Technology licensing firm Wi-Lan said it has initiated a patent infringement litigation against Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter Communications in a U.S. federal court. The Canadian company alleged that the three U.S. companies continued to infringe its patent by offering to sell, operate, advertise and market cable systems and cable modems.
Motorola Inc.’s Mobility unit filed a patent-infringement complaint against Microsoft Corp. with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, expanding a licensing feud between the two companies. Motorola Mobility, which makes handsets for mobile telephones, said Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system is infringing its patents and is seeking an order to block imports of the products.
In a call to arms, Internet founder Tim Berners-Lee urged web users to protect the net from becoming a fragmented territory. Citing threats from all the big players in the telecom space -- carriers, social networking sites and search engine operators -- Berners-Lee made his case in a new Scientific American article for Internet users to realize their control over the medium and protect it from commercial interests that could undermine its freedom.
Europe's effort to regulate online "cookies" is crumbling, exposing how tough it is to curb the practice of tracking Internet users' movements on the Web. Seeking to be a leader in protecting online privacy, the European Union last year passed a law requiring companies to obtain consent from Web users when tracking files such as cookies are placed on users' computers, but Internet companies, advertisers, lawmakers, privacy advocates and EU member nations can't agree on the law's meaning.
The UK's information commissioner has said that wi-fi data accidentally collected by Google's Street View cars will be deleted "as soon as possible." Deputy information commissioner David Smith told the BBC that there would be no further enquiries into the matter.
Democratic politicians are proposing a novel approach to cybersecurity: fine technology companies $100,000 a day unless they comply with directives imposed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Legislation would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to levy those and other civil penalties on noncompliant companies that the government deems "critical," a broad term that could sweep in Web firms, broadband providers, and even software companies and search engines.
A federal judge ordered Gawker to take down excerpts the website posted from Sarah Palin's upcoming book until at least November 30. In his two-page decision, U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa told Gawker to cease "from continuing to distribute, publish or otherwise transmit pages" from Sarah Palin's "America by Heart" until a hearing scheduled for November 30.
A Chinese woman was sentenced to one year in a labor camp after she forwarded a satirical microblog message that urged recipients to attack the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, human rights groups said. The woman, Cheng Jianping, 46, was accused of "disturbing social order" for resending a Twitter message from her fiancé that mocked young nationalists who held anti-Japanese rallies in several cities last month.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., says that the Senate will not act on cybersecurity legislation during the lame-duck session, punting the issue of how to improve the government's response to cyber threats to the next Congress. Lieberman made the comments during a hearing on the Stuxnet worm that has targeted the control systems of critical infrastructure facilities.
A controversial proposal allowing the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy is closer to becoming a federal law. After a flurry of last-minute lobbying from representatives of content providers including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a Senate committee approved the measure by a unanimous vote.
Warner Bros. is investigating how the first 36 minutes of the newest "Harry Potter" film came to be posted on the Internet, four days ahead of the movie's world-wide theatrical debut. A spokesman for the studio, a unit of Time Warner Inc., declined to say whether it had yet figured out the source of the leak, but said an investigation was underway.
A highly complex computer attack that may have been targeting Iran's nuclear power plants is posing a serious security threat to critical infrastructure worldwide, according to government and cyber-industry experts testifying on Capitol Hill. The computer worm known as Stuxnet was discovered this past July and specifically targets computers that run critical infrastructure such as the electric power grid, water treatment and oil and gas pipelines.
As net-neutrality efforts remain saddled by delay, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski blamed two corporate giants for helping slow down the process: Google and Verizon. Genachowski said that the release of a net-neutrality legislative proposal by the search giant and the telecommunications company helped slow the FCC's net-neutrality efforts, a process that has been dragging along for more than a year.
Google said that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project. Under the agreement, which follows a landmark settlement with U.S. publishers last year, Google will be allowed to sell the books it scans as e-books or in other electronic formats.
For about 20 minutes in April, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm rerouted massive amounts of Internet traffic, including from U.S. military and government networks, through Chinese servers before sending it on its way, according to a Congressional commission report. Evidence related to the incident does not indicate whether it was deliberate, but computer security researchers have noted the capability could enable "severe malicious activities," said the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its latest report to Congress.
Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with top executives of several technology firms about a proposal to make it easier to wiretap Internet users. Mr. Mueller and the FBI's general counsel, Valerie Caproni, were scheduled to meet with senior managers of several major companies, including Google and Facebook, according to several people familiar with the discussions.
Even as airline passengers struggle with whether they should have the full-body security scan or go for the "enhanced" pat-down, another potential safety issue has arisen: Does the coming of Wi-Fi service to passengers pose any sort of danger aboard the plane?
The Stuxnet computer worm that infiltrated industrial systems in Iran this fall may have been designed specifically to attack the country's nuclear program, potentially crippling centrifuges used to enrich uranium gas, according to new research.
Android faces a new threat with a lawsuit that Vertical Computer Systems filed against Samsung and LG. Vertical alleges that certain Samsung and LG Android-based phones infringe two of its patents that describe systems for generating applications.
The United States faces a major threat in the future from cyber technologies that will require civil-military coordination to shield networks from attack, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "I think there is a huge future threat. And there is a considerable current threat," Gates told The Wall Street Journal CEO Council.
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