Supreme Court mulls eBay appeal

The US Supreme Court has announced that it will consider hearing an appeal by eBay over a long-running patent dispute with Virginia startup MercExchange. At issue is an Appeal Court ruling that a District Court judge should have issued an injunction that would have prevented using any of the disputed technology until all appeals had been heard. As the patents concerned involved the use of credit cards and online auctions, it would have hit the very heart of eBay's business model. ...more

Britain storms ahead with digi-telly

Britain is leading the way when it comes to digital television. According to a report by Ofcom, the UK has the highest digital penetration of any country in the world. As of 31 December 2005 digital television was viewed by just under 70 per cent of all UK television households, up from 65. ...more

Consumers hit spot for Gates

Chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates stated his intention to take Microsoft into every corner of modern life with the announcement of Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) in his keynote speech at Comdex Fall, Las Vegas. In front of an excitable crowd of admirers, Gates said Microsoft intended to push computing down to every level as he unveiled a range of gadgets powered by his company's SPOT technology. Networked fridge magnets and key fobs that deliver personalised information and 'smart' alarm clocks led an array of gadgetry that the bespectacled MS leader intends to push into everyday life to 'make life better and easier'. ...more

Hollywood wins DVD cracking lawsuit

The movie industry has won its legal battle to prevent a journalist from publishing links to software that cracks the copy protection on DVDs. New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan yesterday ruled in favour of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which had sought to prevent Eric Corley, publisher of the online hacker magazine 2600.com, from distributing the DVD-cracking program DeCSS. ...more

Linux code certification will not prevent legal action, says analyst

Linus Torvalds and the Open Source Development Lab's new submission process for developers contributing code to the Linux kernel may not be the panacea they hope, an industry analyst has warned. Code that is put forward for inclusion into the open source operating system kernel must now be signed off with a Developer's Certificate of Origin - to document the provenance of the kernel and ward off future litigation such as that being brought by SCO. George Weiss from Gartner warns Linux users that the new system is not the panacea for Linux. ...more