When Samsung went on a patent lawsuit spree last year in the European courts, they may have reneged on an agreement they gave the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to license any “essential patents” to competitors “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms. So now the EU is investigating Samsung on suspicion that they distorted competition in the mobile market. Fun! More »
One of the most common complaints about Apple’s dock connector is that it’s proprietary. Don’t have your iPhone or iPad charger on you? You’re totally out of luck. Unless you live in the EU, that is, where the iPhone 4S will come with a MicroUSB charger — of a sort. More »
Apple’s been granted a preliminary injunction to stop sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 across the entire European Union on the basis of patent infringement. The ban excludes the Netherlands, where Apple has a separate lawsuit pending due to differences in patent law. More »
The new facial recognition photo-tagging feature that was rolled out on Facebook this week has got privacy-freaks in a frenzy, but none more so than European Union data-protection regulators, who are investigating it for privacy violations. More »
After villagers chased the Street View cars away in Buckinghamshire, England, it became pretty obvious last year that a lot of Brits were unhappy having their houses and streets documented online. Now, European regulators have told Google they must delete images obtained by the street cars every six months. More »
Microsoft has agreed only to hold your personal information (read: darkest secrets) for six months, while Google and Yahoo will continue to keep them much longer to “improve search quality”. By which, of course, they mean “ad revenue”. More »
