A US blogger who reported on a court ruling has been ordered by car rental firm Avis to remove an image of its logo from his blog posting to avoid charges of trademark abuse.

Eric Turkewitz is a lawyer who writes a personal injury blog. In a recent post he discussed a ruling on the constitutionality of car rental firm immunity from some kinds of negligence suits. He illustrated the story with pictures of the logos of leading firms Hertz and Avis, but was told by Avis’s lawyers to take down the picture.

A comment on the blog from Fred Grumman, associate general counsel at Avis, said: “We have the greatest respect for your right to express your opinions on your blog, but that does not include the right to use Avis’ trademark as you have done in this particular piece.

“Understandably, trademark law is not within your area of expertise. Therefore, we trust that this was done out of ignorance and not based on an intent to misuse our mark to the benefit of your personal injury practice. We ask that you remove it immediately and refrain from any similar use in the future.”

Turkewitz said he is not convinced he has actually committed a trademark violation. “Was my use of the Avis logo last month a violation of its trademark?” he asked his readers in a post.

Microsoft today released its November 2007 security bulletin, which includes only two updates. One is designated as Critical by the software giant and affects how Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 handle Windows URIs. The other bulletin is deemed Important and affects how Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003 handle spoofing attacks.

A Sydney man who uploaded the first known pirated copy of “The Simpsons Movie” to the Internet after recording it on his cell phone was fined $888 by a magistrate Tuesday for breaching copyright.

An international operation involving Australian Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.’s Fox movie studios, which own the rights to the blockbuster, tracked the unauthorized copy to the home of Jose Duarte, 21, who was arrested in August.

Prosecutor Chuan Ng said the movie was downloaded 3,213 times in the few hours it was available on the Internet.

Duarte’s lawyer said Duarte tried twice to upload the movie July 26, the release date, several hours ahead of its appearance in most of the world. He thought he’d failed, said the lawyer, Ken Stewart.

Google’s Android software gives Sun Microsystems’ Java technology a starring role–but not the version of Java the rest of the mobile phone industry has been developing since the 1990s.

Instead, Google struck off on its own in an attempt to improve performance and openness for the software used in the Open Handset Alliance phones. That means programmers will have a new variety of Java to reckon with–offset somewhat by Google’s $10 million code contest to draw developers in.

One difference is Google’s development of its own core Java virtual machine (JVM) technology called Dalvik, the software that actually executes Java programs on an Android phone, which Google says means Java programs run fast even on the constrained hardware of mobile phones. But a more significant departure than just using an in-house JVM is the fact that Android isn’t part of the Java Community Process that Sun established in 1999 to oversee the development of new Java features.

The JCP governs Java by codifying new features as application programming interfaces (APIs), so programmers can have a standard way of calling upon new technology such as Bluetooth support or 3D graphics. But that existing Java realm wouldn’t accommodate the developer freedoms Google thought were important in Android.

Apple has pushed out its iPhone 1.1.2 firmware update to users of its popular mobile phone, fixing a widely publicized bug in the iPhone’s browser.

Apple made the software available for download last Thursday, but on Monday, it began pushing it out automatically to users via its iTunes updating mechanism.The iPhone uses iTunes to scan for security updates once per week, so users will gradually be offered this new firmware over the next seven days.

The update fixes a bug in the way that the iPhone renders TIFF images.

Over half of Europe’s airlines including Ryanair could be forced to close their Web sites next year if they fail to remedy problems shown by the EU consumer affairs watchdog in a probe carried out in September.

The results of the investigation to be published on Wednesday and obtained by Reuters says “over 50 percent of all Web sites showed irregularities, in particular relating to price indications, contract terms and clarity of proposed conditions.”

“Companies will be contacted by authorities and asked to provide clarification or change their practices in four months. Those who fail to do so could face legal action leading to fines or closure of their Web sites,” the report says.

The results do not identify any airlines in particular, but the European Union’s Executive Commission intends to “publish a list of companies concerned” in four months’ time.

Last month, Spain’s consumer rights watchdog said it had found misleading information in seven of 12 airline ticket Web sites including Ryanair — Europe’s biggest low-cost airline.

The Spanish authorities also found faults with Spanish carriers Vueling, Iberia and Spainair.

In a bid to one-up Apple, Microsoft said it will engrave designs by contemporary artists on the back of its Zune media players free of charge starting Tuesday, when the new line goes on sale.

Microsoft Corp.’s Zune Originals include work from 18 artists, including illustrators Catalina Estrada of Spain, Skwak of France and Nobumasa Takahashi of Japan. The intricate designs take up most of the metallic back surface of the players.

Apple Inc., the overwhelming market leader in portable music players, will engrave a line or two of small text on the back of its iPods and iPhones.

“We looked at how homogenized the category looked, everybody has the same sort of player, the same white earphones,” said Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for the Microsoft division responsible for the Zune. “We knew there was something interesting here that would allow us to have a slightly different position in the marketplace.”

Google Inc. is offering $10 million in prizes for people who build the best software to enhance the company’s upcoming cell phone operating system.

The Mountain View-based company is developing a free cell phone software package that it says will make it easier to surf the Web over mobile devices. It also will give Google more opportunities to sell ads and services.

The operating system will be based on computer code that can be openly distributed among programmers, which Google hopes will encourage developers to create new software and improvements that could spawn new uses for smart phones.

Winning offerings could encompass simple aesthetic improvements like personalized home screens or more complicated social-networking programs that merge data from the Web - such as maps or personal Web pages - with data from users’ phones - like contact information or the phones’ geographic locations.

As part of the Android Developer Challenge, a panel of judges will pick 50 winners from entries received from Jan. 2 through March 3, 2008. In the first phase of the competition, those winners will each get $25,000 and be eligible for ten awards of $100,000 and another ten $275,000 awards.

The second phase of the competition will feature another $5 million in prize money.

Google did not specify how the applications will be judged. The company only said the winning programs will “provide consumers with the most compelling experiences.”