FTC v. Google
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday the Federal Trade Commission is inching closer to challenging Google’s $750 million bid for mobile advertising platform AdMob. The agency has assembled an internal litigation team and briefed Congress about its concerns, the paper reported. The staff has not made a final decision, and the commission has yet to vote on the matter. The news comes as Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) aired his concerns about the deal in a letter to the FTC on Tuesday.
Open Source v. IBM
The free and open source software community in Europe is going after IBM for using its patents against an open source project by a French company called TurboHercules. “IBM is using patent warfare in order to protect its highly lucrative mainframe monopoly,” open source advocate Florian Mueller wrote on his blog Tuesday. “The Hercules project is anything but anti-IBM. Hercules just wants to provide customers with an interesting and much-needed choice.”
Dupont v. Monsanto
Monsanto earnings results are expected today. The biotech seed giant’s shares have fallen about 15 percent this year and are trading at less than half a mid-2008 peak of about $142, the WSJ reports. Monsanto’s rival, Dupont’s Pioneer unit, expects to gain 1 to 2 percent market share in corn this year, according to the Journal, by promoting seeds that are cheaper alternatives to Monsanto’s more expensive products.
Comcast v. FCC
In case you missed it Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit dealt a blow to the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to keep Internet service providers from slowing or blocking some content. The ruling stems from Comcast’s 2007 move to interfere with access to a file-sharing program that it said was hogging bandwidth. It sparked the FCC’s signature initiative to impose “net neutrality” and force Internet service companies to treat all content equally. The court said the agency did not have jurisdiction to do that. Look to Congress for the next steps.
