Dell wins latest round of Alcatel patent spat

A Californian court has ruled that personal-organiser products from Dell did not infringe a patent held by Alcatel-Lucent. This is according to a court document filed online on Thursday. The court also ruled in the summary judgement that Microsoft would not be liable for indirect infringement of the patent, according to a filing at the US District Court for the Southern District of California. ...more

A global force for good?

A new organisation is to be launched to support using technology to improve the quality of life. Each year it will sponsor a number of IT-related projects in underdeveloped countries. TEN (Technology Empowered Network) will formally be launched 30 January, and it has already adopted two projects. ...more

Parallels updates Desktop virtualisation

Parallels has released a new update to its Desktop virtualisation software that adds support for Macs with more than 2GB of RAM. Desktop enables Intel Mac users to run Windows alongside OS X, as opposed to Apple's Boot Camp software, which only lets you run one or the other. The update supports Mac Pro and Core2Duo Macs with up to 16GB of memory. ...more

Sony goes organic with new TVs

Sony aims to be first in a new market of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions offering ultra-thin displays Several companies are investing in OLED technology because it can produce bright, colorful images and does not require a backlight as do liquid crystal displays (LCDs), allowing for a thinner panel. OLED panels are also said to be energy-efficient and good at reproducing fast-moving images. At a display forum in Tokyo, customers, suppliers and even rival TV makers turned their backs on 50-inch and bigger TVs to throng before Sony's tiny 11-inch OLED TVs. ...more

Disney asks YouTube to crack down on copyright misuse

A senior Walt Disney executive said she sees limits to how long her company will tolerate copyright infringement of its programming by users of Google's online video sharing site YouTube. Anne Sweeney, the head of Disney's entertainment and news television properties, said YouTube needed to do more than enforce its take-down policy in response to complaints about video piracy from media owners such as Disney. 'We've had the phone calls, which are when we see clips of our content going up,' Sweeney told the Reuters Media Summit in New York. ...more