Legal

Amazon, Overstock.com and similar companies may be facing new taxes in California. The state has passed a bill in the Assembly which will tax e-commerce sales, and now the legislation is on its way to the Senate. 

State legislatures continue to experiment with novel nexus legal theories in their persistent drive to compel use tax collection by retailers located beyond their borders. The most recent state efforts are aimed directly at online retailers through passage of so-called "Amazon laws."

I often check the clickthough rates of our daily e-newsletter of aggregated and orignal content, ROI Report, to gauge what our audience of cross-channel retailers are interested in and concerned about. Lately, the clickthrough rates for articles about hackers and scammers targeting retailers and shoppers are through the roof

Overstock.com today announced that it will award free Club O accounts ($20 value) preloaded with $10 in Club O Reward dollars to top customers in Connecticut, where the company canceled ad contracts because of the recently passed sales tax law.

Fruit basket and gifts retailer Harry & David plans to exit bankruptcy protection in late summer, it said in a reorganization plan filed. The company, which entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March after struggling to remain afloat during the recession and as online and discount competitors proliferated, said the plan has the support of its official committee of unsecured creditors and about 81 percent of the company's noteholders.

Liberty Media, which owns interests in a broad range of electronic retailing, media, communications and entertainment businesses, made an offer to acquire Barnes & Noble for $17 per share in cash, which values the company at approximately $1 billion.

NCR Corp. has no plans on changing the name on its 9,000 Blockbuster Express DVD rental kiosks despite the letter it received from Dish Network demanding it to stop using the trademark.

Michaels has removed the PIN pad tampering threat from its U.S. stores and believes it's identified the time frame that customer information was exposed. Based on the latest information available, exposed PIN pad transactions occurred from Feb. 8 through May 6, the date Michaels disabled the tampered devices.

The online eyeglasses seller who terrified customers in the hopes of creating buzz about his website, and raising the profile in Google searches, pleaded guilty to two counts of sending threatening communications, one count of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud.

Harry & David, which filed for Chapter 11 in March, asked the court for permission to hire a real estate consultant to help close 50 of its 122 stores. The company seeks approval to hire DJM Realty Services, a subsidiary of the Gordon Brothers Group.