Tech Briefs

Friday, October 29, 2004

Tech Briefs

NORTHWEST

Suits filed over spam and 'spim' in four states

Another round of anti-spam lawsuits was filed yesterday by Internet service providers Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc., Earthlink and Yahoo! Inc. The lawsuits were filed in courts in Seattle, Virginia, Georgia and California, against various defendants alleged to have violated federal and state anti-spam laws.

The suits are part of a broader effort to curb the spam problem by shutting down "kingpin spammers" -- people and groups that clog inboxes with high volumes of deceptive or fraudulent messages, said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement attorney. In the latest round, Microsoft filed three suits, two of them against unnamed defendants whom the company hopes to identify through the legal process.

One of the latest AOL suits is the first by the Virginia-based company to target "spim" -- spam conveyed via instant messaging or chat rooms.

Microsoft filed its own "spim" suit last year in King County Superior Court against a Canadian man alleged to have sent spam via the MSN Messenger instant-messaging service. That suit is still pending. Spim is not prevalent in MSN Messenger, Kornblum said, in part because of a Microsoft feature that lets users see when others place them on a personal list of potential instant-messaging correspondents, and block them if wanted.

Abuse-resistant narcotic painkiller patented

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has published a patent for the new delivery of an existing narcotic that it is hoped will reduce moderate to severe pain, Nastech Pharmaceutical Co. Inc. said yesterday.

The Bothell company, which is collaborating with Controlled Chemicals Inc. on the delivery of the oral-abuse resistant opioid, said the drug could be abused if people chew, crush or break the tablets or capsule beads. The companies are working to make the narcotic abuse resistant by having it activate only once it reaches the small intestine. In a statement, Nastech said this could be its first orally delivered drug.

Snippet ...

Peter Pervere, former chief financial officer at Commerce One Inc., has joined the board of Onyx Software Corp., the Bellevue customer relationship management software company. ...

NATIONAL

Multimedia messaging standard agreed to

The nation's cellular companies have agreed on a common standard for multimedia messaging that should enable mobile phone users to exchange photos, video and audio clips just as they do e-mail, regardless of their wireless carrier.

The technical standards, announced this week, were developed by an industry group that began meeting in May. Since the wireless companies still need to implement the new standard and negotiate terms to deliver "outside" messages to their customers, the disparate services aren't yet interoperable.

Quick Hits is written by P-I reporters John Cook, Dan Richman, Todd Bishop and Brad Wong. Send comments to johncook@seattlepi.com. This report includes information from The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

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