U.S. court rules against Canon in flat-panel suit [Reuters]
Patent troll Nano-Proprietary, owners of SED flat-panel technology patents, trolls Japan's Canon, Inc. A new licensing deal will have to be reached, or damages will be awarded.
Mystery Cell Phone Charges [PC World]
Mysterious bills for extra services brings mounting ire from subscribers. In one example, Sprint allowed a third-party company to recurrently bill a user, but refused to tell the user who that company was, making it impossible to stop the charge. They even continued to apply the charges for months after she has the phone cut off. My own cellphone bill is opaque and strange, but my standard phone bill is actually far worse: it's an endless catalogue of incomprehensible charges and other nonsense.
Skype petitions FCC for open cellular access [News.com]
Why, asks the VoIP upstart asks, shouldn't the same free-access rules that apply to wired networks also apply to wireless ones?
Microsoft hit with $1.5 billion patent verdict [News.com]
A San Diego jury orders MS to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over the use of "MP3 technology." The bottom line is that Alcatel-Lucent will now be able to go after anyone that uses MP3 compression in their products, and that licensing the technology from its inventors, the Fraunhofer institute, won't be enough to stop a lawsuit from Alcatel-Lucent. Be sure to read Wired News's analysis at The Listening Post.
