RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. - PC makers who are relenting to Chinese government demands that they install web filtering software on computers sold in that country may now face another challenge – a legal one.

Solid Oak Software told PC World on Thursday that it plans to sue Morrisville-based Lenovo along with Acer and Sony for installing the so-called Green Dam software from a Chinese firm, Solid Oak claims its code was stolen for use in Green Dam.

In a study of Green Dam, University of Michigan researchers reported: “Some of the blacklists appear to have been copied from American-made filtering software.” Read more about the study here.

The companies did not respond to PC World’s...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – How sad that just as the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre passes private sector companies are kowtowing to Chinese demands that web filtering censorship software be installed on all PCs sold in that country.

Of course, these companies had little choice. Resistance is futile. Do it or cease doing business in country where a flowering democracy movement was crushed in 1989 under tank treads at Tiananmen - the “Gate of Heavenly Peace.”

China boasts about its “Great Firewall” of Internet censorship and monitoring. "Green Dam" is a key brick in a wall that seems to grow ever taller and thicker.

The latest company to give in to the demand is Morrisville-based Lenovo, which issued its first statement on the so-called Green Dam decree in an e-mail to Local Tech...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Nortel may not be broken up and sold off in pieces after all if a U.S.-based private equity firm has its say.

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that MatlinPatterson Global Advisors will put together a bid for all of Nortel when a bankruptcy court auction takes place July 24. At this time, Nokia Siemens Networks is planning to bid some $650 million for some of Nortel’s assets. But MatlinPatterson apparently wants it all.

“We are working very hard to respond to the bidding process established by the court,” Jennifer Feldsher, a lawyer for MatlinPatterson, told the Citizen.

“We are moving heaven and earth to put ourselves in a position where we can participate.”

The newspaper also notes that the firm already owns 10 percent...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Who would have ever thought that making a plaster cast of an expectant mother’s belly could be turned into a work of art, let alone a business?

Leave it to a female entrepreneur to conceive the idea.

Tisha DeShields of Atlanta is one of 200 working mothers who have built successful businesses that topped the voting in StartupNation’s 2009 “Top 200 Leading Moms in Business” competition. “Original Belly Works” is one of 16 mom-owned ventures from the Carolinas (four in the Triangle) and Georgia that cracked the list. Belly Works came in at 126, but it’s the favorite of The Skinny.

Regional winners include sites focused on social networks to welcome neighbors, a record label to scrapbooking, custom furniture covers and much, much more.

A whopping 620,000 people voted...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – What is management at bankrupt Nortel up to as it prepares to sell off the former telecom giant’s remnants? Will a much smaller, much more tightly focused telecommunications gear maker survive and emerge with a focus on the next generation of wireless technology?

Telecom industry news source Light Reading believes that Nortel Chief Executive Officer Mike Zafirovski is hanging on to “long term evolution,” or LTE, patents even as the company pursues plans to sell most of its wireless assets to Nokia Siemens.

Around that intellectual property, will Mr. Z build a new company?

In the sad story of Nortel’s meltdown toward final breakup, who can really say what is on the CEO’s mind?

Creditors were  back in bankruptcy court Monday in New Jersey to fight Nortel’s proposed $650 million sale of other assets to rival Nokia Siemens Networks....