Cody Taylor

suraj.sun tips news that Google and 47 other companies are being sued over use of the “Android” name. Eric Specht of Android Data alleges that Google “stole first and asked questions later.” According to The Register, “Google applied for a trademark for Android in October of 2007, but had that application denied in February of 2008. The USPTO’s reasoning for the denial was simple: Since both Google and Specht were involved in the development of software and related services, ‘consumers are likely to conclude that the goods are related and originate from a single source.'” Reader ruphus13 points out related news that Motorola is planning several Android-based phones for later this year.

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hahiss writes “Apparently, NoScript has taken to adding its own whitelist updates to Adblock Plus — so that the ads on the NoScript page show up — without notifying users. (It is described on the NoScript addon page, however.) This was a part of the last update to NoScript. Wladimir Palant, the main developer of Adblock Plus, describes the situation in an informative blog post.”

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Reservoir Hill writes “The NYTimes reported in their June 13, 1897 edition that ‘Canadian pirates’ were flooding the country with spurious editions of the latest copyrighted popular songs. ‘They use the mails to reach purchasers, so members of the American Music Publishers Association assert, and as a result the legitimate music publishing business of the United States has fallen off 50 per cent in the past twelve months’ while the pirates published 5,000,000 copies of songs in just one month. The Times added that pirates were publishing sheet music at 2 cents to 5 cents per copy although the original compositions sold for 20 to 40 cents per copy. But ‘American publishers had held a conference’ and a ‘committee had been appointed to fight the pirates’ by getting the ‘Post Office authorities to stop such mail matter because it infringes the copyright law.’ Interestingly enough the pirates of 1897 worked in league with Canadian newspapers that published lists of songs to be sold, with a post office box address belonging to the newspaper itself. Half the money went to pay the newspapers’ advertising while the other half went to the pirates who sent the music by mail.” The AMPA never dreamed of suing their customers, though.

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An anonymous reader writes “The US is blaming Canada in a new report that claims that Canadian copyright and intellectual property laws are as bad as those found in China and Russia. Michael Geist notes that Canadian officials have dismissed these findings in the past, arguing it ‘does not recognize the Special 301 process due to its lacking of reliable and objective analysis.'” (Read more about the annual Special 301 report.)

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nandemoari writes “Recently, the Conficker/Downadup worm infected several hundred machines and critical medical equipment in an undisclosed number of US hospitals. The attacks were not widespread; however, Marcus Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center, told CNET News that it raises the awareness of what we would do if there were millions of computers infected in hospitals or in critical infrastructure locations. It’s not clear how the devices (including heart monitors, MRI machines and PCs) got infected. Infected computers were running Windows NT and Windows 2000 in a local area network (LAN) that wasn’t supposed to be Internet accessible, but the LAN was connected to one with direct Internet access. A patch was released by Microsoft last October by November that fixes the problem, but the computers infected were reportedly too old to be patched.”

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FEMA has decided to pull a children’s coloring book entitled, “A Scary Thing Happened” from their website. The coloring book contained three images of the twin towers on fire for children to color. Rose Olmsted, the coordinator behind the book said, “I stand firm that it was a very well thought-out and useful resource for kids, but it’s obviously being misinterpreted by a lot of people.” Since people are so upset about the coloring book, I can only assume FEMA’s plan for a human remains concentration game will be put on hold.

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A poll carried out by a major Swedish newspaper predicts that the Pirate Party will grab around 5.1% of the votes in the upcoming European Union elections. This means that the movement, which has gathered huge momentum due to the Pirate Bay ‘guilty’ verdict, will get a seat in the EU Parliament.

krou writes “The Wrap has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt on Google’s new plan for news. Google is apparently planning on rolling out ‘high-quality news’ to users who are not actively searching for news. It’s expected to launch in approximately six months’ time, and the first two news organizations to be involved will be The New York Times and The Washington Post. ‘Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google’s page. The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering — based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues — to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they’re looking for it. And on this basis, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ads against premium content.’ Although Schmidt said that companies like the New York Times won’t get any of this ad revenue, he commented that it will push stories to users who want them, drive up traffic to those stories, and in turn bring higher advertising rates for those stories.” As VentureBeat points out, Google hasn’t officially confirmed any of this, and with no ad revenue going to the other companies, it only partially addresses complaints that Google is profiting unfairly from the work of news publications.

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Hugh Pickens writes “European antitrust regulators, who have been aggressively pursuing what they see as anticompetitive practices among technology companies, could impose their largest fine ever in a market-dominance case against Intel. The commission began investigating Intel in 2000 after Advanced Micro Devices, its arch-rival, filed a complaint. In two sets of charges, in 2007 and 2008, the commission accused Intel of abusing its dominant position in chips by giving large rebates to computer makers, by paying computer makers to delay or cancel product lines, and by offering chips for server computers at prices below actual cost. Some legal experts speculate that Intel’s fine could reach about a billion euros, or .3B. ‘I’d be surprised if the fine isn’t as high or higher than in the Microsoft case,’ said an antitrust and competition lawyer in London. In 2004 Microsoft paid a fine of €497M, or 3M at current exchange rates, after being accused of abusing its dominance; the EU imposed another .3B fine in Feb. 2008.”

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coondoggie writes “So, if the government gave your company 0 million to spend on building a new data center what would you buy and how would you build it? Well, the Social Security Administration is about to find out. As part of the stimulus bill, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the SSA got the tidy little sum to replace its National Computer Center. The SSA in fact says it will need closer to 0 million to fund a new IT infrastructure, including the new data center — the physical building, power and cooling infrastructure, IT hardware, and systems applications. (This is addition to a million backup facility currently under construction in Durham, North Carolina).”

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