Nortel Networks has lost a US$28.1 million patent infringement case in Marshall TX brought about by Ipernica Ltd., an Australian patent, trademark and copyright holding firm. Last week a federal court jury concluded that Nortel had infringed Ipernica's patent for statistical multiplexing, which facilitates data transmissions over communication networks. A Nortel spokesperson reportedly said the company disagrees with the decision and plans to fight on. Nortel rivals Cisco Systems Inc., Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper Networks Inc. are discussing settling with Ipernica.

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Battling rivals whose wares increasingly act like BlackBerries, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) says it plans to release software that puts genuine BlackBerry features onto devices running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile 6 operating system. Slated to hit the street later this year, the suite will extend BlackBerry email, phone and PIM functions to "select" products, but RIM didn't detail which models. The news follows software releases from Microsoft, Palm Inc. and third-party providers that give BlackBerry contenders such as Palm's Treo smartphone the same "push" email technology that made RIM's device so popular. Over the past few months RIM has unveiled software linking its back-end message-handling technology to handsets from other manufacturers.

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Getty Images subsidiary iStockphoto has selected AMUSE Entertainment Group BV to take its stock photography images into the mobile sector. During the pilot phase of the project, which will be launched in the UK, mobile users will be able to download wallpapers from a selection of 5,000 images from Calgary-based iStockphoto's library. Mobile phone subscribers on the 3, Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone networks can download these wallpapers from iStockphoto's website and they will be delivered via mobile transaction network mBlox. "People want their gadgets to feel uniquely theirs, including their mobile phones," said Garth Johnson, the VP of business development at iStockphoto. The project rollout starts this month and will be expanded to Canada and the US based on the success of the pilot.

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Rogers Communications Inc. and XM Canada have announced an agreement to provide XM Canada content across Rogers' wireless, cable and Internet platforms. The offer – the first of its kind in the country – launched last month as part of the Rogers VISION suite of services. "This is an incredible opportunity to expand the reach of satellite radio," said John Bitove, the chairman and CEO of XM Canada. "With Rogers products available throughout Canada, we will now reach more Canadians than ever before, and this agreement provides us new avenues for awareness and revenue growth." Rogers' wireless platform will be offering customers up to 25 channels of XM commercial-free music programming, as well as comedy, sports, entertainment and talk channels.

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BCE Inc.’s board of directors has established a committee of independent directors to oversee the company’s evaluation of a range of strategic alternatives. The committee will be chaired by Donna Soble Kaufman and also includes André Bérard, Thomas O’Neill and James Pattison. It’s formation follows BCE’s April 17 announcement of its intention to review strategic alternatives with a view to further enhance shareholder value. However, the company provides no assurances that the review will result in any specific action.

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In whitepaper titled Rootkits Part 2: A Technical Primer McAfee Inc. helps explain how malware authors are able to use Microsoft Corp.'s operating system to design rootkits, a term used to describe Trojans, worms, viruses and other malware. McAfee's whitepaper suggests that new ways of hiding files "will continue to challenge the security community, as hackers create stronger and more virulent strains of malware that will prove difficult to detect and delete," reads a McAfee statement. The company says it's getting better at combating the problem though. "The number of rootkits submitted to McAfee Avert Labs in the first quarter of 2007, compared to the first quarter of 2006, has decreased by 15% — demonstrating that we are getting better at capturing existing families and existing techniques," McAfee senior VP Jeff Green added.

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Research In Motion Ltd.'s (RIM) network outage, which kept many BlackBerry users from being able to send and receive messages on April 17 and 18, was caused by a new cache-optimization system routine. RIM said that although the system routine was tested before implementation, "pre-testing…proved to be insufficient." The new routine caused interaction errors between a database and the cache. RIM tried to failover to a back-up system, but it didn't go as well as planned, delaying service restoration.

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