Hitachi, Oracle jointly fight piracy in China
Japanese electronics group Hitachi and U.S. software firm Oracle Corp. plan to jointly market wireless tags that help to identify counterfeit goods in China, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

Hitachi and Oracle will market the IC, or integrated circuit, tags for a wide range of products, including cash vouchers, luxury items and home appliances, the Nikkei said. IC tags are tiny chips that can store basic information about a product such as where it was produced and by which company. A reader can be used to retrieve that information and verify the authenticity of the product.

The tags will be made by Hitachi and cost about 10 yen ($0.08) each. Initially Hitachi and Oracle will sell the tags for use in tickets for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. The tags would be embedded in the tickets and be used to prevent the use of fake ones the report in Nikkei said.

Piracy of branded and copyright goods has been a source of trade friction between China and several of its trade partners, and the Chinese government is taking steps to crack down on counterfeiting and protect intellectual property rights.
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Telecom giant AT&T gets new CEO
Telecommunications giant AT&T Inc. is getting a new chief executive Randall Stephenson.

Prior to his current appointment Stephenson was the chief financial officer and chief operating officer of the company. He is credited with AT&T acquiring a number of companies that helped turn it into America's largest traditional phone, wireless and broadband services provider.

Stephenson takes over for Edward Whitacre Jr. just when Apple Inc.'s iPhone is being launched. AT&T, whose wireless division was formerly known as Cingular, will be the exclusive carrier for the combination cell phone, portable music player and Web device when it launches in the US later this month.
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