Encryption vendor files patent lawsuit against tech giants
TecSec, an encryption vendor based in McLean, Va., has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against several large tech vendors, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, eBay, Oracle and Adobe Systems. Read more...

Sharp, Samsung settle all outstanding LCD patent cases

Patent office to review VoIP patent

Apple allure may help it win iPad name in Europe

Tablet PC in TechCrunch controversy now in full production

Old security flaws still a major cause of breaches, says report

Setback for SAP in Oracle suit

China tablet PC maker may sue Apple over iPad design

RIAA preps for third trial in music piracy case

ITC to investigate Apple at Nokia's request

More Intellectual Property and DRM Stories

Oracle patches flaw, Asustek to take on iPad
This week brought a mix of IT news. Oracle was forced to issue an emergency patch for buggy software after details of the flaw became public. Yahoo continued to shed excess business units and sold its HotJobs division. Nexus One users finally have some multitouch functions after Google issued an update for the smartphone. Also, check out an interview with Eugene Kaspersky of security company Kaspersky Lab, and a package on business intelligence if your company is looking to delve deeper into data analysis.

Private Investigations in the Information Age
These first two decades of Information Age, i.e., the 1990s and the 2000s, have transformed almost all aspects of human endeavor from bookselling to physics, from astrology to economics, and from pornography to politics; and the many ways in which the field of investigation has been impacted by information technology (IT) is of particular interest for me.

Nokia fires new patent lawsuit at Apple in growing battle
Mobile phone maker Nokia has filed a new U.S. lawsuit accusing Apple of patent infringement, escalating the legal battle between the companies.

Microsoft, Intel, Google legal news prevails
It was a week where competition regulators danced with IT industry behemoths: the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Intel, while the European Commission gave approval to Microsoft's proposed browser "ballot screen" and pushed the proposed Oracle-Sun Microsystems deal forward. Meanwhile, a French court slapped down Google for what it saw as a copyright grab in a book-scanning case.

Data Loss Protection and Your CRM System
Information Leak Prevention (also known as Data Loss Protection) is a fairly well established area for security software, but most of the marketing noise is about protecting financial system data from unauthorized access or transmission. Why is this functionality so important for a CRM system?

Facebook tweaks, Intel chip delay and leak
Facebook's new privacy policy was rolled out this week and although we have known for months that it was coming it grabbed a lot of headline attention just the same. Of course, there were plenty of complaints from users about various aspects of the changes, so Facebook has already made some tweaks. In other news, Intel's Larrabee delay, announced last week, carried over into this week.

AMD and Intel patch things up, HP buys 3Com
We had a blockbuster deal this week, with Hewlett-Packard saying it plans to buy 3Com, and a blockbuster settlement, with Advanced Micro Devices and Intel ending a long-running legal dispute. By midnight tonight, Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers are supposed to file a revised book-search settlement proposal, which could add to our top stories list for the week. For now, though, what follows are our top IT headlines of the moment.

A Practical Approach to Protecting Trade Secrets
Trade secrets are increasingly becoming a company's most valuable assets, and not surprisingly, threats to those assets have increased concomitantly. The greatest threat to company data is, of course, not outsiders but a company's own employees A company's ability to protect against rogue employees (as well as against unintentional harm) is governed by both federal and state laws, which vary by jurisdiction and, worse, are in a state of flux in many of those jurisdictions.

Finding Your Photos Online
Recently, a friend of mine congratulated me for selling one of my wildlife photos. When I asked him what he meant, he sent me a link to a site that was prominently using a shot I had taken of some wolves. The problem? I had never given the site owners permission to use my photo, which they had "borrowed" from my Flickr page. I asked them to remove the photo, and they did--but not everyone out there is so reasonable. You can watermark your photos to prevent this sort of thing from happening. But is there any way to find your photos online to see they're being used inappropriately?

Q&A: isoHunt founder says P2P can help create post-piracy world
isoHunt's Gary Fung talks about how isoHunt has evaded legal trouble so far, why he holds out hope of working together with Hollywood and the music industry, and how he's launched a new P2P site for just that purpose.

Editors' Picks

Watch the most compelling Super Bowl ads of years past from the likes of Intel, Iomega, EDS, Apple and Xerox, then vote for your favorite in our reader poll. As the technology used to create NAND flash memory continues to shrink, bit error rates and reliability issues are increasing, forcing solid-state memory makers to look for alternatives. You're ready to advance, but your manager is asleep at the switch. Here's how to get ahead without a boost from your boss. These applications can help you turn your raw video into a snazzy presentation.

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