The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, appears to be particularly interested in the activities of the Blu-ray group because of its dominance in Hollywood, according to people familiar with the situation. The commission is investigating whether improper tactics were used to suppress competition and persuade the studios to back their format.

"The appeals court said Vonage could cite the new Supreme Court ruling as part of its pending appeal. Vonage had argued that the March 8 infringement verdict in favor of Verizon should be reconsidered after the Supreme Court loosened a crucial legal standard, making it easier to invalidate some patents on the grounds they are obvious inventions."

If a legitimate copy is not bought within 30 days, the system will curtail functionality much further by restricting users to just the Web browser for an hour at a time, said Thomas Lindeman, Microsoft senior product manager. [...] Under that scenario, a person could use the browser to surf the Web, access documents on the hard drive or log onto Web-based email. But the user would not be able to directly open documents from the computer desktop or run other programs such as Outlook e-mail software.