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Acer and its former chief executive Gianfranco Lanci may have parted ways for almost a year now, but it is apparently not quite water under the bridge between the two sides.

The Taiwanese company said on Tuesday that it has initiated legal action in Mr Lanci’s home country of Italy, alleging that Mr Lanci violated non-compete clauses in the contract he signed with Acer upon leaving in Febuary 2011 – Mr Lanci joined Lenovo as a consultant in September, and the Chinese company last month announced Mr Lanci would head its Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, effective April.

Joseph Menn

Smack in the middle of the ultrabook and tablet hoopla from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas comes a sobering report from the market researchers at IDC: PC shipments in the critical fourth quarter were down 0.2 per cent from a year before.

When Acer last March unceremoniously ousted its then-chief executive Gianfranco Lanci, it was not an amicable parting, with both sides apportioning blame on the other for the split.

But if the Taiwanese company had thought they were rid of Mr Lanci by forcing his resignation, then they are sorely mistaken. Mr Lanci was this week appointed the head of Europe, Middle East and Africa by none other Lenovo, Acer’s Chinese rival.

Joseph Menn

Apple has lost a bid to stop Samsung imports of its Galaxy Tab and some smartphones in the US, keeping the waters cloudy in one of the most important legal battles between the two tech titans.

Joseph Menn

The FBI must work more closely with the major US intelligence agencies in order to combat  threats in cyberspace, its director said on Thursday, likening the government response to that against terrorism.

Tech news from around the web:

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has made a ‘multimillion-dollar’ investment in mobile payment start-up company Square, a spokesperson for the company has told Reuters. The move  follows a $100m investment led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and an injection by credit card company Visa.

Adobe Systems is said to be scrapping its move to bring its Flash Player software to smartphones and tablets, CNET reports. The Flash browser plug-in is widely used on personal computers but has so far only reached a fraction of the mobile phone market. 

Joseph Menn

The two-day London Cyber Conference wrapped up Thursday with a remarkable lack of unity for such a carefully staged, invite-only event for world political and technology leaders.

When Taiwan’s Quanta landed orders from Facebook and Google to help custom-build their data centres earlier this year, it was the first step into a new industry for the world’s biggest contract maker of notebooks.

Quanta chairman Barry Lam’s said on Monday, however, that his ambitions go further than just completing built-to-order projects for tech companies. Quanta will instead look to offer a full turnkey solution for servers, he said for the first time. It is a move that will put it into direct competition with industry leaders like HP, Dell, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

HTC has had an amazing run as it grew from anonymity to one of the top Android phonemakers. This has been reflected in its shipments, which have been record-breaking for the Taiwanese company for each of the last six quarters.

But is that run about to end, amid intensifying competition and a weak global economy? HTC said on Monday that it expects fourth-quarter shipments, and revenues, to be down slightly from the third quarter.

Over the past decade, technological advancements have made televisions thinner and thinner, with giant cathode ray tube sets replaced by flatscreen TVs whose thickness are now measured in millimeters.

Starting next year, however, ‘fatter’ flatscreen TVs may be making a comeback in emerging markets, according to one screen maker.

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