Hot Off the Wire – Topkea becomes Google, Kansas; Apple sues rival about iPhone patents; Google buys photo editing site; German court strikes down security data law
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A roundup of the latest high-tech news from The Associated Press:
- Topeka now Google, Kansas - It's a bid to land broadband project
TOPEKA, Kan. - Topeka's mayor says the city shall temporarily be referred to as "Google, Kansas - the capital city of fiber optics," in an effort to persuade the Internet giant to test an ultra-fast connection in the state capital.
Mayor Bill Bunten issued the proclamation Monday after no city council members objected to the monthlong change.
Bunten says the proclamation is mainly for fun, but that he hopes it will set Topeka apart from other cities vying for Google's fiber optics experiment, including Grand Rapids, Mich., and Baton Rouge, La.
Google didn't immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment.
City attorney Jackie Williams says Topeka cannot legally be temporarily renamed, but that the proclamation asking for it to be referred to as "Google" was OK.
• Apple suing phone maker HTC over iPhone patents
CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple is suing Taiwan's HTC, saying the handset maker has violated patents related to the iPhone.
HTC Corp. was the first company to manufacture cell phone based on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, which as emerged as a significant competitor for the iPhone. It is also making the Nexus One phone that Google is selling directly to consumers.
Apple Inc. says HTC has infringed on 20 of its patents covering aspects of the iPhone's user interface and hardware.
In a statement Tuesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it."
In an e-mail message, HTC spokeswoman Linda Mills said the company only learned of the lawsuits on Tuesday through media reports and hasn't had time to review Apple's claims.
"HTC values patent rights and their enforcement but is also committed to defending its own technology innovations," Mills said.
• Google adds Picnik to its basket of acquisitions
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google Inc. is adding online photo editing service Picnik to its basket of recent acquisitions.
Financial terms of the deal announced Monday weren't disclosed.
The Internet search leader said it doesn't plan immediate changes at Picnik, which employs 20 people in Seattle.
Picnik's software is used for editing images on Google's photo sharing service, Picasa, and at other Web sites, including Facebook and Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr.
The deal brings Jonathan Sposato, Picnik's CEO, back to Google for a second tour of duty.
In early 2005, Sposato sold another startup called PhatBits to Google, where he remained for nearly a year before Picnik lured him away.
Picnik is the eighth small technology company Google bought in seven months. The shopping spree reflects Google managers are renewing their optimism after limiting their spending in 2009.
Google also wants to buy AdMob, a mobile advertising service, for $750 million, but that deal is still being reviewed by antitrust regulators.
• German court overturns security law on phone, e-mail data
BERLIN — Germany's highest court on Tuesday overturned a law that let anti-terror authorities retain data on telephone calls and e-mails, saying it posed a "grave intrusion" to personal privacy rights and must be revised.
The court ruling was the latest to sharply criticize a major initiative by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and one of the strongest steps yet defending citizen rights from post-Sept. 11 terror-fighting measures.
The ruling comes amid a European-wide attempt to set limits on the digital sphere, that includes disputes with Google Inc. over photographing citizens for its Street View maps.
The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the law violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence and failed to balance privacy rights against the need to provide security. It did not, however, rule out data retention in principle.
The law had ordered that all data — except content — from phone calls and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities, who could probe who contacted whom, from where and for how long.
"The disputed instructions neither provided a sufficient level of data security, nor sufficiently limited the possible uses of the data," the court said, adding that "such retention represents an especially grave intrusion."
The court said because citizens did not notice the data was being retained it caused "a vague and threatening sense of being watched."
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