China newspaper suit against Internet portal called opening salvo in media war
The Beijing News is seeking damages from a popular site for having copied and republished articles and photographs without authorization.

Intertainer says Apple, Google and Napster infringe on its patents
Intertainer holds nine patents, including U.S. Patent No. 6,925,469, which was issued in 2005 and is intended to cover the management and distribution of digital media from various suppliers.
- Kodak and Sony end patent dispute over digital photography inventions
- Jury awards topped $1 billion in U.S. patent cases last year

Briefing: 'Plastic chip' plant gets $100 million in funds
Also: Sony tops Hollywood in 2006 box office sales; Wikipedia clears Qatar; Philips sells flexible displays business; GPS devices to offer Yahoo; British music retailer in trouble

Google collects better data searching for the perfect hire
Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google has created an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 applications it receives each month.

Germany quits search engine project
The German government has opted out of a multimillion-euro research effort to build a European search engine.

Kicking an addiction, with real people
Taking a cue from the consumer-generated content craze, GlaxoSmithKline gave the smokers — Lisa, Keith, Matt and Kim — video cameras to tape themselves narrating their effort to quit over 13 weeks early last year.

An online photo service offers muscle
Smilebox.com, a start-up based in Redmond, Washington, is offering customers the opportunity to build online scrapbooks with animation, music and artwork. In a market cluttered with free services that have struggled to produce a profit, Smilebox is actually attracting paying customers.

Layoffs imminent at The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer was expected to announce Wednesday that it would lay off 68 to 71 employees, or about 17 percent of the newsroom staff, just seven months after a group of local business executives took over the newspaper and its sister publication, The Daily News.

South Korean regulator's investigation adds to Qualcomm's woes
The antitrust watchdog has formed a special task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company.

Plastic Logic, a British electronics company, said Wednesday that it had raised $100 million to build the first factory that will make semiconductors out of plastic instead of silicon for use in displays in electronic reading devices.

The devices allow users to download newspapers or books and read them in a form closer to paper than any other electronic product, Plastic Logic, based in Cambridge, England, said. Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment led a group of financiers funding the project.

The plant, to be located in Dresden, will initially be able to make some one million display modules when production, which is scheduled to start in 2008, begins.$@

Sony tops Hollywood in 2006 box office sales

Sony led studio owners in 2006 box-office sales as Hollywood rebounded from a slump in 2005.

Sony had record sales of $1.76 billion in the United States and Canada, according to Nielsen EDI's FilmSource. News Corp. was second with $1.56 billion. For the industry, revenue rose 4.9 percent to $9.4 billion, according Media By Numbers, which tracks box-office results. The gain almost erased the 5.2 percent drop in revenue the industry suffered in 2005, the worst decline since 1985. $@(Bloomberg)

Wikipedia clears Qatar

DUBAI: The Web encyclopedia Wikipedia inadvertently blocked all users from Qatar from posting on its Web at least four times since November, computer logs from the site show.

Wikipedia reversed the block over the weekend, said David Gerard, Wikipedia's London-based spokesman. He said the entire nation had been accidentally blocked because Qatar's sole telecommunications company funnels all Internet traffic through a single Internet protocol address$@(AP)

PHILIPS ELECTRONICS sold the majority of its flexible displays business to the Luxembourg company Technology Capital. Technology Capital has invested €21 million, or $26 million, in Philips' Polymer Vision business, and in return now holds around 60 percent of the shares in the company. $@(Reuters)

YAHOO agreed to let U.S. drivers use its Web site through a wireless link over global positioning system products made by Dash Navigation. Using Dash Express, a GPS device and software, drivers can use Yahoo's search engine to find businesses and products while in their cars, the companies said. $@(Bloomberg)

MUSIC ZONE, one of the largest music and movie retailers in Britain, went into administration following a poor holiday season. The 104-store chain will continue to operate as buyers for the business are sought, said Bill Dawson of Deloitte Touche, Music Zone's administrator. $@(Bloomberg)