HTC Corp, the world's No.4 smartphone maker, said that a U.S. court has further postponed a final ruling on its lawsuit against Apple Inc. An HTC official said the International Trade Commission, a U.S. trade panel that investigates patent infringement involving imported goods, would deliver its ruling on December 19.
Companies that missed the chance to register their trademarked names as ".xxx," a new Web domain, may find that others picked them up instead. And those who bought previously trademarked domain names may not find riches they're hoping for.
Apple Inc., fighting to protect sales of the iPhone worldwide, was sued by a U.S. company contending its products infringe two patents for caller-identification technology. Cequint Inc. of Seattle, a unit of data-network servicer TNS Inc. of Reston, Virginia, seeks unspecified damages and a court order to stop Apple’s use of the inventions, according to a complaint in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
A Connecticut man affiliated with the Anonymous hacking group has been arrested on federal charges for an attack on a website belonging to Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. Kevin Poe, of Manchester, Conn., was indicted in Los Angeles on two counts: conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.
Facebook is making it easier for people who express suicidal thoughts on the social networking site to get help. A program enables users to instantly connect with a crisis counselor through Facebook's "chat" messaging system.
By Brooke Donald
Associated Press Posted: 12/13/2011 08:25:13 AM PST Updated: 12/13/2011 10:46:56 AM PST
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MENLO PARK -- Facebook is making it easier for people who express suicidal thoughts on the social networking site to get help.
A program launching Tuesday enables users to instantly connect with a crisis counselor through Facebook's "chat" messaging system.
The service is the latest tool from Facebook aimed at improving safety on its site, which has more than 800 million users. Earlier this year, Facebook announced changes to how users report bullying, offensive content and fake profiles.
"One of the big goals here is to get the person in distress into the right help as soon as possible," Fred Wolens, public policy manager at Facebook, told The Associated Press.
Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) have long provided the phone number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as the first result when someone searches for "suicide" using their sites. Through email, Facebook also directed users to the hotline or encouraged friends to call law enforcement if they perceived someone was about to do harm.
The new service goes a step further by enabling an instant chat session that Advertisement experts say can make all the difference with someone seeking help.
"The science shows that people experience reductions in suicidal thinking when there is quick intervention," said Lidia Bernik, associate project director of Lifeline. "We've heard from many people who say they want to talk to someone but don't want to call. Instant message is perfect for that."
How the service works is if a friend spots a suicidal thought on someone's page, he can report it to Facebook by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook then sends an email to the person who posted the suicidal comment encouraging them to call the hotline or click on a link to begin a confidential chat.
Facebook on its own doesn't troll the site for suicidal expressions, Wolens said. Logistically it would be far too difficult with so many users and so many comments that could be misinterpreted by a computer algorithm.
"The only people who will have a really good idea of what's going on is your friends so we're encouraging them to speak up and giving them an easy and quick way to get help," Wolens said.
There have been high profile incidents of suicidal expressions on Facebook.
Last month, authorities in Pittsburg said a man posted a suicide note on Facebook before he killed his wife and in-laws then himself.
In July, police in Pennsylvania said they believed they were able to help prevent a man's suicide after the man's friend in California alerted police about a distraught Facebook posting. Police met with the man, who was committed to a hospital.
Nearly 100 Americans die by suicide every day, and 36,035 a year, according to U.S Surgeon General Regina Benjamin's office.
"We have effective treatments to help suicidal individuals regain hope and a desire to live and we know how powerful personal connections and support can be," Benjamin said in a statement. "Facebook and the Lifeline are to be commended for addressing one of this nation's most tragic public health problems."
The Lifeline currently responds to dozens of users on Facebook each day. Crisis center workers will be available 24 hours a day to respond to users selecting the chat option.
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Microsoft Corp. purposely duped a Utah company into believing its writing application would be included in the Windows 95 rollout, then pulled the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product, an attorney said in closing arguments of a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against the software giant. "It was purely a predatory action," Novell Inc. attorney Jeff Johnson told jurors.
