Corporate and legal

Research in Motion's co-CEOs might have dodged what could have been one of Canada's largest penalties ever imposed with a settlement agreement announced Wednesday.

RIM announced that the company as well as "certain of its officers and directors" (which we know to be CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazardis) has settled with the Ontario Securities Commission over an investigation into stock option backdating at RIM over the last decade. The OSC still has to approve the settlement at a hearing scheduled for tomorrow.

The amount of the settlement was not disclosed; it's up to the … Read more

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

Time Warner's fourth-quarter financial results showed more pain for its struggling AOL unit.

AOL's quarterly revenue fell 23 percent from a year ago to $968 million, Time Warner said Wednesday. AOL's ad revenue fell 18 percent and subscription revenue fell 27 percent from a year ago. AOL also had an operating loss of $1.9 billion, largely due to a $2.2 billion noncash charge related to the carrying value of goodwill. In a nutshell, AOL acquired a bunch of companies such as Bebo that aren't … Read more

Time Warner Cable took a hit from a weak economy and growing competition from phone companies in the fourth quarter as subscriber growth slowed.

Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable operator in the U.S. behind Comcast, met financial expectations on Wednesday for the fourth quarter, but it added fewer subscribers during the quarter.

CEO Glenn Britt cited a weak economy and growing competition from phone companies AT&T and Verizon Communications.

The cable operator only gained about 49,000 new lines for a total of 34.2 million during the quarter. And basic video subscriptions decreased by … Read more

A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday postponed indefinitely the coordinated patent infringement cases filed by Rambus against a collection of rival memory chipmakers.

The cases were scheduled to go to trial later this month.

Judge Ronald M. Whyte of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order indefinitely postponing the long-running cases against Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Nanya Technology, and Samsung Electronics, pending appeals of earlier court decisions.

Shares of Los Altos, Calif.-based Rambus, which licenses technology for high-speed memory architectures, plunged 22 percent in after-hours trading, or $2, to $6.95. … Read more

A criminal trial starting Tuesday that could mean jail time for three Google employees and the company's former chief financial officer was postponed until Feb. 18, Google said Tuesday.

Tracey Bentley, who's monitoring the trial for the International Association for Privacy Professionals, also reported that the municipality of Milan has added a new charge against the company itself. Bentley In addition, Bentley quoted a former Italian prosecutor as saying procedural delays are common in such cases.

The case involves a video of teenager with Down syndrome being taunted by classmates in a Turin school that had been posted … Read more

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PST with Microsoft comment and additional context.

When Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha said Tuesday that his company's phones would eventually carry Windows Mobile 7, he let on more than he probably thought.

In answering an analyst's question during the Q-and-A portion of his company's earnings call, Jha said: "Yes, we are still committed to Windows Mobile. As you know, Windows 6 series is available in 2009 and as compared to Android, we believe in 2009 Android is more competitive; more of our effort and focus in 2009 is going to Android, but in 2010 when Windows 7 will become available, we will then participate in a more focused way in Windows Mobile 7 in 2010."

Without commenting on Jha's comment, a Microsoft representative said the company has "nothing to announce today."

In September, CNET News reported that Microsoft told its partners not to expect Windows Mobile 7 until at least the second half of 2009. Jha's comment seems to indicate that the deadline has been pushed back even further. … Read more

Cheryl Kellond, formerly Yahoo's vice president of advertiser product marketing, has taken a new post as vice president of advertising at ChoiceStream, a company that personalizes online advertisements for clients including Overstock.com, AT&T, Yahoo, Blockbuster, and Borders.

The company also said Darin Hicks, formerly Acxiom's general manager, is now chief operating officer.

In addition, the company said Yahoo's former chief data officer, Usama Fayyad, has joined its board of directors, and a former executive at advertising giant WPP, Lauren Frank, has joined its advisory board.

Greg Coleman, a longtime Yahoo executive, has been named the new president of AOL's advertising division, Platform-A.

"Greg Coleman is the perfect person to build on the foundation we created at Platform-A and drive branded display sales across our fast-growing MediaGlow programming network," AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco said in a release, referring to the network of blogs and media properties that the online conglomerate formally packaged and announced last month. "Greg's a seasoned sales pro who understands that online brand building is the next frontier in digital advertising, and that whoever can deliver … Read more

Correction at 11:24 a.m. PST: This post initially misstated the length of the cell phone video at the center of the lawsuit. It was a 191-second video.

Four executives from Google are about to face criminal charges in Italy regarding alleged privacy violations.

The lawsuit, noted by The New York Times' Saul Hansell and the International Association of Privacy Professionals, revolves around a 191-second cell phone video in 2006. In the video, four high school kids tease a boy with Down Syndrome. The video was uploaded to Google's Italian site and quickly removed from the site after … Read more