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News

• EU hits IBM with two formal antitrust investigations

  The European Commission announced on Monday that it will begin formal investigations into allegations that IBM has abused its dominant position in the mainframe server market.

• Cybercrime costs US businesses $3.8 million per year, study finds

  A new study of 45 U.S. organizations found that cybercrime -- including Web attacks, malicious code and rogue insiders -- costs each one of them $3.8 million per year, on average, and results in about one successful attack each week.

• Cisco may call home TelePresence 'UMI'

  Cisco Systems may be planning to give its consumer TelePresence system the friendly sounding name "UMI," according to a trademark application made last year.

• Dell to pay $100 million to settle SEC case

  Dell will pay US$100 million to resolve an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the company's past accounting and financial reporting practices, it said Thursday.

• State AGs question Google about Street View Wi-Fi snooping

  Law enforcement officials from 38 states have sent a letter to Google, asking the company whether it tested its Street View mapping software before discovering it was snooping on Wi-Fi networks as the Street View cars drove through neighborhoods.

• Hollywood pushes movie streaming standard, UltraViolet

  The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), a group of 58 Hollywood studios and technology companies, is pinning its hopes for the future of entertainment on UltraViolet, an online digital locker that would allow you to buy a movie once, and stream it over the Internet for free on any other compatible devices.

• Disagreements on transparency fail to stop ACTA treaty leak

  Disagreements between the European Union and the US over whether to release the current negotiating text of a secretive international copyright treaty became moot this week, with the publication on a French website of a leaked version of the latest draft of the treaty.

• UK royalty society suggests ISPs pay for pirated music

  A U.K. music royalty collection society has suggested charging ISPs for pirated content traded on their networks, as the organization claims piracy will worsen with faster broadband speeds.

• Lawsuit against Apple continues as a class action

  A lawsuit against Apple and AT&T Mobility will proceed as a class action, following a ruling in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Thursday, court documents show.

• NTP sues smartphone makers Apple, Google and others

  Patent holding company NTP, which received a US$612.5 million settlement from BlackBerry marker Research In Motion in a patent infringement case, has filed patent lawsuits against six makers of smartphones or related software, including Apple and Google.

• Nokia asks Russia for help retrieving N8 prototype

  Nokia has asked Russian authorities to help retrieve what it says is an unauthorized model of a future phone that a blogger wrote about and photographed on a phone review site.

• Beijing angry with EU anti-dumping investigation

  China has hit back at the European Commission over an investigation into allegations of hardware dumping.

• AT&T reaches settlement of old billing claims

  AT&T and lawyers representing class-action plaintiffs have reached a proposed settlement of lawsuits over billing by AT&T Wireless before 2004.

• Taiwanese LCD maker pleads guilty to price fixing

  HannStar Display, a Taiwanese maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), has agreed to plead guilty and pay a US$30 million fine for participating in a global conspiracy to fix prices of the displays, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

• Dell knew some PCs were faulty, court documents reveal

  PC maker Dell has been accused of selling thousands of desktop PCs despite knowing the machines contained faulty components, according to recently unsealed court documents first reported about on Tuesday by The New York Times.