IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 12 January
12-01-2011
by Sylvia Leatham
BT Young Scientist show gets under way | MySpace cuts almost 50pc of staff
The Irish Times reports that judging gets under way on Wednesday afternoon in the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition at the RDS, Dublin. President Mary McAleese will be on hand to formally open the exhibition. This is the 47th annual Young Scientist event, making it one of the largest and longest-running science fairs of its kind in the world. For a preview of the show, see ENN.ie.
The paper also says that IBM was awarded more than 5,000 patents in the US last year, with its Irish operations filing, on average, one patent application a week. IBM was awarded 5,896 US patents in 2010, according to data from IFI Claims Patent Services. It is the first time any company has been awarded over 5,000 patents in a single year. Samsung was the second ranked company, with 4,551 patents awarded, followed by Microsoft with 3,094.
According to the Financial Times, Leif Johansson is in contention to become chairman of Ericsson after he steps down as chief executive of Volvo this year. BP's Carl-Henric Svanberg has ruled himself out of the job. Network equipment maker Ericsson is searching for a successor to Michael Treschow, who announced last month that he was planning to retire after nine years as chairman. Sources said Johansson, who is due to step down in August after 14 years in charge of Volvo, was a leading contender.
The Wall Street Journal reports that MySpace has cut 500 of its more than 1,000 employees. MySpace notified staff of the long-rumoured cuts on Tuesday. While there are no signs that MySpace is actively being put up for sale, sources said that site owner News Corp is open to the possibility. The job cuts, which represent 47 percent of the workforce, are part of a broader restructuring that also involves a curtailment of the site's international operations.
The paper also says that a San Francisco court has heard the sequel to one of the web's most famous legal quarrels: whether Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for the influential social networking site. Three judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals questioned lawyers about whether to throw out a 2008 USD65 million settlement between Zuckerberg and his collegiate business partners, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. While the hearing was short on new revelations, the judges showed signs of reluctance to re-open the settlement. A verdict is expected in the coming months.
The same paper reports that German data protection authorities have broken off talks with Google over its Google Analytics tool, warning that German companies that use it could face legal action and fines. Google Analytics gathers data about how visitors interact with a website by tracking their IP address. Regulators argue that collecting IP addresses could violate an individual's privacy. Google said it wasn't aware that discussions with German officials had ended, and that it was actively working to address their concerns. "Google Analytics complies with European data protection laws and is used by other European data protection authorities on their own websites," a Google spokesman said.
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