Business

Does your business bear legal responsibility to police the infringement of one of your organization's most valuable assets, the company brand, on widely used Internet auction sites like eBay? That all depends on where the electronic commerce is being conducted, based on recently issued, conflicting ...

New technologies in Verizon's future and its contentious past with telecommunications unions are set to collide this weekend as the company faces a new deadline for talks regarding compensation issues for some 65,000 of its workers. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brother...

Rackspace Hosting went to market with the tech industry's first initial public offering in six months, winning, at the very least, karmic points for its bravery in forging into a dismal equity environment. The company, which began trading on the NYSE under the symbol "RAX," priced its initial offeri...

Search engine giant Google could see a significant write-down in its $1 billion investment in AOL, the company revealed. "We believe our investment in AOL may be impaired," it says in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be ...

In a recent article for the E-Commerce Times entitled "Getting Serious About Energy Independence," I outlined what I thought was the general direction the country should take in order to conserve energy and ultimately become energy independent. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from th...

Sprint Nextel continues to shed wireless customers despite efforts to improve service and lure high-end subscribers to its network. The number of mobile subscribers at the carrier declined to 51.9 million in the second quarter ended June 30, down 3.9 percent from the 54 million it reported during th...

With the Olympic torch now in Beijing, residents there are wondering: Who will carry it those final few steps to light the cauldron in China's Olympic Stadium? Meanwhile, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft face their own burning question regarding China: Can an agreement on a code of conduct for business d...

By now, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang must be feeling as though he simply cannot catch a break. He has weathered a succession of setbacks over the past few months, since Microsoft launched its unsuccessful bid to acquire the portal. Now it turns out that he doesn't have as much shareholder support as he thou...

U.S. television programming is moving toward on-demand status, judging from a federal appeals court ruling Monday in favor of Cablevision's proposed network-centric digital video recorder. Concluding a two-year legal battle, U.S. Circuit Court Judge John M. Walker Jr. found that Cablevision's plans ...

Sony has acquired German media giant Bertelsmann's 50 percent stake in Sony BMG Music for $900 million. Bertelsmann gets another $300 million for its share of the cash on Sony BMG's books. Filings with the SEC show that Sony BMG will buy back part of Bertelsmann's stake for $600 million, with anothe...

Dell has successfully navigated through a considerable stretch of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office maze in its quest for ownership of the ubiquitous technology industry term "cloud computing." On March 23, 2007, Dell filed an Intent to Use application with the PTO; its request was published and ...

Wireless technology giant Motorola has landed a top Qualcomm executive to run its mobile devices unit, which is expected to be spun out in the second half of 2009. Sanjay Jha, former chief operating officer at San Diego-based Qualcomm, is now co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the Schaumburg, Ill.-based ...

By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission has sharply rebuked Comcast for its network management practices. It found not only that Comcast's practices were invasive, but also that the company was likely motivated by anticompetitive issues. "The Commission found that Comcast monitors i...

I was once in the middle of an anchor dispute. Consultant-led mediation helped, but the best advice came from an older, wiser anchor who told me to keep smiling, be patient and wait for my coanchor to implode. Of course, all this was before the rise of computer hacking, spyware and keylogging device...

Sun Microsystems continues to struggle. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based server maker reported that earnings in the quarter ended June 30 fell nearly 74 percent to $88 million, compared with earnings of $329 million during the same period a year ago. Quarterly revenue fell 1.4 percent to $3.78 billion,...