Philips wins CD-R civil action against Taiwanese makers

Philips Electronics Taiwan has stated that it has won its civil suit filed with the US District Court in the Southern District of New York State against two Taiwanese companies, Gigastorage and Princo, over their infringement of its six CD-R/RW patents, according to the US federal court's judgment made on 11 March. This is the first victory for Philips after the Dutch giant lost an administrative lawsuit presided over by the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in March 2004. The US federal court, in accordance with its judgment, put a ban on imports of CD-R/RW discs to the US by the two Taiwanese companies, Philips indicated. ...more

Sony heralds 100GB optical discs in two years

Sony has announced a new cartridge-free disc for its high-definition Professional Disc for Data. Like Blu-ray, Professional Disc for Data utilises blue-violet lasers to vastly increase the amount of data that can be stored on a 12cm optical disc. However this technology has been specifically engineered for professional use, where data reliability, capacity and speed of access are crucial. ...more

Bid for new online music rules rejected

The European Parliament has called for binding rules to regulate the bloc's online music market and protect less powerful artists, but the proposal was rejected by the bloc's executive. It was the latest spat in the European Union's tortuous efforts to get agreement in the hotly contested field of intellectual property rights. In October 2005, the EU's Executive Commission published nonbinding guidelines allowing artists to choose which collective rights management society (CRMs) they want handle their online music copyright across Europe. ...more

NEC gets handy with handhelds

NEC Computers has joined the ranks of PocketPC 2002 PDA makers with the MobilePro P300 Pocket PC. As with the army of new PocketPC 2002 PDAs from the likes of Toshiba, HP, Compaq and Casio, the MobilePro P300 houses the standard set of high-end components including Intel's 206Mhz StrongARM processor and a 65,000 colour screen and is aimed squarely at the corporate market. The unit comes as standard with an SD card comprising third-party apps for data management, image editing, a Java runtime environment, VoIP software and a PowerPoint/Excel viewer. ...more

Microsoft fights back against DRM-stripping tool

Microsoft has issued a software update to enable digital music stores to protect downloaded files against a new tool that can strip the DRM from copy-protected Windows Media files. The hack emerged last week in a new application, FairUse4WM, that by all accounts losslessly removes DRM from tracks encoded under Microsoft's PlaysForSure programme. This technology is employed by the majority of music download services, notably Napster and Yahoo! Music, though not by the market leader, Apple's iTunes Music Store or by Real's Rhapsody. ...more