Microsoft and Samsung strike patent licensing deal

Microsoft and Samsung have announced that they have entered into a broad patent cross-licensing agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will get access to Microsoft patents for technologies that are deployed in a range of current and future product lines - including computer products, set-top boxes, digital media players, camcorders, televisions, printers and home appliances. In addition, Samsung and its distributors and customers may use Microsoft's patents in Samsung's products with proprietary software, and Samsung will also obtain legal coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of certain Linux-based products. ...more

UK woman virtual hits virtual jackpot

A businesswoman from Surrey has scooped an incredible ?98,000 prize from an online casino. It is the biggest-ever online casino win in the UK and Carol Andrew's $137,000 win came when she was playing the Cashsplash game on the US site King Solomon's Online Casino. The payment was made the next day but Mrs Andrew didn't receive her win until a week later after the sum had been converted from dollars to sterling. ...more

RIAA issues 750 more writs to University users

The US music industry pressure group the RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) has fired off over 750 lawsuits against students and others who have been downloading music for free from P2P networks. The suits accuse 757 individuals of engaging in copyright infringement, including computer network users at 17 different colleges throughout the US. RIAA says that the people concerned not only used P2P networks such as Grokster, Kazaa and eDonkey but also used the student run i2hub p2p network to distribute music. ...more

Microsoft eyes business process management with BizTalk

Microsoft has announced the imminent release of BizTalk Server 2004. Part of the Windows Server family, it is business automation software that covers business to business communications, application integration and business process management (BPM). Applications built with BizTalk Server 2004 run on the Microsoft . ...more

EU to investigate Italy and Germany over Intel-favoured procurement

AMD's legal dispute with Intel in Europe, over anti-competitive practices, has taken another twist. The European Commission is to investigate whether member states have procured computer systems based on specific suppliers. Specifically, that Intel was favoured by certain government agencies in the contract process, which would break Commission rules. ...more