The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has denied Vonage's request that a patent infringement ruling against it be vacated and the case sent back to the lower court for a retrial. The company can, however, reference the matter in its appeal brief, due next Wednesday.

Vonage's request followed a ruling Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court that called into question the patentability of "obvious" inventions. Verizon sued the company for infringing on its voice over IP patents, but Vonage claims the patents should not be considered valid.

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Michael Dell next week will donate a number of items from his namesake company to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. As one of the largest computer manufacturers in the world, Dell will be featured in a special "Treasures of American History" exhibit.

Among the donations will be a PC's Limited computer from 1985, Michael Dell's employee badge, a Dell OptiPlex GX520 built in 2005 at the new manufacturing facility in Winston Salem, N.C., objects used by workers at the factory, in addition to company documentation.

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In yet another sign of the ubiquity of broadband, AOL said yesterday it now counts only 12 million subscribers - a far cry from the company's peak of 26.7 million in 2002. AOL is now only the third largest ISP, behind both AT&T with 12.1 million subscribers and Comcast with 12.9 million.

AOL has ceased marketing its dial-up and high-speed Internet services, instead focusing on its advertising-based Web business. The company says 8 million users have signed up to the free offerings, although nearly half are former AOL ISP customers. Still, the company remains upbeat about its progress, saying users are now spending more time on AOL Web properties, meaning advertising revenues should increase.

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Forced to comply with US federal statutes on providing music to foreign listeners without a license, Pandora and other American streaming Internet radio services began actively enforcing restrictions on streaming to IP addresses outside US boundaries this morning.

As a result, Pandora listeners in Canada and elsewhere began receiving apology notices instead of music, including a description of efforts Pandora and others are making to secure international performance rights - a topic to which countries elsewhere have apparently not assigned a very high priority.

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Microsoft's hopes that Monday's historic pair of US Supreme Court rulings - including a Microsoft victory over AT&T - would lead to a revisiting of a $1.53 billion ruling against it in favor of Alcatel-Lucent, were dashed yesterday afternoon. US District Court Judge Rudi Brewster upheld the jury verdict from last February, as a penalty to Microsoft for having acquired its license to use MP3 technology in its Windows Media Player from the wrong supplier.

Microsoft was one of multiple companies, including Apple, that were sued by Alcatel (Alcatel-Lucent's predecessor) for using what it claims to be its technology without a license. Lucent's own predecessor, AT&T Bell Laboratories, was the co-creator of MP3 along with Fraunhofer Labs, which may have contributed technologies to the 1992 collaboration that dated back to 1987.

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Almost exactly a year following its acquisition of in-game advertiser Massive, Microsoft further expanded its ad reach Thursday with the purchase of mobile advertiser ScreenTonic. Based in Paris, ScreenTonic provides advertisers a variety of ways to reach mobile users and has deals with wireless operators.

Microsoft plans to integrate ScreenTonic's offerings into its Digital Advertising Solutions division, enabling marketers to reach an audience that spans the computer, game console and mobile phone. Microsoft says it will now "be able to provide relevant ads where consumers are, when they are actively engaged and communicating." Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

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Following through on a plan announced in late March, Dell confirmed this week that it will soon begin shipping consumer desktop PCs and laptops with Ubuntu 7.04 - one of the most popular Linux distributions. Systems running the open source software will be available in "the coming weeks."

Dell partnered with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to bring about the option after over 100,000 responses from interested users. "We believe that Dell’s decision is a strong endorsement of Ubuntu and to the work of many in coding, translating and promoting open source software," Canonical said in a statement. "It is also testament to the demand that exists for Ubuntu."

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An attorney representing Internet radio interests reports that the due date for 2006 performance royalties has officially been moved back to July 15 from May 15, due to a technicality created by an alteration in the ruling of the US Copyright Royalty Board.

That alteration, which rolls back the rate of 2006 back royalty fees to become more commensurate with what satellite radio pays to the SoundExchange organization for performance royalties, apparently gives streaming music providers a 45-day window from yesterday to file a formal appeal, according to attorney David Oxenford. Online providers have already indicated their willingness to do so.

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While making progress towards an agreement surrounding roaming in the European Union, the European Commission and member countries still differ over specifics of the arrangement.

During a meeting Wednesday, representatives for both sides failed to reach an agreement however were coming closer on the specifics. Main points of disagreement remain the rates that companies may charge and where consumers should be automatically switched.

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At a conference for its business customers in Los Angeles this morning, Microsoft Senior Vice President for Server and Tools Bob Muglia revealed that, as part of the company's upgrade of Systems Management Server to become "Systems Center Configuration Manager," the company will begin deploying malware signatures - perhaps on an as-discovered basis - as part of its online updates and patches sent to Windows Server customers.

The revelation came as the company unveiled two new product lines: Forefront for enterprise-oriented security tools, and System Center, which will not only envelop the old SMS but also Microsoft Operations Manager as well. MOM, as she was affectionately known, will now be called System Center Operations Manager; and through this common console, as product manager Kuleen Bharadwaj demonstrated, administrators will be able to poll Microsoft's network for Forefront support as often as policy may dictate, not just for patches but also for virus, adware, and other malware signatures as well.

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IBM has given pink slips to approximately 1,300 workers in its services division. The cuts are aimed at getting costs under control in the United States. The cuts mean a reduction of less than a half a percent of its total worldwide workforce. Laid off employees have an opportunity to apply for jobs within IBM which they may be qualified for before their positions are officially terminated.

The Armonk, New York based company has made no public announcement of the layoffs: word of the cuts first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday through sources from IBM's union "The Alliance at IBM." IBM's general policy is to not announce layoffs, says the paper.

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Beginning two weeks ago, attorneys for the licensing authority for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD issued letters to multiple Web sites and services, including search engines, demanding they remove direct references to a 32-hexadecimal digit code they claim is a processing key that could be used to circumvent DRM protection in HD DVD discs.

"It is our understanding that you are providing to the public the above-identified tools and services at the above referenced URL," reads one letter sent by AACS LA's attorneys to a representative of Google, "and are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

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CBS said Wednesday that it had signed an agreement with Internet television company Brightcove to allow the site to syndicate ad-supported CBS News content to users of the service. The deal expands on previously announced partnerships with AOL News, Comcast and YouTube to allow small and medium sized sites that include Brightcove videos to license CBS News content.

As part of the deal, segments from the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, The Early Show, as well as other CBS News programs will be featured on Brightcove. In addition, the network plans to make available content produced exclusively for the web. From there, members could use the Brightcove Syndication Marketplace to apply to become an affiliate, the company said.

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A New Zealand-based company has sued Nokia over certain messaging technologies within its phones, claiming the Finnish phone maker is using its technology surrounding data packaging. The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Monday. A case by Michael S Sutton Ltd. had previously been filed, but was voluntarily dismissed for an unknown reason.

To its defense, Nokia said it would "actively defend the rights" of the company in the case. The cell phone maker is also defending itself against another patent infringement case, dealing with patents on HSDPA held by Qualcomm. Both sides have filed several lawsuits against each other.

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Blockbuster's online service seems to be catching on, as the company added some 800,000 subscribers during the first quarter of the year, it said on Wednesday. Over the past two quarters, it has nearly doubled in size to 2.8 million members, and beat its larger rival Netflix in subscriber additions for the first time. Netflix added 481,000 new customers to end this past quarter with 6.8 million subscribers.

The quick growth has not come without a price however. The nation's biggest brick-and-mortar movie renter swung to a much larger loss, posting a net loss of $46.4 million compared to $1.9 million in the year ago quarter. Cost of sales increased 17 percent, while operating costs increased 3 percent.

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