LITIGIOUS Apple is apparently threatening the Chinese maker of a Steve Jobs action figure with legal action.

According to the The Telegraph, Apple has told Chinese company In Icons, which makes the 12-inch doll, that it will sue unless they cease trading.

Reportedly the legal battle centres around the likeness of the figurine to the late Apple co-founder, and Apple says it owns the rights.

In a rumoured letter to In Icons, Apple wrote that any toy that resembles its logo, the name of someone who works for it, or the appearance or likeness of its products is a criminal offence.

The doll, which we at the INQUIRER are quite honestly are disturbed by, wears Jobs's trademark blue jeans, sneakers and black turtleneck sweater.

It also comes with accessories including a pair of glasses, a leather belt, black socks, a bar stool, two apples and even a "One More Thing" backdrop.

For those that still want the figure despite this, it's currently available on Ebay for $135, on preorder. It's normally $99 and is due for release in February if, of course, it ever appears on the shelves. µ

THE INQUIRER has been tipped off that one of the UK Government's web sites that uses an external hosting provider is using spam filtering software that rejects legitimate emails.

We are still awaiting replies from the government department involved and the UK hosting firm before we publish names, however the allegations made by someone who has extensive experience in hosting services claims that the web site, which solicits members of the public to submit their complaints against third parties, does not relay their emails to that same government department.

The email server reportedly has in place a spam filter that is so aggressive that the government department is unaware of incoming emails being rejected, with the address used for spam messages itself having a spam filter. The messages essentially end up in a continous loop until they are discarded by the government department's internet service provider's spam filtering email system.

Our source claims that the ISP has admitted that email messages are not being deliverered to the government department but the technical support representative responded in a very rude manner when further questions were asked. The INQUIRER has been attempting to contact the particular ISP in question, however it has seemingly gone to great lengths not to have a telephone number visible on its web site.

The INQUIRER has also contacted the government department in question to confirm whether it is aware of the problem, however it has been unable to get back to The INQUIRER by press time.

One underlying question to all of this is why is the government outsourcing its domain and email services to a company that is clearly not wanting to give out any of its telephone contact numbers. We understand that the government is cutting costs across the board, but considering it has well over a hundred datacentres, one would think that running a public facing web site could be done on its core network, not at a private offshoot handled by a cut price web and email hosting firm. µ

ACCUSATIONS have been flying around the web over the past few days that The INQUIRER is guilty of plagiarism, and that as Editor, I enforce this as a policy.

Here's a very quick response to the accusations, for anyone who's been following this saga.

The INQUIRER doesn't plagiarise other sites. All the information in the article in question was based on either an alert sent to us by AMD or told to our reporter by AMD's Jan Guetter during a phone interview, including the references to Nvidia and Via. Feel free to confirm this with AMD. We were unaware of other articles stating the same points until after publication.

We haven't got a list of sites that we steal information from and then deliberately don't link to. Whenever we can't confirm the material ourselves, we link to the originator of the article.

However, I strongly encourage my reporters to talk to the original source as a follow up to any stories they see on the web, rather than just taking the 'facts' from a third party source, whether a competitor of ours or not. This is because I want The INQUIRER's articles to contain facts that we've verified, rather than blindly trusting other sites, and also because I want the writers to talk to as many sources as possible to work towards exclusives rather than just parroting other people's news.

Lots of other technology editors have been happy to use the plagiarism accusation as an opportunity to state how they would never condone such practices, as it's just not ethical journalism. However, nobody has approached me or anyone else at The INQUIRER to ask for a response or confirm whether this is true before stating their thoughts. Surely, isn't that the first rule of journalism?

Author: Madeline Bennett

TABLET MAKER Motorola is facing a lawsuit over the use of the Xoom trademark.

Electronic money transfer outfit Xoom Corporation is asking for an injunction to prevent Motorola from using the word Xoom to market its tablet, claiming that infringes on its trademark. We found that the firm had been issuing press releases under the Xoom name since October 2002.

Motorola worked hard to build up interest in its Xoom tablet, making sure it was the only tablet at CES running Android 3.0 Honeycomb and that it was the featured device at Google's Android 3.0 unveiling earlier this month. Motorola also scattered Xoom tablets all over Mobile World Congress, allowing conference goers to play around with what is generally regarded as the first real competitor to Apple's Ipad.

