Corporate and legal

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Despite a bevy of questions--looming competition from Oracle, takeover rumors, and a weak economy--Red Hat appears to be humming along, according to Jeffries analyst Katherine Egbert. But in the long run, Red Hat will have to be subsumed into a large company--most likely IBM.

In a research note, Egbert touches on the short-term and long-term prognosis for Red Hat. In the short run, she notes that there's solid demand for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Jboss in a down economy. Meanwhile, sales to the government--Red Hat has just beefed … Read more

After two reports of flaming laptop batteries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday that Hewlett-Packard is voluntarily recalling 70,000 lithium-ion batteries that shipped with several models of its HP and Compaq laptops.

The recall affects nine models of HP Pavilions, nine models of Compaq Presarios, two models of HPs, and one HP Compaq laptop model sold between August 2007 and March 2008. For the full list, see the CPSC's site.

There were two separate reports of batteries that "overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage" but no injuries, according to … Read more

Class action suits against carrier early termination fees (ETFs) are nothing new, but now it appears one case may come to an end.

Though it has yet to be approved by the court, T-Mobile has proposed a settlement in an $11.5 million class action suit filed in August 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The suit alleges that T-Mobile broke federal and state laws when charging the ETFs.

The settlement would cover T-Mobile subscribers who were charged a flat-rate ETF from July 23, 1999 to February 19, 2009, or those whose service … Read more

The global recession has hit Sony hard--the company on Thursday reported its first annual loss in 14 years.

Sony lost 165 billion yen ($1.72 billion) in the quarter that ended March 31, the fourth quarter of its fiscal year, compared with net income of 29 billion yen in the year-ago period. Revenue for the three-month period was 1.5 trillion yen ($15.5 billion), a drop of 22 percent from a year earlier.

Adding that to the previous three quarters of fiscal 2008, the company saw an annual loss of 98.9 billion yen ($1 billion). The loss was … Read more

Verizon Wireless will start selling Netbook computers from Hewlett-Packard starting Sunday, the company said in a statement released Thursday.

As previously reported by the Boy Genius Report, the HP Mini 1151NR Netbook will be priced at $199.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and will require users sign a two-year service agreement for wireless broadband services.

Verizon is sticking with its current 3G wireless pricing. But it has increased the amount of data downloads per month for its lowest tier of service. Now subscribers will be able to get the $40 a month plan with 250 Megabytes of data per … Read more

Seagate announced Thursday that it has initiated a restructuring plan that includes laying off approximately 1,100 employees, or 2.5 percent of the company's global workforce.

According to the hard-drive maker, this reduction is required to support a targeted product development, marketing, and administrative costs of less than $300 million per quarter. In addition, it will also help position the company to be cash flow and earnings positive within its fiscal year 2010.

Seagate expects the layoffs to be completed by the end of July and result in total pretax restructuring charges of approximately $72 million. These charges, … Read more

There's no question that the European Commission's $1.45 billion antitrust fine against Intel is a lot of money. But don't expect Wednesday's antitrust enforcement move to radically change what you see when it's time to buy your next PC.

Antitrust actions can have a dramatic effect when a decision breaks a company into pieces, but the biggest factors in the rivalry between Intel and AMD--and increasingly Nvidia, too--is technology. So while AMD can be pleased with the European Commission's conclusion, it's got bigger worries.

"They have a marketing problem. They need … Read more

About a month after an appeals court revived a trademark lawsuit over Google's keyword sales, another suit has surfaced in Texas.

Ars Technica spotted Firepond's lawsuit, filed Monday in Texas, against Google over whether Google should be allowed to sell keywords bearing a company's trademark to its competitors. A similar suit involving PC support company Rescuecom was brought back to life in April by an appeals court after initially being dismissed in 2006.

The issue is whether Coke, for example, should be allowed to buy keywords such as Pepsi and place ads for Coke products on searches … Read more

I logged into Slashdot this morning and saw this note:

This strikes me as an excellent balance between the different kinds of contributions to a service. I didn't mind the ads before on Slashdot, but I can imagine some would happily buy their way out of the ads. If I did mind the ads, however, I'd far prefer to contribute my way out of seeing them, rather than paying my way to this same end.

There's a potential lesson in this for others, including Twitter in its ongoing business model evolution. Cash is not the only value … Read more