intellectual property

SanDisk is disclosing at a San Francisco technology conference Tuesday that it will begin mass production of memory chips that will allow consumers to store up to 64GB of data on tiny flash cards.

The Milpitas, Calif., company's X4 technology will pack four bits of data into each memory cell. To date, flash memory chipmakers typically stored one bit or two bits per cell.

SanDisk--the largest supplier of retail flash cards--is making the disclosure jointly with Toshiba at the 2009 International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). The two companies will use 43-nanometer manufacturing process technology to make the chips. … Read more

President Obama is continuing to fill the senior ranks of the U.S. Department of Justice with the copyright industry's favorite lawyers.

Donald Verrilli announced Wednesday that he had been named associate deputy attorney general. Verrilli is the lawyer who pulled the plug on Grokster, sued Google on behalf of Viacom, and represented the Recording Industry Association of America against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas who's accused of illicit file sharing.

This follows a string of other pro-copyright industry picks that Obama has made. Last month, there was Obama's selection last month of a top RIAA … Read more

Updated 4:55 p.m. PST with Mullor comment. Correction, 5:12 p.m. PST: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect day the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on this suit. It was Thursday.

Microsoft has sued a former employee for allegedly lying when he applied for a job there and stealing trade secrets that were later used in a lawsuit against Microsoft partners.

According to the lawsuit, filed January 22 in King County Superior Court, Miki Mullor stated on his application that he no longer worked at Ancora Technologies because it had gone out of business. However, Sammamish, … Read more

Nvidia on Wednesday named the chairman of Stanford University's computer science department as its new chief scientist, a particularly important position for the world's largest graphics chip supplier as it wages a technological war with Intel.

Bill Dally, who will be vice president of Nvidia Research, has been a professor of computer science at Stanford since 1997 and chairman of the computer science department since 2005. He will replace David Kirk, a renowned scientist in his own right, who will become an Nvidia fellow.

"Bill is legendary in the computer industry," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and … Read more

There are many opposing viewpoints on the issue of patent reform, but at least one thing can be agreed upon: patent law is complicated.

Comprehensive patent reform will likely have to take a multifaceted approach, including reform of patent office procedures and the litigation process. A bill introduced this week, however, takes a focused approach to patent reform by aiming to make the subject less confusing for judges.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) reintroduced legislation this week that would start a 10-year pilot program to educate district judges on patent issues. Judges from courts that meet … Read more

For his vice president, Barack Obama chose Joe Biden, a senator with a long history of aiding the Recording Industry Association of America. Then Obama picked the RIAA's favorite lawyer, Tom Perrelli, for a top Justice Department post.

Now, as one of his first official actions as president, Obama has selected the Business Software Alliance's top antipiracy enforcer and general counsel, Neil MacBride, for a senior Justice Department post. Among other duties, MacBride has been responsible for the BSA's program that rewarded people for phoning in tips about suspected software piracy.

All of these choices are well-qualified … Read more

Updated at 6:15 p.m. PST with AMD statement about a letter it received from Intel on January 20.

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday reported a bigger-than-expected net loss of $1.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2008. This is the chipmaker's ninth consecutive quarterly loss.

AMD also disclosed that it received a letter from Intel regarding the two companies' patent cross-licensing agreement.

The $1.42 billion loss, or $2.34 per share, was below the $1.77 billion loss, or $3.06 per share, reported a year ago but worse than Wall Street analysts had expected… Read more

Technology firms are often hampered by patent disputes, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called into question last week a patent that had the potential to disrupt the habits of millions of Internet users.

The PTO rejected all 20 patent claims over Internet subdomains held by a company called Hoshiko, which were used to bully sites like LiveJournal and Freehomepage.com and pursue litigation against larger companies like Google. The idea behind how to manage subdomains--domains hosted within larger domains, such as news.cnet.com--is too obvious to patent, the PTO ruled after the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation … Read more

By Declan McCullagh and Stephanie Condon

news analysis Months after being sworn in as president, George W. Bush sat down with reporters and his wife, Laura, for a technology-themed event: a relaunch of the Whitehouse.gov Web site, which previously had been rather dilapidated.

Bush and his aides proudly demonstrated the new features, including photo essays, better access for the disabled, and a kids' area with details about the First Pets. The president said the Web site would let Washington become "more accessible" and let Americans "participate in the process."

Less than two weeks later, the … Read more