Linda Rosencrance

Last month, a federal judge ruled that eBay Inc. had fulfilled its obligations to investigate and control users who were trying to use its Web site to sell counterfeit Tiffany goods -- a decision that put the onus on Tiffany & Co. to monitor eBay's site itself.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan was a major victory for eBay in its fight with Tiffany and other luxury goods companies over the sale of their merchandise -- counterfeit or otherwise -- on its auction site. If the ruling stands, it could have big implications for trademark owners, which would have to deploy technology to scour eBay's site for counterfeit and pirated goods, have employees manually monitor the site or pay other companies to watch it for them.

For the first time in a year, user satisfaction with federal government Web sites has risen slightly, according to the second quarter American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Government Satisfaction Index.

The federal government sector got 72.9 points on the ACSI's 100-point scale, up 0.7% from last quarter's score of 72.4, according to the study. The report, which measures the online performance of approximately 100 federal Web sites, is produced by the University of Michigan.

If you thought the days before Yahoo Inc.'s annual meeting on Friday were going to be relatively uneventful, think again.

In the past week or so, billionaire investor T. Boone Pickens sold his 10 million shares in Yahoo -- losing money in the process -- and lit into the company's management for not agreeing to be acquired by Microsoft Corp., according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Yahoo and Carl Icahn have apparently ended their public acrimony over the billionaire investor's proxy fight to replace the company's board of directors and its CEO Jerry Yang.

As part of an agreement announced early Monday, Yahoo has agreed to put Icahn and two of his nominees on the board, and Icahn has agreed to drop his effort to replace Yahoo's board with his own slate.

Seventy percent of U.S. searches in June were done on Google Inc.'s search engine, according to Web measurement figures from market research company Hitwise Pty. Ltd. .

In the four weeks ending June 28, Google accounted for 69.17% of all U.S. searches, up from 63.92%, or 8%, from the same period a year ago, according to Hitwise.

AT&T Inc. and AOL LLC have joined three other major Internet service providers in eliminating access to child pornography newsgroups, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Friday.

In June, Verizon Communications Inc., Time-Warner Cable and Sprint Nextel Corp. signed an agreement with Cuomo to shut down access to two major sources of child pornography.