The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

 has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from https://electricnews.net/news.html?code=7594354

In the papers 23 May 
Thursday, May 23 2002
by Sylvia Leatham


SmartForce faces patent complaint from US rival | Comcast is to sell its entire
stake in AT&T



The Irish Independent reports that SmarfForce, the e-learning software developer,
has been hit with a patent claim by a US rival. IP Learn filed a complaint in a
Californian court alleging that the Irish company infringed five of its patents.
The patents are related to computer-aided learning methods and systems. IP Learn
has asked the court for a preliminary and permanent injunction and unspecified
damages.



The same paper says that Iona Technologies has confirmed it is to lay off 70
people. The software firm said 10 people would be leaving the Dublin operation,
out of a total of 200 staff. Overall employment figures at the company will come
down to 820.



The paper also reports that Enron and Global Crossing teamed up in a complex deal
in March last year to sidestep accounting rules. According to the New York Times,
the deal involved a swap of fibre-optic network capacity that enabled the
troubled Global Crossing to disguise a USD17 million loan and allowed both
companies to book revenues. The deal was brokered by Reliant Resources, one of
America's largest traders of energy contracts. 



According to the Financial Times, Yahoo is to close its on-line auction sites in
six European countries in an effort to improve profitability. Yahoo will stop
accepting new listings for its auction sites within the next two weeks in
Ireland, the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, and the sites will be closed
within six weeks. Read the full story in ElectricNews.Net's href="/section.html?code=207">E-commerce
section.



The FT also reports that Comcast said it would sell its entire stake in AT&T and
portions of its holdings in Sprint as part of a broad attempt to raise cash and
protect its investment grade rating. The cable company said its commitment to its
investment-grade debt rating had forced it to sell 42 million shares in AT&T, a
stake worth about USD540 million. Comcast also said it planned to sell the
remainder of its AT&T stake in the future, along with half its stake in Sprint.



The Wall Street Journal says that troubled Deutsche Telekom delivered a much
greater than anticipated first-quarter net loss, due to asset write-offs and a
slump in its core fixed-line business. Europe's largest telecoms group said its
loss for the period ballooned to EUR1.81 billion from EUR358 million a year
earlier, sparking a sell-off in its shares. Analysts had predicted a EUR1.2
billion loss for the first quarter.



The same paper reports that Sony has agreed to pay USD28.5 million in a licensing
deal with InterTrust Technologies, a pioneer in copyright-protection technology.
Sony agreed to pay the fee plus undisclosed future royalties to license all of
InterTrust's patents for use in Sony consumer products that distribute digital
media. The patents include a series of inventions in the digital-rights
management field.