Science and technology news blog

A California legislator wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent light bulbs as part of California’s initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act would ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012 in favour of energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs, which use about 25 percent of the energy.

“Incandescent light bulbs were developed almost 125 years ago and… have undergone no major modifications,” assemblyman Lloyd Levine said on Tuesday.

“Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about five percent of the energy they receive into light.”

Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week.

If passed, it would be another pioneering environmental effort in California, the first to mandate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a 25 percent reduction in emissions by 2020. – Reuters

Lawyers for the family of a woman who died after drinking nearly two gallons of water in an on-air radio contest are demanding the Federal Communications Commission terminate the station’s license.The development comes as the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of 28-year-old Jennifer Lea Strange, and as the family’s lawyers threaten to file a wrongful-death suit against the station as early as Thursday.

“Despite having a distended abdomen and complaining of significant symptoms of a headache and lightheadedness, the radio station allowed her to leave the premises without any type of assistance or concern. Ms. Strange went home, slipped into a coma and died,” wrote Roger Dreyer, the family’s personal injury lawyer, in a letter Sunday to Kevin J. Martin, the FCC chairman.

“We believe the conduct of the radio management and the on-air staff mandates that your agency terminate the radio station’s license and discipline its ownership for their wanton disregard of the safety of the participants in this contest.”

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Intel has filed a countersuit against Transmeta Corp, a chip designer company, alleging that the company infringes on seven of its patents, media reports said Friday.Intel, the world’s largest computer chipmaker, accused Tuesday Transmeta in a U.S. District Court in Delaware, saying that Transmeta chips under the Crusoe, Efficeon and Efficeon 2 brands infringe its seven patents relating to microprocessor technology.

On its part, Transmeta, in October 2006, claimed that Intel’s Core 2 Duo, Core and Pentium processors infringed 11 of its patents, and sued Intel in the same place.

“As expected, Intel has filed a timely response,” said Greg Rose, a Transmeta spokesman, noting that the company “is not able to comment until it has had a chance to review the cross-complaint.”

Transmeta, founded in 1995, is one of the early pioneers of energy-efficient chips, filing some of its patents as far back as 1991—predating Intel’s Pentium Pro, Transmeta said.

Both lawsuits seek injunctions against the offending company’s continuing sale of infringing chips, as well as unspecified damages.

Video sharing Web site YouTube is blocking steamy footage showing supermodel Daniela Cicarelli in intimate scenes with her boyfriend, the company said a day after a judge ordered it to find a way to stop Brazilian viewers from seeing the video.

‘’The video in question was removed from YouTube because it violated our terms of use,’’ YouTube said on Friday in a statement attributed to spokeswoman Jaime Schopflin. ‘’It was recently uploaded again and we became aware of it through media reports and users flagging the content, and we removed these copies immediately.’’

YouTube’s announcement came after court officials said on Thursday that the judge issued the injunction requiring the company to prevent Brazilian Internet users accessing the wildly popular video showing Cicarelli and Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni making out along a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz.

The two sued YouTube in September and won an injunction for the removal of the video, but Sao Paulo state Supreme Court Justice Enio Santarelli Zuliani expanded his order this week after the clip continued to appear periodically, the court’s press office said.

Cicarelli, one of the country’s best-known models, hosts a show on Brazilian MTV and was previously engaged to soccer great Ronaldo, who plays for Spain’s famous Real Madrid team. Two Brazilian sites that ran the video complied with the original order, but Malzoni went back to court after it kept appearing on YouTube, owned by Google Inc.

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The patent in question, filed in 2001 and granted in 2005, outlines the business model for offering video content from various providers to consumers over the TV and the Internet, Intertainer Inc. said in its lawsuit.

Intertainer claims Apple, Google and Napster are using the patent without permission. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, seeks damages and a permanent injunction.

Apple recently started selling movies through its popular iTunes online store, while Google offers a mix of free and for-pay video content and recently bought the highly trafficked video-sharing site YouTube. Napster runs an Internet music service.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Wednesday the company does not comment on pending litigation, while Napster spokeswoman Dana Harris said the company was looking into the matter. A call to Google for comment was not immediately returned.

A Brazilian judge has ordered the video-sharing website YouTube to remove a clip of supermodel Daniela Cicarelli romping in the sea off Cadiz in Spain.

The ex-wife of Brazilian football star Ronaldo was secretly filmed cavorting with Brazilian banker Renato Malzoni.

The court told YouTube to find a way to permanently block the intimate video from being uploaded on its servers.

Inaction could result in a daily fine of $119,000 (£61,300), the couple’s lawyer said. YouTube has not commented.

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Advanced Micro Devices will be able to collect evidence about events outside the U.S. for an antitrust lawsuit against Intel.

AMD alleges Intel used its dominant position in the microprocessor business to pressure system makers not to use AMD chips in their products. Its suit, before Judge Joseph Farnan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, is scheduled to be heard beginning April 2009.

