E-Commerce

Lawyers for Apple Computer argued to a United Kingdom court that the iTunes Music Store is a data-transfer service, not a purely musical endeavor and as a result does not violate a long-standing agreement with the company that handles The Beatles business affairs. The argument was made during procee...

The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing arguments in eBay v. MercExchange. It is not examining the underlying dispute between the two firms -- indeed, MercExchange has successfully challenged eBay's use of its buy now technology. Rather, the court is examining whether issuing an injunction against the...

Microsoft has announced the repackaging of four hosted solutions from FrontBridge Technologies, a company that it bought in August 2005, as well as a new licensing model and road map for Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services. The rebranding comes as no surprise, said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst with Jup...

Google said it would release another 5.3 million shares of its stock for public sale, claiming it wanted to be ready to meet higher demand for its shares as it enters the Standard & Poor's 500 index and in the process raise additional cash for "general corporate purposes." The move, which will r...

A case that could dramatically alter the way keyword search advertising is sold has closely moved toward a court date, with Google's practice of letting anyone bid on certain keywords -- and whether the practice may constitute trademark infringement -- at issue. The case of Edina Realty, Inc. vs. Th...

The TiVo v. EchoStar Communications patent trial officially began on Wednesday. Now it's up to a Texas jury to decide whether the satellite TV giant stole TiVo's technology that allows viewers to skip commercials. In a case that could have stock market and cable television industry repercussions, Ti...

The lengthy patent battle between e-commerce giant eBay and a small firm that says it came up with the popular "Buy it Now" technology first will get a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday. The focus of the hearing will be whether MercExchange should be granted an injunction barring eBay ...

In direct competition with TiVo, Cablevision Systems on Monday announced a planned trial of a remote storage digital video recorder service. It will allow customers to record and store programs in a dedicated space within Cablevision's head-end facilities, using existing digital set-top boxes. Using...

You know that half the money you are spending on Internet advertising is wasted -- you just aren't sure which half. You've read about Web analytics and have played with the free tools that come from your Web hosting solution, but you realize you need more. The only problem is, there are more than 60...

The lengthy battle between The Beatles and Apple over whether the computer maker infringed on the legendary band's trademark by pushing into the music business will reach the highest court in the United Kingdom this week. Justice Edward Mann will hear arguments on whether Apple's iTunes online music...

If you are like millions of other Americans, you made money peddling products on eBay last year. Many earned enough to enjoy a night on the town. Others collected enough to go on their dream vacation. Still others made a living selling widgets at the online auction site. Regardless of whether you ma...

In yet another experiment to leverage legal, digital distribution of Hollywood movies, Universal Pictures and online rental service LoveFilm announced they will begin offering a download-to-own Internet movie service in the UK next month. The service will kick off with the release of the feature fil...

Sling Media, the maker of the Slingbox technology that enables remote access to TV programs stored on a digital video recorder, has made a beta version available of a service that can deliver video from various sources to mobile devices. SlingPlayer Mobile lets Slingbox owners gain access to their s...

PayPal is going mobile. The online payments giant is gearing up to launch a service that would allow its customers to make purchases or money transfers using simple text messaging on their mobile phones. Dubbed PayPal Mobile, the service is currently only available to the eBay unit's employees for ...

As the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is making news this week with the debut of new industry- and country-specific Top Level Domain extensions, the overall market for domain names continues to burgeon dramatically, pointing to continual, solid growth in the global Internet econ...