Business

Twitter has taken its battle against spammers to the courtroom. It's sued groups it says are responsible for dumping fast numbers of junk tweets into its network. The suit goes after five of what Twitter called the network's "most aggressive tool providers and spammers." Defendants include the maker...

Google CEO Larry Page issued a public dispatch on the state of the company Thursday, enthusiastically promoting the Android platform and next-generation search techniques. Page took over as CEO of the company about a year ago. His open letter Thursday, a "2012 Update From the CEO," revealed few surp...

If your friendly sock puppet is made of recyclable materials, use it now to write a check! The Internet boom is back, but in an interesting new-millennium twist, it is followed closely by the clean technology sector. Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association reported that Internet...

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has upheld a permanent injunction on a Colorado law that would have required out-of-state online retailers to report their in-state customers' purchases to Colorado tax authorities and notify those customers of the resulting sales tax owed to the state. The repor...

Facebook accused Yahoo of violating 10 of its patents Tuesday, a response to a similar suit Yahoo filed just under a month ago. The two Internet competitors are embroiled in a patent duel that started last month, when Yahoo sued Facebook for 10 counts of patent infringement. The litigation came at a...

Rumors that Yahoo was prepping for a huge round of layoffs have turned out to be true. On Wednesday, the company announced it would lay off 2,000 employees under a plan designed to prepare it for the future. Scott Thompson, the company's recently appointed CEO, said Yahoo's larger goal was to focus ...

Books and e-books are becoming the No. 1 sales and marketing tool for many small and mid-sized businesses. Large companies have successfully used them for years, but they were much more expensive and took much longer to produce. Now print on demand and e-books are transforming the space, allowing ev...

Research In Motion has been accused of infringing six patents owned by Dutch semiconductor company NXP. NXP claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Florida that the BlackBerry maker has infringed on patents pertaining to data transmission, GPS receivers on mobile phones, and circuit desig...

The European Commission has opened two formal investigations of Motorola in response to grievances Apple and Microsoft filed against the company. The licensing fees Motorola charges for patented technologies used in products like the iPhone and Xbox are set unfairly high, the companies have alleged....

Groupon's announcement last week that it was revising its financial results for the fourth quarter has apparently caught the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency is taking a look at Groupon's financials. This development caps a run of bad news for the company over the...

Yahoo has been at work developing a header solution that will implement Do Not Track compliance across its global network by early this summer. The news follows the final report released by the Federal Trade Commission this week that, among other points, calls on companies to make privacy options si...

In January of this year, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office issued a patent to Amazon for its "one-click" technology, thereby marking the beginning of business method patents in Canada. This came more than 13 years after Amazon's initial patent application, which was rejected by the Canadia...

Research In Motion's recently appointed CEO Thorsten Heins emerged from his self-imposed 10-week quiet period by dropping a number of bombshells. Former co-CEO Jim Balsillie has resigned from the board of directors. Several other executives, including Chief Technical Officer David Yach and Chief Ope...

Best Buy is taking an ax to its big box retail business model. The company plans to close 50 of its larger stores and test new store formats in San Antonio and Minneapolis. The formats will be so-called "connected stores" that will emphasize tech support and wireless products. They will feature chec...

It appears that Yahoo and shareholder Third Point are digging in for a contentious proxy fight. The companies have been tussling over who will fill four seats on the board of directors, with the two sides clashing on several points, including whether Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb should get one of th...