- A seven-year battle between the US Federal Trade Commission and Rambus, the memory-chip specialist, has ended in defeat for the FTC. The regulator had ruled that Rambus plotted to get secretly patented technology it developed included in industry standards, but an appeal court had thrown out its ruling and, on Thursday, the FTC dropped the rest of its case.
- Nintendo was the big winner in April in the US video game market. According to the NPD research firm’s monthly figures, it sold 1.08m units of its dual-screen handheld console following the introduction of the new DSi model on April 5. That was nearly double unit sales of 563,000 in March.
- It was a mixed day for Facebook. Good news was that the social network finally launched its Verified Apps program. This will help users sort through the thousands of applications now available on the Facebook platform, and make some informed decisions about which of them they might want to try out. Bad news was that Facebook suffered yet another phishing attack. As with previous attacks, this one was dealt with quickly by Facebook. But interestingly, the company said today’s incident was related to a previous wave of similar attacks.
- DVD buyers will soon be able to store copies of more movies on computer hard drives, organising them and preserving them in case of damage to the physical copies, studio representatives said on Thursday. The initiatives came to light in recent testimony during a San Francisco legal battle between Disney, Sony and the other big movie makers and RealNetworks, which is trying to sell its own software for making copies of DVDs.
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