Supreme Court mulls eBay appeal

The US Supreme Court has announced that it will consider hearing an appeal by eBay over a long-running patent dispute with Virginia startup MercExchange. At issue is an Appeal Court ruling that a District Court judge should have issued an injunction that would have prevented using any of the disputed technology until all appeals had been heard. As the patents concerned involved the use of credit cards and online auctions, it would have hit the very heart of eBay's business model. ...more

UK and US to wipe out Internet fraud

The UK and the US will work together to tackle Internet fraud, Trade and Industry secretary Stephen Byers has said. The minister said that the relevant bodies, including the Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Fair Trading over here and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, would co-operate to tackle get-rich schemes, fake lotteries and other scams. It will mean that UK customers who feel they have been conned by a US firm will be able to be referred to the FTC. ...more

A new Flash

Macromedia has released Flash MX the latest version of the animated Web content application that has proved very popular both for the presentation of Web content - the homepage of this site included - and for the creation of standalone animations within more traditional HTML-based sites. With this upgrade Macromedia has made significant changes to the way Flash works. These include a new interface that conforms to those used by Macromedia's other mainstream Web applications, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. ...more

Met Office: Invest in supercomputing to tackle climate change

The UK Met Office has called for increased investment in its computing infrastructure to enable it to maintain its leading role in climate change research. The weather and climate monitoring organisation's research formed a large part of the recent Stern Report, which projected a calamitous economic impact if climate change is not tackled. But, the Met Office says, much more work is needed if it is to fully answer the questions that policy makers and the public are now asking about climate change. ...more

Palm and Handspring sued over patent row

Palm and Handspring have been named in a US lawsuit, saying their handhelds infringe on a 1987 patent. NCR, a company that sells cash dispensers, says it is due royalties from Handspring for its Visor PDA and Palm for the Palm Pilot. It has asked the court to force the two companies to stop selling the products until the matter has been resolved. ...more