NEWS IN BRIEF
For the record 8 August
08-08-2007
by Ciara O'Brien
AppLabs to create Dublin jobs | More legal woes over Apple iPhone
There was good news on the jobs front for Dublin on Wednesday with news that AppLabs hopes to create up to 100 jobs at a new facility over the next year. The company, which carries out independent quality management and testing, opened new offices in Dublin on Wednesday and said it expects to develop a testing facility in the next 12 months in the capital. The new roles are expected to be mainly consultants and engineers.
Meanwhile, Siemens is to create up to 10,000 jobs worldwide by the end of its fiscal year in September, in an attempt to keep up with strong growth in orders. The firm has already taken on more than 8,000 new employees between October 2006 and the end of June 2007. The engineering firm has about 445,000 staff worldwide.
YouTube is in for a rough few months it seems, with music publishers lining up to sue the site for copyright infringement. The latest group to get in on the act is the National Music Publishers' Association, which previously won a similar case against peer-to-peer file service StreamCast Networks. The NMPA joins a host of other copyright holders, including the British FA Premier League, who are taking action against the media firm. Parent company Google said it was "surprised and disappointed" at the move as it has already drawn up agreements with some NMPA members.
Meanwhile, Google has signed up to contribute to an open source patents group, the Open Invention Network. The agreement will mean that Google will cross-license patents to other members of the organisation free of charge. Google is one of the biggest users of open source software in the world, and joins IBM and Red Hat in the OIN.
Apple is facing more legal troubles over its new iPhone, with news that it is being sued for patent infringement over its touch-screen. According to Florida-based SP Technologies, the new hybrid phone's touch-screen breaches a patent it was granted in 2004, four years after filing it. The patent covers the use of an on-screen keyboard that can be activated without using hardware, which can be applied to many existing PDAs and devices. Earlier this year, Cisco settled with Apple after suing it over the use of the iPhone trademark.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 