Intel had argued against allowing discovery, or the collection of evidence, for documents involving activities outside the U.S. But it decided not to object to a Dec. 15 recommendation by Special Master Vincent Poppiti that foreign discovery should go forward, said Intel spokesman Chuck Molloy. A special master is a specialist appointed to overlook certain aspects of a suit.

Intel told Judge Farnan in a letter yesterday that it wouldn’t fight Poppiti’s recommendation. The same day, Farnan ordered Intel to produce documents and other evidence sought in discovery that concern its business outside the U.S. In a press release today, AMD hailed the order as a major victory in its suit, which was filed in June 2005.

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As if its options woes weren’t trouble enough, Apple Computer Inc. said Friday it is facing several federal lawsuits, including one alleging the company created an illegal monopoly by tying iTunes music and video sales to its market-leading iPod portable players.

The case, filed July 21, is over Apple’s use of a copy-protection system that generally prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival players. Likewise, songs purchased elsewhere aren’t easily playable on iPods.

The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages and other relief. The court denied Apple’s motion to dismiss the complaint on Dec. 20.

Another lawsuit, filed Nov. 7, alleges that the logic board of Apple’s iBook G4 fails at an abnormally high rate. The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple said its response to the complaint is not yet due.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also disclosed that PhatRat Technology LLC filed a lawsuit Oct. 24 alleging patent infringement. The Nike-iPod product in question, developed jointly with Nike Inc., allow runners to keep track of how far and how fast they’ve gone. The company’s response to the complaint is not yet due.

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A court ruling has given the recording industry the green light to go after individuals who link to material from their websites, blogs or MySpace pages that is protected by copyright.

A full bench of the Federal Court yesterday upheld an earlier ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of mp3s4free.net, as well as the internet service provider that hosted the website, were guilty of authorising copyright infringement because they provided a search engine through which a user could illegally download MP3 files.

The website did not directly host any copyright-protected music, but the court held that simply providing links to the material effectively authorised copyright infringement.

“Mr Cooper had power to prevent the communication of copyright sound recordings to the public in Australia via his website,” the judges said.

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Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates finds it easier to “just buy a CD and rip it” than grapple with the copyright protection used by online music stores.

Gates confessed to a round table of prominent bloggers that “no one has done it right” when it comes to Digital Rights Management. This is despite Microsoft recently creating yet another DRM format for it’s new Zune MP3 player.

Gates went on to say Digital Rights Management “causes too much pain for legitimate buyers” trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He declined to elaborate on how Microsoft would address this.

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The Supreme Court entered the debate over global warming Wednesday, as Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservatives questioned whether states’ environmental problems truly would be helped if the U.S. government changed its decision not to regulate emissions from new cars and trucks.

Roberts suggested that economic development in China, for example, could produce pollution that would offset whatever “marginal benefit” states hope to win through federal limits on tailpipe emissions. Justice Antonin Scalia also seemed skeptical about warnings of looming harm from so-called greenhouse gases, asking, “When is the predicted cataclysm?”

At the same time, Justice John Paul Stevens and other liberal justices were sympathetic to arguments from Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey that the impact of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases is imminent and serious.

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Individuals who use the internet to transmit information from another source may not be held to account if the material is considered defamatory, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a reversal of an appeals court’s decision.

The decision supports federal law that clears individuals of liability if they distribute but are not the source of defamatory information.

“We acknowledge that recognising broad immunity for defamatory republications on the internet has some troubling consequences. Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area, however, plaintiffs who contend they were defamed in an internet posting may only seek recovery from the original source of the statement,” California’s high court justices said in their opinion.

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Grouper.com, the online video-sharing company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, has denied charges in a Universal Music Group lawsuit that accuses the company of allowing users to swap pirated music videos.

In a filing with the U.S District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Grouper denied the copyright-infringement allegations and said Universal was using the lawsuit to boost a rival video-sharing site in which it has a stake.

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A US court ruling on a widely used CSIRO-patented WiFi technology could have broad implications for the wireless industry and CSIRO’s future.

The organisation has won the first round of its battle to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty payments for its patented wireless LAN technology.It was granted a patent in 1996, but the CSIRO claims many manufacturers are using the technology without permission or licence.

It filed a test case early last year in the US against Japan’s Buffalo Technology in an attempt to take back control of its intellectual property. According to the CSIRO, devices using the 802.11a/g standards adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1999 and 2003 infringe its patent.

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OPTi filed a patent infringement lawsuit earlier today in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against AMD for infringement of three U.S. patents. The three patents at issue in the lawsuit are U.S. Patent No. 5,710,906, U.S. Patent No. 5,813,036 and U.S. Patent No. 6,405,291, all entitled Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses. The patents were awarded in 1995, 1997, and 2000, respectively.

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