November 2004 Articles

    • Identity Cards Bill published

      30 Nov 2004

      UK citizens who refuse to register for the forthcoming identity cards scheme will be fined £2,500, according to the Identity Cards Bill, which was published yesterday. Individuals who do not amend the register when they change address will be fined...

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    • Patent Office gives short shrift to business methods

      30 Nov 2004

      The UK Patent Office is taking a new approach to dealing with the increasing number of applications for business method patents, which cannot be patented in the UK, to short-circuit the usual lengthy exchange of correspondence.

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    • Games developer wins cyber café copyright fight

      30 Nov 2004

      Games company Valve yesterday announced that it had won a court order prohibiting publisher Vivendi Universal Games from distributing Valve's games, which include the Half-Life series, through cyber cafés.

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    • Linus Torvalds gets software patents wrong, says attorney

      30 Nov 2004

      Attempts to scupper the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions – more commonly referred to as the Software Patent Directive – are misinforming the IT industry and serving only to endanger genuine inventions, says...

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    • Criminal cashback scam

      30 Nov 2004

      Beware the buyer who sends you a cheque for more than the price of the item you are selling. The warning came yesterday from the Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Directorate: you could become a victim of the "criminal cashback" scam.

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    • Six months for camera phone contempt

      29 Nov 2004

      A 19-year old who used his camera phone to take pictures in court at his friend's robbery trial has been sentenced to six months in a young offenders institution after he was found to be in contempt of court.

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    • Kazaa owner in Australian copyright battle

      29 Nov 2004

      Sharman Networks, distributor of the software behind popular peer-to-peer service Kazaa, went on trial in Australia today, in the latest copyright battle between the music industry and file-sharing service providers.

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    • Amex sued by big spender

      29 Nov 2004

      American Express has been sued by a customer who ran up bills of over $951,000 because the credit card provider gave her access to funds when it should have know that she was "acting impulsively and irrationally," according to reports.

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    • £80 million funding available for tech research

      29 Nov 2004

      The UK Government today announced a national "competition" that will result in an investment of £80 million into British research and development into innovative technologies such as pervasive computing and nanotechnology.

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    • Streaming movie pirate to pay $23.8 million

      26 Nov 2004

      Malaysian web site operator Tan Soo Leong and his California-based company MasterSurf Inc. were this week ordered by a US court to pay $23.8 million to movie studios for illegally streaming their movies and charging on-line viewers.

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