Salesforce.com , the world’s leading SaaS vendor, is suing Microsoft for patent infringement, Business Week reported today. As we’ve reported , Microsoft filed suit against Salesforce.com for patent infringement last month. Salesforce.com has hired David Boies who represented the U.S. Department of Justice in its antitrust case against Microsoft. Sponsor TechCrunch reports the patents Salesforce.com is alleging Microsoft infringed are: Patent No. 6,813,633, Dynamic multi-level cache manager. Patent No. 6,918,059, Method and system for handling errors in a distributed computer system. Patent No. 7,024,454, Work sharing and communicating in a Web site system. Patent No. 7,209,929, Java object cache server for databases. Patent No. 7,305,454, Apparatus and methods for provisioning services. In April, Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said about Microsoft: “The reality is that these patent trolls are unfortunately just part of doing business in technology these days. They’re basically the alley thugs. Every thriving economy has alley thugs.” Bringing on Boies is a clear sign Salesforce.com is taking Microsoft’s legal threats seriously. During his career, Boies defended IBM during the Justice Department’s antitrust case against the company, represented New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a suit against Major League Baseball, represented Vice President Al Gore in Gore’s dispute over the 2000 election, represented SCO Group in its controversial Linux patent disputes, and several other high profile intellectual property cases. Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel for intellectual property told Business Week that, “We remain confident in our position and will continue to press ahead with the complaint.” Microsoft claims Salesforce.com infringed the following patents: Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications Aggregation of system settings into objects Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network Discuss

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Historical records are hard to look through casually. One solution is being explored in the case of Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan’s archive of emails sent while working under the Clinton administration. That body of data is now available in a Web-based interface that looks a lot like Gmail and is open to full-text search, thanks to the watchdog Sunlight Foundation . Elena’s Inbox is a thought-provoking project that could inspire future efforts to facilitate citizen evaluation of public records, and the Sunlight Foundation has open-sourced the code used to build it. As it stands, the microsite is a fun and interesting peek inside the Clinton administration’s day-to-day operations. It’s hard to imagine any previous political nominee facing this degree of public transparency. Sponsor Kagan was a legal eagle for Clinton, holding two different positions over five years. In that time, she sent just under 5,000 emails. Some of the emails are amusing, others enlightening, others still are both. This is a fun interface for looking through these texts, but the limitations are quickly evident as well. Full text search works well when it’s your own email you’re searching through, but when you don’t know what language someone else uses to discuss certain topics, full text search feels inadequate. If a site like this incorporated collaborative user tagging of emails into topical buckets, that would make it all the more interesting. It would also be in character for the Sunlight Foundation. It’s interesting, for example, to read that the policy focus Kagan recommended the President consider regarding race and crime was “systematic underprotection of minorities (segregation of safety).” That does sound more politically palatable than focusing on inequities in sentencing. As a public service, Elena’s Inbox is quite helpful. As Kagan faces debate and questioning over her nomination, the site will offer a very easy way to see what she said about topics 10 years ago, and how she said it, while in a position of substantial political power. That’s certainly a historically unprecedented degree of transparency around a Supreme Court nominee. Discuss

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Wednesday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the winners of its annual Knight News Challenge , a contest funding innovative ideas for disseminating news and information to local communities with digital technologies. 12 entrants were awarded a grand total of $2.74 million , the largest share, $400k, going to Eric Rodenbeck and his data visualization project CityTracking. Sponsor “We can use the Knight News Challenge to experiment with ways to learn how to think in different ways about information sharing so we might discover the future of news.” – Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation President. Rodenbeck, a San Francisco-based designer and entrepreneur, hopes his project will ease the process of creating captivating visualizations of municipal data for local journalists and bloggers. “CityTracking will allow users to create embeddable data visualizations that are appealing enough to spread virally and that are as easy to share as photos and videos,” says the Knight Foundation description. Data visualization initiatives fared well at this year’s challenge, as a second entry, Tilemapping, was granted $74,000 from the foundation. Other popular categories included projects aimed at finding new ways to engage readers, as well as those geared toward determining new methods for funding journalism at the local level (see video below). The foundation hopes that by funding these ideas they will help spur innovation and aid digital journalism take its first strides in the Internet age. “The free flow of shared information is essential for communities to function in a democracy. More each day, that information flows through and because of digital technology,” said Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen. “Until someone figures out the next big thing we can use the Knight News Challenge to experiment with ways to learn how to think in different ways about information sharing so we might discover the future of news.” The announcement of this year’s winners was made at the Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT – an event featuring previous challenge winners. Since beginning four years ago, the challenge has received over 10,000 applications and has doled out $23 million to 50 winning projects. Possibly the most well known past Knight News Challenge winner is Spot.us – a platform for community funded journalism. Discuss

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At 8pm ET tonight, President Obama plans to address the nation about the BP oil spill from the Oval Office. In addition, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs will also answer questions from YouTube users right after the president’s address. If you would like to submit your own questions, head over to the White House’s YouTube page . Just like during earlier events, the White House is using Google Moderator to collect these questions. YouTube users can then vote which questions they would like Gibbs to answer tonight. Sponsor You can ask questions by leaving a short text message on Google Moderator. You can also attach a YouTube video to your question. Given that YouTube and the White House only announced this event today, it definitely looks like this was a last-minute effort to get the public involved. Topics for the event include BP accountability, Gulf Region recovery, the cleanup plan and the environmental impact of the spill. Even though this event was only announced about an hour ago, questions are already streaming in at a rapid pace. Earlier this month, Google, in cooperation with the PBS Newshour , also enlisted the public’s help in collecting the best ideas for stopping the spill and cleaning of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Over 15,000 people submitted their ideas at that time and over 100,000 Google users voted on these ideas. Discuss

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Bangladesh lifts Facebook ban . Following a similar agreement with Pakistan, Facebook has agreed to more self-censorship. It has removed the Everybody Draw Muhammed Day page in Bangladesh and Bangladesh has removed the block on Facebook. Australia joins list of nations investigating Google . Australia announced it is officially investigating Google for its collection of personal information. The company used its Google Street View cars to map Wi-Fi locations but picked up personal information as well. Other countries investigating include the U.S., Germany, Italy, France and Canada. Sponsor China releases Internet policy white paper . The most interesting part of this official Chinese communication is the emphasis its government puts not just on control of free expression, but on measures that will force its citizens to use China-made communications products. Sometimes it announces an intent to block something, like the U.S.-made Google Earth , in an apparent attempt to ensure Chinese Internet users stay with Chinese services, which are, in turn, more controllable. Cuba and Vietnam infect Internet cafe computers . “Cybercafés in Havana will start using software called AVILA, designed to spy on which websites the users visit. This tool is a real trap to hunt Internet users. Since the past couple of years, this software application, whose main purpose is to capture the user’s private information, has been installed in Internet access services of most of the Havana hotels.” The software keeps external drives from being used as well. Vietnam has actually infected a popular software that allows the use of Vietnamese language typing with malware to monitor Internet use. Venezuelan President indicts news website. Again . Hugo Chávez railed against a news website, Noticiero Digital , and the federal prosecutor immediately announced it would begin “proceedings” against the site. The site had reported on concerns by members of the military regarding Mr. Chávez’s reign and was promptly accused of calling for a coup. Photo of wall in abandoned Cuban school by Paul Keller Discuss

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