Corporate and legal

Since March 2007, when Viacom first accused Google in a $1 billion lawsuit of profiting off thousands of unauthorized copyrighted clips that once appeared on YouTube, most of the conflict had smoldered out of public view.

Once the case documents were unsealed on Thursday, all the spite roared into the open. Google attacked Viacom for chopping up e-mails from YouTube's founders in an obvious attempt to invent sinister-sounding messages. In Viacom's motion for summary judgment, the parent company of Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures railed against Google and YouTube for developing "serial amnesia" during depositions and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--T-Mobile USA said it will soon have bragging rights as the nation's fastest 3G network. But will the claim to fame help the company attract new customers?

Executives at the CTIA trade show here on Tuesday outlined the company's network upgrade plans to a technology called HSPA+ that will effectively triple its network download speeds on its 3G wireless network by the end of the year.

T-Mobile admits that it got to the 3G wireless party late, but executives at the company said current upgrades to their network will offer faster speeds to more consumers than even … Read more

One of the Yahoo board members who accompanied Carl Icahn into the boardroom does not plan to run for re-election, Yahoo announced Tuesday.

John Chapple, whose day job is managing equity investment firm Hawkeye Investments, will not serve another term on Yahoo's board.

It's not clear whether anyone will be nominated at Yahoo's June annual meeting to take his place and keep the number of directors on Yahoo's board at 11.

Chapple came into Yahoo during tumultuous times, joining in August 2008 along with Icahn and current Yahoo board member Frank Biondi to protest the company'… Read more

LAS VEGAS--T-Mobile USA on Tuesday announced its first Netbook for its 3G wireless network here at the CTIA trade show.

Starting Wednesday in select markets, T-Mobile will begin selling the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook with access to the company's newly upgraded HSPA 7.2 network. The device, which comes with Windows 7 installed as well as an Intel Atom processor for fast Web surfing, will be $199.99 with a two-year contract. Customers can buy the device without a contract for $499.

T-Mobile charges $60 per month for its data card service, which gives users 5GB of usage … Read more

Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis have raised $165 million to invest in European start-up technology companies, the Skype co-founders said Monday.

The raising of these funds will be invested through Zennström and Friis' venture capital vehicle, Atomico, which they formed in 2006. This will be London-based Atomico's second wave of investment, and their first concentrated on Europe.

Atomico said it will invest in early-stage, high-growth technology companies that can provide "outsized returns" over the long term.

Read more of "Skype founders raise £110m for European start-ups" at ZDNet UK.

LAS VEGAS--AT&T executives are pushing the government to allocate more spectrum for wireless broadband and back off on regulation in order to keep the mobile broadband growth engine revving.

Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T Mobility and the new chairman of CTIA, and Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, each spoke at the CTIA 2010 wireless trade show here Tuesday about how the U.S. leads the world in wireless broadband, but they emphasized the need for more spectrum and a light regulatory touch from the government to keep the momentum going.

De … Read more

LAS VEGAS - In the next few years it will be difficult to buy a new smartphone that does not have built-in Wi-Fi for speedy Net access, according to a report that ABI Research and the Wi-Fi Alliance published Tuesday.

Today, about half the smartphones sold have Wi-Fi. By 2014, the forecast goes, about 90 percent of smartphones will offer access to Wi-Fi.

The big driver for Wi-Fi is bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications, such as graphically intense games and streaming video. The Apple iPhone was among the first devices to show the true benefit of having Wi-Fi. AT&T, the … Read more

The one-company, two-systems concept didn't work for Google in China. It's not clear how long having one system will work, either.

In following through on its very public threat to shut down its censored Chinese-language search engine on Monday, Google ended months of speculation about its plans following its January announcement that it had been hacked by cybercriminals working from inside China. And in the same moment that Google started redirecting traffic from Google.cn to Google.com.hk and its Hong Kong-based servers, a new era for Google and its operation in China began.

Hong Kong enjoys … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--One of the coolest demos at DemoSpring here is from Exaudios.

The company's new Maginify product analyzes the intonation of someone on a phone call and can tell if the person is calm, beginning to get angry, or seconds from blowing up. It also identifies other emotions, but for this product, the focus is on happiness and anger. The service is being pitched to call centers, though there is potentially more to it than that.

You may rightly note that most humans have the innate ability to tell if the person they're speaking with is … Read more