IBM has called for tighter regulation of patents and a review of intellectual property ownership issues in collaborative software development.

Big Blue — one of the largest patent-holders in the United States — detailed its position at a media event in New York last week. Jim Stallings, vice-president, intellectual property and standards, launched an attack on the current patent process, arguing the methods adopted by the United States Patent office are flawed.

Stallings called on the industry to stop what he calls “bad behaviour” by companies who either seek patents for unoriginal work or collect and hoard patents.

Source: ZDNet

A collection of media organizations has urged a California appeals court to overturn a ruling that would allow Apple Computer to subpoena records from a Mac enthusiast site.

The “friend of the court” filing follows a decision last month by a California superior court judge who ruled that Apple could subpoena the e-mail records of PowerPage in an attempt to uncover who at Apple leaked confidential information about an unreleased music hardware device code-named Asteroid. The judge’s ruling is being appealed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of three online journalists whose records Apple is seeking.

Source: ZDNet

XM Satellite Radio and America Online (AOL) announced a new web-based radio service aimed at boosting the spread of satellite radio in the United States.

XM Radio provides some 3.8 million subscribers across the United States with scores of channels. Special radio sets are available in cars, homes and as portable units.

The company is seeking to spread satellite radio by getting access to AOL’s estimated 22.2 million subscribers.

Under the deal some of XM Radio’s channels will be available free to AOL customers who will also be able to buy a premium service with extra channels. The companies said in a statement they will also collaborate on new programs and services for online and satellite subscribers.

Source: Yahoo

MTV: Music Television and Microsoft Corp. today announced a global marketing alliance to unveil the next-generation Xbox(R) video game system on MTV channels in the United States, Asia Pacific and Europe, all within a 24-hour window — a first for the video game industry. The highly anticipated console will be revealed to video game fanatics, music lovers and MTV viewers via a high-energy half-hour program titled “MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed.”

The special will be hosted by entertainment icon, seasoned gamer and Xbox fanatic Elijah Wood, known globally for the Academy Award-winning “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Island Records’ renowned Las Vegas rockers The Killers will deliver electrifying performances throughout the special. The global broadcast will premiere Thursday, May 12, at 9:30 p.m. EDT in North America and on Friday, May 13 in other regions around the globe

blinkx.tv, today announced a content agreement with Live365, the world’s largest internet radio station serving some 2.6 million listeners every month. Blinkx.tv allows you to search the web for video and audio clips.

Live365, who was awarded the People’s Voice Award for Best Radio Site in the 2004 Webby Awards, will join some of the most established names in radio broadcasting in making thousands of hours of airplay from over 150 countries accessible and searchable on demand through http://www.blinkx.tv.

From today, radio listeners will be able to tune into tracks and programming from their favourite artists and disk jockeys via Blinkx By entering names of tracks, programmes or even artists into the search box, blinkx.tv users will be linked straight to matching radio content from Live365.

Intel may launch its upcoming dual-core Pentium processors and their supporting chipsets sooner than anticipated, with the products now set to debut this month, possibly as early as next week.

That’s rather sooner than the late Q2 date that the chip giant was previously expected to have scheduled for the debut of the Pentium Extreme Edition and the 955X chipset.

That Intel has done so was suggested today by Taiwanese motherboard maker sources cited by DigiTimes. It’s not hard to see the motivation: AMD is expected to launch its own dual-core Opteron processors on 21 April, the second birthday of the AMD64-based server processor family.

Source: The Register

Patients from the San Jose Medical Group are feeling even sicker this morning - the organisation has lost personal and confidential information on 185,000 current and ex-patients.

Patient records and financial details were downloaded from secure servers and put on two Dell desktop machines. The information was related to customer billing and was needed for the firm’s annual audit. But on the night of 28 March someone got into the building and stole the two PCs and a monitor.

Source: The Register