Given that Motorola put so much work into building up hype around the Xoom, it seems surprising that it didn't think of working something out with Xoom Corporation. The firm owns the xoom.com domain name so it's not exactly hiding in the shadows, and while its unlikely that Motorola will have to reprint all its advertising due to a name change just yet, it could disrupt a major product launch for the company.

Clearly Xoom Corporation has been using the Xoom mark for many years prior to Motorola's choice of the name for it tablet. The question for the court, if the dispute goes that far, will be whether Motorola's Xoom tablet is liable to cause confusion with what Xoom Corporation does.

On the face of it, Motorola's Xoom is a tablet and Xoom Corporation is a money transfer service, and perhaps not one that is particularly well known at that. So common sense might say this is just another nuisance lawsuit. However, as is best practice in these matters, Xoom Corporation has hooked up with what looks to be a pretty big and expensive law firm to take on Motorola, so it looks like it means business.

The question is whether Motorola can get away by just paying off Xoom or whether the relatively small outfit wants to slug it out against one of the biggest names in the mobile hardware business to protect what it believes is its trademark.

With Xoom Corporation hiring some expensive lawyers the chances seem good that Motorola will have to shell out quite a bit either for its own defence or in payments to Xoom Corporation. µ

PHONE MAKER Sony Ericsson has decided that a US broadband firm's logo comprised of a green swirl might confuse punters with its own, so it has taken the ISP to court.

Sony Ericsson filed a lawsuit against Clearwire in the US District Court in Virginia, claiming that Clearwire's logo which consists of a green swirl is "confusingly similar" to its own. Sony Ericsson has used a circular green logo for the best part of a decade and it thinks that Clearwire's logo is "poised to be used in the sale of identical mobile phone products".

Upon inspection it is possible to see a vague similarity in the two logos, primarily due to their circular shapes. However, if you were to believe Sony Ericsson's claim that it was "the only company in the mobile communications business that used a sphere with a swirl logo in green, silver/white colors", then any logo that is circular and green can be deemed to be confusing.

Sony Ericsson admits that Clearwire doesn't flog mobile phones but said that it is "growing quickly and is poised to offer mobile phones to its rapidly increasing customer base".

Conversely the mobile phone manufacturer, which suffered significant losses in market share last year, painted a glorious picture of itself claiming, "due to their superior design and performance, Sony Ericsson's products have received numerous awards". We'll leave up to you to contemplate which products fall under Sony Ericsson's claim of offering 'superior' units as we gave up after 10 minutes.

Sony Ericsson said that the two firms were in discussions to resolve the trademark issue but Clearwire had gone ahead and decided to use the logo anyway without notifying Sony Ericsson. The phone maker claims Clearwire's conduct has caused "irreparable injury" to Sony Ericsson and has "damaged" the firm by a financial amount to be decided at trial.

Despite all its grandiose statements, Sony Ericsson is posturing not for a massive payout but to force Clearwire to change its logo. However, getting some cash out of Clearwire might also help to offset its flagging phone sales. µ

THE JAPANESE GIANT of technology and entertainment, Sony is going to waste lots of money and get all Samurai on the hacking group Failoverflow because one of its members made public security codes that can allow any software to be run on the company's Playstation.

The 21-year old hacker George Hotz is enemy number one as far as Sony is concerned, and it has filed a restraining order in a California court to stop Hotz from doing much with a computer.

The accused told the BBC he wasn't bovvered. He said, "I have spoken with legal counsel and I feel comfortable that Sony's action against me doesn't have any basis."

Sony's lawsuit argues that the publication of the security codes constitutes copyright infringement and computer fraud. The complaint says that the hacker's work facilitates the counterfeiting of video games and it makes the claim that illegally copied video games are being packaged and distributed with these circumvention devices already.

According to the BBC, the Playstation's protection was secure for several years but last December Failoverflow members demonstrated the hack at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

Rather than wasting money by attacking people in courts of law, Sony might better hire the hacker group as white hats to develop a more secure system. How can corporations claim to have secure systems if part-time hobbyists can crack them? For all the hardware excellence that is seen in so many Sony products why, like many other companies, is its software security so crap? Legal action against people isn't going to improve Sony's software security or prevent future hacking. µ

THERE WERE CALLS FOR BLOOD at Intel's annual "Quiz [sic] Night" after Chipzilla produced a shameless display of favouritism in front of the UK press.

Your battle hardened hacks from The INQUIRER have witnessed many an injustice, such as Frank Lampard's disallowed goal in the World Cup and Jedward's dismissal from X Factor, but nothing prepared us for the charlatan behaviour of Intel.