European antitrust regulators have suspended their investigation into Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a maker of smartphones, until Google provides additional evidence in the case, the European Commission said. Google needed to supply “certain documents that are essential for the evaluation of the transaction,” Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for the commission, said.
As few as 12 different Chinese groups, largely backed or directed by the government there, commit the bulk of the China-based cyberattacks stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies, according to U.S. cybersecurity analysts and experts. The aggressive but stealthy attacks, which have stolen billions of dollars in intellectual property and data, often carry distinct signatures allowing U.S. officials to link them to certain hacker teams.
Indian authorities are investigating a computer server in Mumbai for links to the Duqu malicious software that some security experts warned could be the next big cyber threat. Web Werks, a Mumbai-based Web-hosting company, said it had given an image of the suspicious virtual private server to officials from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), after security firm Symantec Corp found the server was communicating with computers infected with the Duqu virus.
A sudden move to return a hip-hop site to its owner after it was seized and held by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a year has renewed criticism of the agency's domain confiscation program called In Our Sites. Since its launch in June 2010, the initiative, spearheaded by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) directorate, has seized hundreds of websites for alleged intellectual property violations, including a raid on "Cyber Monday" that shut down 150 websites for selling or distributing counterfeit goods.
The European Union should help teach bloggers living under oppressive regimes how to communicate freely and avoid detection, and develop technology to help them, the bloc's digital affairs commissioner said. Speaking at an online free speech conference, Neelie Kroes said digital dissidents need tools that are "simple and ready-made."
The Arkansas Supreme Court tossed out a death row inmate’s murder conviction and said he deserves a new trial because one juror slept and another tweeted during court proceedings. Erickson Dimas-Martinez’s attorneys had appealed his 2010 murder conviction because a juror sent tweets despite the judge’s instruction not to post on the Internet or communicate with anyone about the case.
Research in Motion Ltd. said it has fulfilled its commitments to improve its operations and cooperate with authorities in Indonesia this year so it doesn't understand why some local officials are again threatening to block its services. Some Indonesian telecommunications officials have revived threats of blocking the popular email and instant messaging functions on RIM's BlackBerry devices, saying it hasn't gone far enough to satisfy demands made early in the year.
Netflix is backing a bill in Congress that would amend the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 law that requires a video services company to get a customer’s written consent when it seeks to disclose that client’s personal information, such as rental history. The new bill, passed by the House, would allow consumers to give one-time blanket consent online for a company to share their viewing habits continuously.
Russia and the United States are planning a regular exchange on "technical threats" that appear to come from computers in each other's territories, a White House spokeswoman said, even as bilateral ties have come under growing strains. A range of mechanisms aimed at confidence building and crisis prevention are being planned to cope with alarming events in cyberspace, said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.
A German court has ruled in Motorola Mobility's favor in a patents dispute with Apple. The Android smartphone maker had complained that Apple failed to license one of its wireless intellectual properties.
Apple may need to brace itself for a lawsuit stemming from its July pursuit of an errant, unreleased iPhone in San Francisco. Sergio Calderon, the San Francisco man whose house Apple security officials searched at the time, has ended negotiations with the company and is preparing to file a lawsuit, said his attorney, David Monroe.
Samsung Electronics Co. can get its rival to Apple Inc.’s iPad 2 on Australian store shelves before Christmas after the country’s highest court denied the U.S. company’s bid to maintain a ban on Samsung Galaxy tablets. Chief Justice Robert French, on behalf of the three-judge High Court panel, said that Apple failed to persuade them that it could win on appeal and denied the company a hearing. He reinstated an appeal court judgment lifting the ban on the Galaxy 10.1 tablets in Australia.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other international leaders urged countries and private businesses to fight increasing efforts to restrict access to the Internet by repressive governments and even some democratic ones. Opening a two-day conference on digital freedom here sponsored by Google and the Dutch government, Mrs. Clinton warned that restrictions on the Internet threatened not only basic freedoms and human rights, but also international commerce and the free flow of information that increasingly makes it possible.
Senators urged the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to move carefully with its plan to open the Internet up to hundreds of new domain endings at a hearing. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said the group "better [move] slowly and cautiously."
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