Paul Kallender

Japan

Softbank Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son, the Internet entrepreneur who revolutionized Japan's broadband market, is threatening to do the same to the country's wireless communications business, and is prepared to sue the government if it gets in his way, he said on Monday.

Japan's third-largest bank, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd., will deploy a biometric security system based on vein-pattern recognition technology in branches nationwide in October, the bank said on Tuesday.

Vodafone Group PLC operators in Europe will begin offering several new (3G) mobile phones to customers by the end of the year, the company said Wednesday. The lineup includes Europe's first 3G 2-megapixel camera phone.

Google Inc. launched Japanese and Korean language versions of its Google News service, the company said Sept. 1. The sites are beta versions.

Microsoft Corp.'s Japanese arm will begin giving away more than a million CD-ROMs of the company's latest security update, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) from 27,500 locations during September and October, the company said on Thursday.

Latest figures for the number of applications for international patent filing by companies through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) point to continued international recovery in research and development (R&D) spending across a broad range of technologies and industries. Applications from East Asia and Japan in particular showed strong growth, the organization said Tuesday.

Fujitsu Ltd. has commercialized a biometric security system based on vein pattern-recognition technology. The company has received orders from two Japanese banks, one of which is already using the technology.