The INQUIRER, along with the not so great and good of the UK tech press, worked tirelessly to uphold the integrity of quiz nights, however it was left to Intel's underhanded tactics to debase the sanctity of quizes everywhere.

Ten or so teams made the running but the reality was there were only two that ever stood a chance, not that one would realise this at the half way point. After three gruelling rounds, The INQUIRER team was in a very creditable joint second place, one point behind the leaders.

A quick scan across the bar quickly revealed this was merely a false dawn. Our beady eyes spotted the PC Pro and Eweek teams sporting Intel representatives as team members. Well the result was decided, regardless of the fact that both teams were nearly 10 points behind the leaders. Still with a bulldog spirit The INQUIRER bravely fought on to preserve all that is just and right.

Alas our worldly knowledge let us down during the final round with questions solely related to Intel. The INQUIRER prides itself on its intimate knowledge of alcoholic beverage prices all over the world, however Intel's marketing is something we don't pay much attention to, but we suspect that Chipzilla's marketing ringers that were on both PC Pro's and Eweek's teams do.

So it was no surprise that both teams managed to overhaul not only The INQUIRER's points lead but others who were significantly ahead with two rounds to go. That in itself wouldn't be too surprising, but The INQUIRER played a blinder despite our lack of Intel knowledge and managed to get most of the questions right. Our conspiracy theories became reality when one member of the PC Pro team told The INQUIRER that they couldn't work out how their team had won with the number of incorrect answers that were tendered. We certainly had a few ideas.

We were all left blaming our fearless news editor, Rob Coppinger, for not following the lead of his counterpart on a monthly rag and pumping the Intel UK PR representative hard enough. He informs us that he will thrust himself onto the matter immediately.

So the night ended with Intel awarding two of its own staff with laptops and netbooks, perhaps as a Christmas bonus or a fee for selling out. Never has so many been swindled out of so little by so few.

It was left for us to ponder, just what would Bob Holness make of all this? µ

COMPUTER WEEKLY'S shrinking publisher Reed Business Information (RBI) must have breathed a sigh of relief when US construction portal Bidclerk.com withdrew its legal action over alleged denial of service attacks and a coordinated "click-fraud" scheme aimed at the portal's paid advertisements.

But the situation must still be embarrassing for RBI and its flagship IT title because the publisher has had to admit, and Bidclerk.com has accepted, that the UK company did not know what was going on with its computers in the US.

Bidclerk.com had accused the declining publishing house, which once owned a range of US construction magazines, of launching denial of service attacks and carrying out click-fraud against the construction industry networking site.

To put it in legal terms, the alleged misconduct by RBI included violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of contract, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and violation of the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Bidclerk.com's case was to be heard in the District Court of Minnesota. Settling the case earlier this month, the two companies said in a joint statement, "After reviewing the information RBI provided and conducting its own investigation, BidClerk is satisfied that the suspicious activity affecting BidClerk's computers was not the result of intentional acts by RBI."

New RBI chief executive Mark Kelsey, who got his job on 1 October after the third board level resignation in as many years, can now sort out why his computers were hijacked and what his IT department was doing, or not as the case may be, to allow that to happen.

Kelsey's appointment came at the end of a tumultuous period that began in 2008 with RBI's parent company Anglo-Dutch multinational Reed Elsevier failing to sell it. Reed Elsevier needed to sell RBI because of the overhang of billions of dollars of debts that it had racked up.

That led to Reed Elsevier's then chief executive Sir Crispin Davis leaving, and he was replaced for a mere eight months by then new boy Ian Smith. Smith was then pushed aside by Reed Elsevier heavyweight Erik Engstrom. Following this management train wreck Kelsey got his job because RBI CEO Sir Keith Jones retired.

In the wake of Reed Elsevier's multi-billion dollar debt disaster, nicely timed to coincide with the worldwide banking meltdown, and the management musical chairs, RBI has been asset stripped to service the gaping fiscal hole. Magazines have been closed down and sold off and staff numbers have been cut to the bone and worse since 2008.

Alas this is not venomous claptrap but it is all factually true and the RBI board's need to deal with this otherwise trivial IT situation must be as irritating as unsubscribing from email alerts that they don't want but which are still being sent to them anyway.

One big issue behind the "unintentional acts" might be the lack of US IT oversight because what was once RBI's US wing is now little more than a shadow of its former self.

