BlackBerry maker Research in Motion won another battle Wednesday in its war against patent holder NTP, as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a final rejection of one of five disputed patents owned by the holding company, which doesn't actually sell or produce anything. Research in Motion hopes the rejection notice will help the company keep operating its U.S. BlackBerry service. Tomorrow, U.S. District Judge James Spencer will hold a hearing to consider NTP's request to move forward with an injunction that would shut down BlackBerry service in the U.S. RIM said the latest decision from the patent office …

Procter & Gamble, one of the world's largest advertisers, has shaken up its interactive agency line-up, according to an Ad Age report. Gone from its 2002 roster are WhittmanHart Interactive, Chicago; WPP Group's Grey Interactive, New York and Omnicom Group's Irving, Texas-based Targetbase. This is the first realignment of the company 's roster since 2002, when it trimmed its list of 40 agencies to nine. The new number stands at seven. A P&G spokeswoman said the agencies removed from its interactive roster will continue with the accounts they have but cannot bide for new ones or defend any reviews of …

Lloyd Braun, one-time ABC Chairman and current head of media and entertainment at Yahoo, hasn't had much joy in his 15 months at the helm of the Internet media company's content division, says a Cnet report. Braun was supposed to turn Yahoo into an entertainment industry powerhouse, but critics say that for all his extensive connections and Hollywood wherewithal, Braun has been unable to negotiate the fast-moving digital media world. In fact, certain Yahoo Media--like Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Games--have lost ground to its rivals under his watch, and ad sales haven't shown any noticeable spikes either. That's probably because …

Pay-per-call vendors and publishers are marketing the service to agencies and search advertising specialists, says ClickZ, in the hope of attracting their big spending clients to the burgeoning Internet marketing channel. Pay-per-call has been thought to be a primarily local marketing channel, but bigger advertisers are starting to notice as vendors continue to sign big time publishers. For example, Ingenio has struck deals with AOL and Miva, eStara has SuperPages.com and Amazon's A9, and Jambo has InfoSpace. Ingenio, one of the biggest pay-per-call vendors, reports working with more than 30 agencies--it even allows them to manage their clients' pay-per-call listings …

AOL is undergoing some major changes, readying a host of new products to help it keep pace with Internet leaders Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. In an interview with USA Today, Jonathan Miller, the Time Warner Company's chief executive, outlined AOL's strategy, beginning with a big push in video. This week, he said, the company begins integrating video search from Truveo, which AOL bought late last year. As part of its In2TV service, AOL will be offering 14,000 free, Warner Bros.-owned classic TV shows on its site. AOL is also in the process of updating its industry-leading instant messaging service, AIM. …

With all the hoopla surrounding the U.S. Internet majors and censorship, we tend to overlook the fact that online censorship is something U.S. companies have been exporting for some time. For example, San Diego-based Websense and Sunnyvale-based Blue Coat Systems provide the Yemen government with tools to block Web sites devoted to sex and beer. USA Today columnist Kevin Maney says there's nothing at all special about Google or Yahoo's decision to censor its Chinese search results. In fact, he says, U.S. tech companies have been helping "repressive regimes around the world sift, block and censor the Net... for years." …

Despite the tough auto market, auto manufacturers and dealers have become big-time spenders on the Internet, accounting for 15 percent of the total online ad market by the end of 2007, according to eMarketer. The research aggregator expects auto companies to spend $2.7 billion in '07, up from $1.4 billion in 2005. The automotive industry is the largest advertising segment in the world, spending $17 billion in the first 11 months of 2005. eMarketer says auto makers have been slow to commit to online advertising despite the fact that 70 percent of consumers use the Web at some point in …

News Corp. has come under serious fire in the last week or so regarding the pervasiveness of sexual predators on its massive social networking site, MySpace. That kind of press can be really bad for business, especially when your product makes all its money from sponsorships and advertising. The news instantly sparked a backlash from the marketing community, prompting Ad Age to call social networking sites "a marketing crapshoot." In a recent article, the advertising trade calls MySpace "a potential eyeball windfall," that also attracts "the worst kind of audience, namely sexual predators," adding "the negative publicity has some marketers …

Curiously enough, AOL has raised the price of its dial-up service to equal that of its new broadband offerings--ostensibly to encourage users to upgrade their connections. Beginning March 9, AOL subscribers will pay $25.90 per month for either broadband or dial-up service, with a $2 a month discount for dial-up subscribers who commit to a year. AOL believes broadband will help boost usage of its new free ad-supported services like news and video?increased usage, which, of course, means more ad dollars. They're probably right: according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project study, those with broadband are 52 percent …

Google can't win with this China situation. The search giant is now coming under fire from the Chinese media for disclosing to consumers that it would censor its results as per a government mandate. Nationalist paper The Beijing News asked "Does a business operating in China need to constantly tell customers that it's abiding by the laws of the land?" It later accused Google of inciting debate about censorship, likening the company to an uninvited dinner guest saying that "the dishes don't suit his taste, but he's willing to eat them as a show of respect to the host." …