U.S. Patent Office Likely to Back BlackBerry Maker

The technology patents at the heart of an infringement lawsuit by NTP against Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry wireless e-mail device, are likely to be struck down by the United States patent office, both companies said on Monday, a move that would be a setback for NTP.

Newyorktimes.com reports that the United States Patent and Trademark Office took the unusual step of notifying the companies that it expected to reject the five patents held by NTP in its final rulings.

The office has issued preliminary rejections of all five wireless e-mail patents in the past. The final rulings may come by mid-February, earlier than expected.

"The patent owner`s arguments are deemed nonpersuasive," said the patent office document, which was received last week but dated Nov. 30. "The next office action is expected to be a final rejection of all current claims."

The patent review, which was requested by R.I.M., is a proceeding separate from the patent infringement lawsuit that could potentially shut most BlackBerry service in the United States early next year.

With Time Warner`s board expected to vote Tuesday to sell five percent of AOL to Google, shareholder activist Carl Icahn on Monday decried the $1bn deal as a "disastrous decision."

Mr. Icahn, a Time Warner shareholder who has been pushing the company to make changes at the AOL unit and its cable properties, said in a letter to shareholders that a deal with Google could prevent more lucrative deals with other players (see Icahn Warns Time Warner and Icahn Pressures Time Warner).

Redherring.com reports that the proposed deal follows months of negotiations between Time Warner and several leading companies that want to strengthen their online presence. At various times, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google all were viewed as potential partners for AOL (see AOL-Google Deal Set for Vote).

Mr. Icahn pointed to a research note last week from Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto, who said that Time Warner would derive greater long-term benefits from partnering with IAC/Interactive, eBay, or Yahoo rather than with Google or MSN.

Microsoft`s biggest challenge in 2006 will be convincing corporations that they should upgrade to Windows Vista when it rolls out late in the year, a research firm said Friday.

Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Washington-based company that tracks the developer`s moves, put the Vista challenge at the top of its annual list.

According to informationweek.com, although demos of the still-in-the-works operating system boast cool graphics effects and consumer features, it`s enterprises that Microsoft must persuade. "Windows is Microsoft`s biggest business unit, and Vista is it`s biggest challenge," said Rob Helm, director of research at Directions. "Frankly, I think it`s going to be very difficult for Microsoft to make its case to corporations."

January and February of 2006 will be the months to watch, said Helm, since that`s when Microsoft will lock down the feature set for Vista. "Then they can try to tell corporations why they need it."

The Dasher.b worm attacking Windows machines still vulnerable to a bug patched in October has infected at least 3 000 systems so far, security company Symantec said Friday. Informationweek.com reports that Dasher.b, the first worm to successfully attack the MSDTC flaw disclosed and patched October 11, was detected Thursday by honeypot PCs, with several security vendors rushing out alerts that same day.

According to Symantec, once Dasher.b has infected a PC, it first contacts a central command and control server located at IP address 222.240.219.143. In turn, that server then via TCP tells the compromised computer to download a malicious payload from a remote FTP server at 159.226.153.2.

"One of the FTP servers used by Dasher is reporting that over 3 000 hosts have connected to it, which serves as a good estimate of affected hosts," Symantec said in a warning issued to customers of its DeepSight Threat Management System (TMS). "TMS data corroborates this infection estimate," the alert continued.