Nancy Gohring

Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the maker of the BlackBerry, has won two patent-related lawsuits in Europe against InPro Licensing SARL, a Luxembourg patent holding company. The English High Court in the U.K. ruled that InPro's U.K. patent is invalid. RIM said that it had won a similar case involving InPro in Germany. The Federal Patent Court in Munich ruled that InPro's patent claims are invalid, RIM said. InPro can appeal both decisions.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected a patent that it previously awarded and that is central to the ongoing litigation against BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), RIM said.

A year after approving a 12-year,

The U.S. General Services Administration gave MySQL AB's open source database a stamp of approval by awarding a five-year contract that makes it easy for government customers to buy MySQL products, the company said Monday. n

Dell Inc. said on Tuesday that it will start building laptops that let users access the Internet over Vodafone Group PLC's wireless networks in the U.K., France and Germany.

One in five European cellular users say they'd consider getting rid of their landline phones in favor of their cell phones, according to a study released by Strategy Analytics on Thursday.

Continuing its push into the mobile space, Google Inc. is making its Google Talk instant messaging service available to BlackBerry users, Google and Blackberry maker Research In Motion Ltd. announced.

In a step toward reforming the U.S. patent system, IBM Corp., Open Source Development Labs Inc. and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are leading an initiative to speed up the patent approval process and improve the quality of patents. The announcement Tuesday follows countless cases of high-profile and long-running patent disputes often involving software innovations.