Articles by Keith Regan

Apple Inc. has reached a settlement with the company that manages the Beatles' intellectual property holdings, ending a trademark lawsuit and possibly paving the way for Beatles songs to be sold through the iTunes Music Store On Monday, Apple announced the pact with The Beatles' music publisher Apple Corps, in which both firms reached a deal to rep...

Media conglomerate Viacom demanded on Friday that Google's video service YouTube remove from its Web pages as many as 100,000 video clips containing copyrighted material The two sides had been negotiating a licensing agreement that would allow Viacom-owned content on the YouTube site, when talks broke down. Viacom's demand came next....

A record holiday season pushed Amazon to nearly US$4 billion in sales in the fourth quarter, but a heavy reliance on electronics sales, continued promotions and shipping discounts ate into profits, forcing executives to defend some of its recent moves into new markets Profit plummeted 50 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, though some of that ...

Google further solidified its paid search lead in the fourth quarter, nearly tripling its profit amid a 38 percent jump in revenue as the search giant continued to burnish its reputation as the can't-miss Internet company Google secured net income for the quarter of US$1.03 billion, or $3.29 per share, up from $372.2 million a year ago, while reven...

Media conglomerate Time Warner posted strong fourth quarter results Wednesday, despite a decline in revenue from online unit AOL (America Online). The company's Q4 profits were up 34 percent over the previous year Revenue at AOL, which is continuing to undergo a massive transformation from dial-up Internet access provider to free-to-all Web portal ...

Music label Sony BMG has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that it violated federal law by installing spyware and digital rights management (DRM) software onto music CDs without telling consumers The deal calls for Sony BMG to allow consumers to exchange CDs purchased before the end of 2006 for new discs that...

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has announced his intentions to seek a seat on the board of directors of No. 2 mobile handset maker Motorola The company said Tuesday it had received notification from Icahn that he intended to have himself nominated for one of 12 seats on the company's board when it holds its next annual shareholders meeting. That m...

Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced it will strengthen its existing relationship with software vendor SAP, and plans to offer a range of server and storage hardware, support and services for enterprises that embrace SAP's service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to information technology HP is looking to lay down a foundation on which customers...

In a move that could have repercussions for all forms of social networking, especially online user-generated video, YouTube intends to begin sharing its advertising revenue with users who contribute videos YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley disclosed the plans during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Hurley indicated that how the system w...

Twentieth Century Fox has subpoenaed Google's YouTube, demanding that the video service release the identities of users who recently uploaded pirated videos of the "24" and "The Simpsons" TV series With the subpoena, which was issued January 18, Fox may be taking a page from the legal playbook of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)...

As it awaits the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft on Thursday posted a second quarter that saw sharply lower earnings for a period marked by continued growth in its entertainment division and little progress in its efforts to catch up with Google on the online search front For the quarter that ended in December, the company said revenue was a re...

A former Hewlett-Packard employee facing charges that he stole company secrets from HP has claimed in court papers that HP management tried to obtain trade secrets from rival Dell Karl Kamb Jr., previously vice president of business development and strategy at HP, was sued by his former employer after starting up an LCD display and flat-screen TV c...

A strong holiday season rife with hard-to-find gifts helped push eBay to a record fourth quarter, with revenue up 29 percent and profits up 24 percent as the online auction giant soundly beat forecasts and boosted its outlook eBay said revenue was US$1.72 billion compared to $1.33 billion in sales in the last quarter of 2006, edging out analyst for...

Web portal and search engine giant Yahoo on Tuesday posted fourth quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates, despite a sharp drop in profit from a year earlier, and said that its long-awaited ad placement system upgrade would roll out a month ahead of schedule Yahoo said revenue climbed 13 percent to US$1.7 billion for the quarter that ended ...

Social networking site MySpace is suing a high-profile e-mail marketer, claiming that he violated the site's rules and state and federal laws by deluging members with spam MySpace said Tuesday it had filed a suit alleging that Scott Richter had violated the federal CAN-SPAM Act and California's anti-spam statute....

Shares of major overseas Internet gambling companies took a heavy hit Monday after news broke that U.S. investigators had launch a fresh probe into Web-based gambling The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly sent subpoenas to as many as 15 investment banks across Europe and the U.S., seeking information on their dealings with companies such as...

When President Bush takes to the rostrum in the U.S. Congress Tuesday night to deliver his seventh State of the Union address, most experts anticipate a lengthy speech that will offer little in the way of initiatives aimed at boosting the nation's technology sector With the ongoing war in Iraq and with so-called entitlement programs such as Social ...

IBM announced Monday a new set of social networking tools that offer enterprise-wide, controlled MySpace-style environments to corporations Big Blue is billing its Lotus Connections platform as the "first business-ready social software platform," saying it is one part of a broader array of Lotus offerings meant to take advantage of real-time presen...

Motorola said Friday it would cut 3,500 jobs worldwide in coming months after turning in a disappointing profit for the fourth quarter, despite a strong surge in sales of its mobile devices Sales for the quarter that ended in December were US$11.8 billion, an increase of 17 percent over the $10 billion posted last year and a record quarter for the ...

IBM posted sharply higher profits for its fourth quarter as software and services paced the technology giant, but some weakness in hardware sales led investors to sell off Big Blue shares IBM said Friday that net income was US$3.54 billion, or $2.31 per share, up 11 percent from the same time frame in 2005. Revenue was up 7.5 percent to $26.3 billi...