In the past the now cratering publisher RBI was a worldwide operation with businesses in Asia, Germany and the USA. But following the failure to sell the company in its entirety in 2008 the RBI US operation was pretty much closed down by spring this year and the Asian and German assets have also been largely disposed of.

In its desperation to rid Reed Elsevier of the debt, Engstrom's colleagues have even started asset stripping the parent company itself. Reed Elsevier has sold off legal database Lexis Nexis Deutschland but market rumours beforehand had the database buyer buying the whole of the Anglo-Dutch multinational. Today's announcement of Reed Elsevier's trading situation shows no improvement and its shares fell because of it. µ

DESPERATE TO GENERATE INTEREST in its smartphone operating system, Microsoft managed to turn a Windows Phone 7 mock-up into a mockery by displaying an icon of Angry Birds.

A picture appeared on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 website that displayed an icon for Angry Birds. The only problem is, Angry Birds won't be available on Windows Phone 7 and that led Rovio Mobile, the developer behind the popular game to say, "Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission."

Adding to Microsoft's embarrassment, the developer further said, "We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version." You could say that the Vole has managed to ruffle a few feathers with its stunt.

Microsoft issued a statement saying, "It appears information was mistakenly posted to Microsoft's website, and has been removed. We have nothing new to share, but stay tuned for announcements from Microsoft and its partners on Monday."

We assume Rovio Mobile won't be one of the software partners lining up alongside the Vole's CEO Steve Ballmer to sing the praises of Windows Phone 7 at its launch later today.

As it kicks off its last ditch effort to make something of itself in the smartphone market, the Vole needs applications to woo new customers. Microsoft needs to attract developers of popular applications such as Angry Birds if it is to make Windows Phone 7 competitive against Apple's IOS and Google's Android and this blunder will do little to persuade developers to allocate effort to writing Windows Phone 7 applications.

In recent months Microsoft has gone on the offensive against Android by claiming that it has hidden costs and that its own upcoming mobile operating system will protect handset manufacturers against potential litigation.

That might be true but it doesn't protect Microsoft against its own developer relations gaffes. µ

SHRINKING PUBLISHER Reed Business Information (RBI) is getting sued for computer misuse by construction industry portal Bidclerk.com.

The construction networking site alleges that RBI's computers were performing denial of service attacks on Bidclerk.com and that it orchestrated a coordinated "click fraud" scheme aimed at the portal's paid advertisements.

To put it in legal terms the alleged misconduct by RBI includes violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, breach of contract, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and violation of the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Bidclerk.com's case will be heard in the District Court of Minnesota.

No doubt employees of the shrinking publisher will spot the irony in a company that owns Computer Weekly and has had such a prominent Internet strategy being sued for computer misuse. One wonders what is going so awry with the company's computer usage policy. Is its management bending it to their own nefarious ends?

It might seem strange for a publishing company to attack a construction industry networking site but RBI in the US owned construction titles way back when. A couple of years ago RBI was a much bigger company and its US arm owned construction titles before it was asset stripped by it's heavily indebted owner Reed Elsevier.

Anglo-Dutch multinational Reed Elsevier is in debt to the tune of billions of US dollars and has been desperately trying to pay it off, even going as far as trying to sell RBI in 2008. Yes that is the year 2008 when the world financial markets were in the worst situation since the 1929 Wall Street crash.

So bad was it that Reed Elsevier had to arrange what is called "vendor financing" for RBI's sale. Meaning it had to get a group of banks to offer any buyer of RBI what money was needed to clinch the deal.

Now the Bidclerk.com lawsuit comes just as Reed Elsevier loses its third top executive in as many years with the retirement of RBI chief executive Keith Jones. And all because the 2008 sale was aborted in 2009 and RBI has been asset stripped since.

The failure to sell RBI saw Reed Elsevier's then chief executive Sir Crispin Davis step down and be replaced by Ian Smith. Smith was to set RBI on a new direction but he stepped down after only being in the job for eight months. He was replaced by one of Reed Elsevier's own, Erik Engstrom. Now Jones has gone and been replaced by RBI UK's Mark Kelsey who will probably have the job of turning out the lights.

The RBI of today is largely only the UK based rump of what was once a true multinational with operations in Asia, Germany and the USA. RBI US was essentially closed down by last April with only vestigal assets including Variety magazine left.

RBI UK sold off Travel Weekly last year and has closed down many more titles during the last few years including medical publications. The company is left with Computer Weekly, New Scientist and Flight International and not much else. µ