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A U.S. judge has ruled on a nearly US$111 million copyright-infringement decision against TorrentSpy.com, the BitTorrent peer-to-peer search site.

Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles awarded the judgment to the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA announced late Wednesday. Cooper entered a default judgment against the operators of TorrentSpy in December, saying they had destroyed evidence related to an MPAA lawsuit against them.

A regular audit of computer systems belonging to the South Australian police force has revealed hundreds of movies which authorities believe could well be pirate copies downloaded from P2P networks.

According to The Australian newspaper the problem is so rife that senior police sources within the force said no official investigation would be taking place because of the large numbers of police involved.

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Palm Inc has unveiled its new youth-orientated smartphone, the Palm Centro.

Nicely styled and available in a rather fetching ‘iPalm’ white, the Centro is an unashamed attempt by Palm to ditch the stuffy spreadsheets, kick off the brogues, slip into some Etnies, grab the snowboard and get on down with the kids.

As if to ram this last point home, the Centro website features a series of excruciating images of painfully trendy, overly self-confident preppy young folk. They’re laughing manically at whatever it is that happens to be filling the two-inch colour screen on their Centros. The whole point, remember, is that you can be just like them…

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Qualcomm Inc. scored a minor victory in its continuing spat with Nokia when a judge last week recommended ending the investigation Nokia bought against it in August for infringing patents.

In August, Nokia Corp. asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of Qualcomm chipsets used in cellphones, including 3G (third-generation handsets), for allegedly infringing on five patents held by Nokia.

ITC Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern [CQ] granted Qualcomm a motion to terminate the investigation, as the companies are already in arbitration to settle a dispute behind a technology license the two companies signed earlier. If the decision stands after a 30-day review, Qualcomm won’t be prevented from importing its chipsets into the U.S.

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