses sales tax on the items.

Amazon has refused to give specifics on what was purchased, though it did provide the names and addresses of buyers to NC authorities. Amazon has won a temporary reprieve in court with the judge presiding over the case stating that NC has "no legitimate need" to have details about purchases revealed to it.

However, the court said that the state could destroy the information is has now and then request new information from Amazon that would not be able to be tie a specific product to a specific user. Undoubtedly, NC will request this information and the courts will force Amazon to provide it setting a precedent none of us wants to think about.

Dairy processors can make claims that their products are free of a synthetic growth hormone, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in striking down parts of the state's rule on milk labeling.

Key parts of the state's labeling rule violated First Amendment rights to commercial free speech, a three-judge panel of 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

The Organic Trade Association and the International Dairy Foods Association sued the Ohio Department of Agriculture in 2008 over a state rule on how consumers are informed about whether milk is made from cows that were given a synthetic hormone.

The trade groups argued that the rule is too restrictive. It prohibits composition claims such as "antibiotic-free" and "pesticide-free," violating their free speech rights and impeding interstate commerce, the groups argued.

The appeals court reversed a lower court decision on the free speech issue, concluding that the state's ban is "more extensive than necessary to serve the state's interest in preventing consumer deception." The appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that the rule does not impede interstate commerce.