Whoops… Google’s bid to trademark “Nexus One” has been rejected.

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Geek.com

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VirnetX, a software corporation founded in 2005, has prevailed in a patent-infringement lawsuit accusing Microsoft of willfully infringing on two patents for automatic and secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology. The Texas jury recommended an award of $105.75 million, which is less than half of the $242 million that VirtnetX asked for. Still, the verdict was a very positive one for VirtnetX. “Our clients are very happy with today’s verdict,” said VirnetX counsel Douglas Cawley in a statement. “We hope this decision sends a clear message to patent infringers everywhere that they will be held responsible for wrongly profiting off the hard work of others.”

Microsoft is not happy with the decision and plans to fight on. “We are disappointed by the jury’s verdict,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. “We respect others’ intellectual property, and we believe the evidence demonstrated that we do not infringe and the patents are invalid. We believe the award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict.” 

The case was tried in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the favored venue for patent infringement cases.

In its original lawsuit filed in February 2007, VirnetX alleged that Microsoft Office Communicator included technology covered by its patent No. 6,502,135 and that Windows Meeting Space infringed its patent No. 7,188,180. The $105.75 million breaks down as $71.75 million for the former and $34 million for the latter, according to the Scotts Valley, California company. VirnetX acquired the rights to the patents from the government-contracting company Science Applications International in 2006. Microsoft accused VirnetX of being a patent troll during the trial, and it was revealed that the company’s business model was based on winning the lawsuit, though it does have a licensing agreement with VeriSign.

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Time Warner Cable customers in Dallas can now get 50Mbps Internet service.

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Broadband Reports

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Wikileaks, a website that aims to boost government transparency and accountability by publishing sensitive documents, has released a classified military counterintelligence analysis report that discusses the “threat posed to the US Army” by Wikileaks itself.

The report outlines this perceived threat and contends that military security could be put at risk if classified information is made available through Wikileaks, where it can be accessed by foreign intelligence agents and terrorists. The report also points out that foreign governments could leak falsified information to the Wikileaks site in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the United States.

One of the primary topics addressed in the report is potential strategies for deterring moles within the US government from disclosing information to Wikileaks. The author of the report suggests that identifying leakers and terminating their employment or pursuing legal action against them could undermine the relationship of trust between Wikileaks and its informants, thus diminishing the risk of future leaks.

“Recent unauthorized release of DoD sensitive and classified documents provide FISS, foreign terrorist groups, insurgents, and other foreign adversaries with potentially actionable information for targeting US forces,” the report says. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.”

The report concludes that the disclosure of classified information by Wikileaks reflects the need for stronger counterintelligence programs and better information security training for military personnel.

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Blockbuster’s latest SEC filing indicates that bankruptcy is a very real option for the company.

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SEC, Silicon Alley Insider

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As the Federal Communications Commission hands its National Broadband Plan over to Congress, the cable industry’s top trade association has issued a manifesto that looks pretty good, at least on paper. It boils down to seven “consumer principles,” says the National Telecommunications and Cable Association, to which cable operators will adhere, “and which we believe could serve as the foundation for Commission and inter-industry efforts.”

The principles have a sort of FCC Internet Policy Statement or even FDR Four Freedoms speech feeling to them, but focus on mobility of content, portability of devices, and ease of Internet access. They include the Holy Grail: “1. Consumers should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can access their multichannel provider’s video services without a set-top box supplied by that provider.” A right-to-broadband clause: “3. Consumers should have the option to access video content from the Internet through their multichannel provider’s video devices and retail video devices.” And a freedom-of-platform commitment: “5. Consumers should have the option to easily and securely move video content between and among devices in their homes.”

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Hate groups have always been a presence on the Internet, but their presence is growing quicker lately thanks to social networking sites. According to a report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), groups that promote violence, terrorism, homophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of intolerance grew by 20 percent in the last year alone.

The report is part of the Center’s annual look at the spread of hate groups online, which noted that there are now more than 11,500 social networks, websites, forums, and blogs that focus on spreading intolerance, recruiting new members, and instructing people on how to hurt others. “The numbers are probably, at the end of the day, multiples of that,” the SWC’s associate dean Abraham Cooper said in a news conference Monday. “That should be taken as a low ball figure.”

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When the federal government spends more than a year developing a 300+ page report on national broadband policy, perhaps the last thing one expects to find in it is a quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

As two rebels plot their assault on the English king, the Welsh leader Owen Glendower brags that he can “call spirits from the vasty deep.” The English Hotspur retorts, “Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?”

Anyone can talk a good game about conjuring broadband policy from the vasty deep of the FCC—but can those people actually implement their visions? The National Broadband Plan, released today, drops this bit of Shakespeare on readers at the bottom of page 11 to make a simple point: this Plan is about the art of the possible.

Perhaps a better quote from Henry IV might be from the lips of the famous comic figure Falstaff: “The better part of valor is discretion.”

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Losing a friend or family member is painful enough, but imagine the extra, unnecessary jabs when that friend’s social networking profile continues to pop up in searches. Or say your friend was particularly wise or witty when posting online, but when you went back to reference something later, the entire record was gone without a trace.

Today, many of us keep our profiles, blog posts, and musings entirely online, leaving family, friends, and service providers stuck trying to figure out what to do with a deceased user’s digital bits.

I have a personal interest in this topic, as I’m of a generation that largely grew up with the Internet while our parents largely remain uninvolved (mine are surprisingly Internet literate, but most of my friends’ parents aren’t). An Ars reader and close friend of mine passed away in early 2008, and all of his online musings remain in limbo to this day—his MySpace profile is still active as if he was still around, confusing old high school friends, yet his blog has mysteriously disappeared and no one will be able to get it back. 

This prompted us to start looking into various sites’ policies on deceased user accounts and what you can do about them—whether you want to preserve them, delete them, or otherwise.

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Google’s partners are getting a stern warning from Chinese authorities over Google’s decision to ditch censorship in the country, which some believe has already begun. An “industry expert” speaking anonymously to the New York Times said that a notice went out to Google’s biggest online partners on Friday, telling them to be prepared to continue censoring search results no matter what Google does.

As we covered on Friday, Google is on the verge of either ending its censorship of search results or pulling its business out of China, although insiders say that Google is trying to work out an agreement with a handful of agencies so it doesn’t have to leave altogether. China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology, however, has made it clear that if the company doesn’t respect Chinese laws with regards to censorship, “the consequences will be on you.”

According to the Times, the government’s warning to Google’s partners is primarily meant to avoid confusion if China is forced to flip the switch on the Great Firewall to block Google’s results. Like other parts of the world, there are numerous Chinese portals that use Google-powered search boxes on their sites, and readers might be a little more frustrated when it’s not just Google.cn that’s being blocked, but also sina.com.cn or ganji.com. Implementing a last-minute switch to another search service could be difficult for those sites, though, so it seems reasonable to expect that there will be some downtime for one and all.

According to some, however, Decision Day has already arrived: Silicon Alley Insider notes that Beijing resident Bill Bishop is already pulling up uncensored results for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which were previously blocked within China. Other taboo subjects remain inaccessible, however, meaning that the Tiananmen Square results are either a bug or evidence of Google testing the waters before going whole hog. Given the company’s commitment to standing by its original word, we’re going to guess the latter.

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