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A startup on Tuesday will launch in an attempt to fix the current patent mess and defend against so-called patent trolls. The startupâ€"RPX Corp.â€"is a so-called defensive patent aggregator. RPXâ€"short for Rational Patentâ€"aims to reduce the costs associated with non-practicing entities (NPEs)...
Apple faces e-discovery problem in Psystar action as it does not have a corporate email policy; John Garcia, who was reponsbile for the CDMA business at Sprint, is gone; two engineers get jail time for foreign espeionage; a gaming PR representative admits to trying to game the review system; and some companies are buildling appliations and protocols based on incorrect assumptions.
When Lindsay Blakely dug through Apple's fiscal year 2008 (October through September) 10-K and found the company's actual advertising expenditures, that got me wondering what else might be in the hundred and one pages. Let's start with the actual number of product units that Apple sold...
I thought that adding an occasional round-up of high tech legal machinations might be interesting to readers. If you think it's worthwhile, or not, email or comment and let me know. Spansion sues Samsung -- Memory chip maker Spansion, a Fujitsu and AMD joint venture, has decided to ramp up its lega...
Verizon employees viewed an old cell phone account for Barak Obama, though supposedly didn't read emails or listen to voice mails; AT&T is funding a privacy policy group to influence government; MTN Group goes to China to find $10 cell phone for African market; and Nokia to partner with China Mobile.
Microsoft has hired a database academic to help scale SQL Server, and it's boosting the number of tunes Zune subscribers can keep to bump sales; gaming company Midway has had massive problems, largely due to its technology choices; Yahoo brings "glue pages" to U.S.; Israel's tech sector is hurting; and Canon's rebate processing firm goes bankrupt.
T-Mobile launches full Internet web browsing with Yahoo search and third-party app store; Nokia puts IBM's Lotus Notes email on handsets; Ireland leads world in cell phone and texting usage, though last year China, Russia, Brazil, and India collectively added 216 million new subscriptions; Volvo makes HD radio a standard; and KPN and Reggefiber plan on rolling out fiber-to-the-home throughout virtually all of the Netherlands.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer nixes the idea of buying Yahoo, though he's still interested in the search business; eBay subsidiary PayPal is offering consumer credit for purchases during the holidays; Google and Procter & Gamble swap employees; CA tries selling mainframe software in new formats; Google gives up on virtual worlds while Sony introduces its entry; and BestBuy feels the pain of a credit downgrade.
Ascendant Consulting works with such clients as Kodak and ITT Industries on better focusing business efforts. Managing Director David Fields is currently working on a book about how top CEOs have turned major problems into winning situations. We chatted about what companies can do to fortify their positions and decision-making.
On the same day Intel chopped $1 billion off its fourth quarter sales target, its nearest rival, Advanced Micro Devices, said its business was just fine. And as it turns out, the financial health of AMD, the world's second largest semiconductor maker, owes a lot to its caution in buying chips for its own use.
Since the world's economic crisis began in September, SAP AG has adopted a "we do not hire, we do not replace" employment policy. The early results are in. And when you exclude acquisitions (see Business Objects, January 2008), there is one area of the world where the overall headcount has...
Amazon Web Services on Tuesday launched CloudFront, a pay-as-you-go content delivery network. The move is likely to accelerate already brutal pricing in the content delivery network market, which includes Akamai and Limelight Networks among others. CloudFront's biggest feature is that there are...
Sirius XM subscribers complain about programming changes as stock drops to 20 cents; Motorola tries brib...oh, sorry, providing incentives for smartphone developers; Apptera gets $10.5 million for phone advertising market; LG adds its U.S. smartphone entry; and Obama FCC transition team co-chair is a World of Warcraft player.
Microsoft to give away security software; judge says no to Mac clone-maker Psystar's counterclaims against Apple; Microsoft and Novell says their two-year-old deal is good, but not all agree; Amazon enters digital content delivery business; and Nvidia has desktop super computer for under $10,000.
How far does Google's reach extend? Far enough that telecom companies might consider giving up the battle right now and preemptively forming partnerships with the search giant, a recent Gartner Research report suggests. As Gartner sees it, Google poses a threat to telecom providers -- not becaus...
