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Tiffany, the world’s second-biggest luxury jeweler, said eBay is a “rat’s nest” for counterfeiting and urged a judge to rule that the biggest online auctioneer was liable for infringement.

Tiffany assailed eBay in a legal brief submitted Dec. 7 to U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in Manhattan, as the companies await his ruling in a trademark infringement trial. EBay said in its brief that it’s a “model citizen” in the fight against counterfeiting.

At issue is whether eBay must pay damages for failing to make adequate efforts to block sales of counterfeit silver jewelry. New York-based Tiffany and other retailers claim online sales of counterfeit clothes, bags and jewelry cost them about $30 billion a year.

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AMD reached its lowest share price for more than four years last week and, as a result, its market value dropped to around US$5 billion – that’s $400 million less than it paid for ATI in July 2006.

Intel, AMD’s major competitor in the CPU business, has been on a roll for the past 18 months and is now worth around US$162 billion, which makes the chip giant more than 32 times the size of AMD in monetary terms.

Even worse for AMD is that its partner-cum-archrival, Nvidia, has a market cap of around $19 billion, which makes it almost four times as valuable as the struggling platform company.

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The chain’s 103 retail stores will remain open and staffed during the holiday season, offering discounts on computer and electronics.

CompUSA, the computer and gadget retailer controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, has been sold to a restructuring and investment firm that will close stores and sell some company assets.

The new owner is Boston-based Gordon Brothers Group, which recently helped CompUSA sell under-performing stores. The terms of the deal were not not disclosed.

Click for more on CompUSA Sold, Stores To Close »

Any device, any application sounds impressive, but skeptics see a play for new spectrum.

Executing a neat reverse-field, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) declared last week that it will throw open its cellular network to third-party devices, applications, and services. Once considered to be one of the strictest gatekeepers of its network, the No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier is now setting an example for other carriers to open their systems to outside hardware and software.

Industry observers remain skeptical, to put it mildly. Verizon will never let itself become just a dumb-pipes provider for other companies’ devices and services, they maintain, and anyone who says otherwise is either a fool or a liar. Tactically, Verizon’s move could be another maneuver on the chess board that is the FCC auction of valuable 700-MHz spectrum for wireless broadband networks, now scheduled for January. On Dec. 3, companies planning to bid must file a “short form” license application for that auction, which is seen as the last, best chance for fully open and accessible wireless broadband networks in the United States.

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Google Plans to Bid 4.6 Billion on 700MHz Band

Google Inc was set to announce on Friday it will bid on coveted airwaves to launch a U.S. wireless network, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The Silicon Valley-based company had said several months ago it was considering bidding in the auction of 700-megahertz wireless spectrum due to begin January 24. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission deadline for companies to declare their interest in joining the airwaves bidding is December 3.

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Google’s Goal: Get Rid of Coal

Google has set its sights on decreasing global dependency on coal Tuesday with the announcement of a new project intended to produce affordable renewable energy.

The effort, dubbed “RE<C”, will initially focus its efforts on solar thermal power, wind power technologies and enhanced geothermal systems. Specifically, Google wants to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal, said Larry Page, Google’s co-founder.

“We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades,” Page said during a Tuesday conference call. One gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco, he said.

Solar power is “currently substantially more expensive than coal, depending on the type,” Page said. “It’s an ambitious goal to get it cheaper than coal, but it’s attainable.”

Google leads the way in search yet again, but Ask.com gains ground.

Google once again was the giant among search sites, as it took a 58. 5 percent share of the search market in October in the United States.

According to Internet ranking site ComScore, Google gained 1.5 share points versus the previous month. Yahoo sites ranked second with 22.9 percent, followed by Microsoft sites (9.7 percent), Ask Network (4.7 percent) and Time Warner Network (4.2 percent).

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IBM Blue Gene takes the crown…again

A system created by IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Lab hits 478.2 trillion calculations per second. IBM and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., took top supercomputer honors.

The IBM Blue Gene/L system installed at the DOE research facility, runs at 478.2 teraflops or 478.2 trillion calculations per second, earning it the most powerful system on the Top 500 Super Computer list, which is published twice annually by the University of Mannheim, Germany, the University of Tennessee and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory. It was released at the International Supercomputer Conference’s in Reno, Nev.

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The planned launch of Intel’s Penryn processors on Monday is the first blow in a one-two punch that might stagger AMD heading into 2008.

Just a few months after the launch of AMD’s quad-core Barcelona chips, Intel is hitting back with Penryn, now known as the Xeon 5400 family of processors. A total of 15 server chips are set to launch Monday as well as a new Core 2 Extreme desktop processor, with Penryn chips for mainstream desktops and notebooks scheduled to launch in the first quarter of next year.

Penryn is essentially a shrink of the Core architecture that brought Intel out of the woods in 2006. But these are also the company’s first chips to use Intel’s 45-nanometer manufacturing technology, and they will usher in the first change to the basic properties of the transistor since the 1960s.

Click for more on Penryn released: Intel Unveils 16 45nm Processors »

Handheld makers saw their market contract substantially for the fifteenth consecutive quarter, down about 70% from its peak in 2002.

Playing in the handheld market today - with “handheld” being defined as a PDA without cellphone capability - isn’t much fun. Once again, the shipment volume of such devices declined significantly in the third quarter of this year.

IDC estimates that 728,894 PDAs shipped globally during the period, which is down 39.3% from 1.20 million in Q3 of 2006. Looking back over the past four years, third quarter shipments have shown a steady decline from about 2.3 million in Q3 2003. By Q3 2004, shipments were down to 2.0 million, one year later the number slipped to 1.7 million. In fact, in Q3 2004 Palm shipped more than 736,000 PDAs - more than the global market volume in Q3 2007.

Click for more on PDA market still shrinking dramatically with no end in sight »