Santa Clara, Calif. - Macrovision, a developer of anti-piracy and content production technologies, said on Wednesday that it has paid $43.5 million in cash to acquire San Mateo, Calif.-based Mediabolic, a maker of software for connected consumer electronics devices, such as televisions, set-top boxes and digital video recorders. [more..]

Seattle - Washington Research Foundation (WRF), which assists Washington state universities with commercializing technology, has filed a patent suit alleging that Matsushita's Panasonic division, Samsung and Nokia, are infringing on four patents sold under the "Bluetooth" name. The suit, which was filed on December 21, 2006 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, requests that the court issue an order barring the sale of products that use the patented technology. [more..]

Los Angeles – The NY Times reports that defunct online video provider Intertainer filed a patent suit last week in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas alleging that Apple, Google and Napster are infringing on a 2005 patent that covers the commercial distribution of audio and video over the Internet. [more..]

New York – Sirius Satellite Radio announced today that it finished 2006 with 6.02 million subscribers, up 82% from the previous year. However, as late as December 4, Sirius lowered its subscriber guidance to between 5.9 and 6.1 million subscribers, down from a previous projection of more than 6.2 million subscribers. The reason given was slower-than-expected sales after Thanksgiving. [more..]

Dallas, TX - Movie rental company Blockbuster said on Wednesday that it reached a year-end goal of 2 million online subscribers, sending its shares up more than 6%. Blockbuster stated that it added more than 500,000 subscribers since the end of the third quarter. [more..]

San Francisco – The fourth quarter was the most active of the year for U.S. venture-backed companies looking for public market exits, with 18 initial public offerings (IPOs) raising a total of $1.23 billion, according to new figures from Dow Jones VentureOne. [more..]

Atlanta – Gary Betty, CEO of EarthLink, who joined the company in 1996 and helped grow it from a small regional, Internet service provider into one of the largest ISPs in the country, has died of cancer at the age of 49. Betty took a leave of absence in November after being diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. [more..]

Santa Clara, Calif. - InvenSense, a developer of motion sensing technology for mobile and consumer applications, said on Wednesday that it has raised $11 million in its second round of funding from new investor QUALCOMM Ventures and previous investors Artiman Ventures and Partech International. [more..]

According to market research results released by Solutions Research Group on Tuesday that the blog Apple Insider has read, 16% of Americans over the age of 12 – approximately 40 million people – responded to a survey saying they thought an iPod phone would be a "great idea" for them personally. [more..]

Emeryville, Calif. – Orb Networks, a Emeryville, Calif.-based provider of software and services designed to give users remote access to digital media stored on their PCs, has named Joe Costello, the company's co-founder and chairman, as its new CEO. [more..]

Arlington, Va. - PBS, the Arlington, VA-based media entity serving 354 public noncommercial television stations, has named Jason Seiken as its senior vice president of interactive. Seiken was the founding executive editor of washingtonpost.com, and later ran AOL's channel programming group. [more..]

Milpitas, Calif. – IP Unity, a Milpitas, Calif.-based maker of media servers, application servers and multimedia applications, said on Wednesday that it has completed its acquisition of Atlanta-based Glenayre Messaging, creating one of the market's largest independent suppliers of rich media messaging systems and advanced IP multimedia systems to carriers. [more..]