If an alliance had been established it would have created the world's largest music company, one that some regulators believed would dominate music delivery over the Web. While the companies had hoped European regulators would view their proposed merger as one that would help them compete in a media landscape vastly altered by the Internet , those regulators viewed the arrangement in a decidely different light, indicating that they would reject any deal that reduced the number of major record labels from five to four. Under that condition, EMI and Bertelsmann would have been forced to sell off the assets necessary to create a fifth major label , something they were clearly unwilling to do. A federal judge has thrown out 54 of Rambus' patent infringement claims against Infineon Technologies AG, leaving the German semiconductor maker to defend itself against only three remaining allegations.
Some business groups are over their plan of record headcount targets.
While some groups will meet headcount reduction targets through normal attrition, others will need to take further action, such as offering employees a voluntary separation program. Of the employees impacted, most will exit tomorrow, May 1st 2001, while others will remain through a short transition period. The company released about 250 workers into the wild in January. Apple's press event today continues to be the subject of much speculation among Mac monomaniacs. Still others hope the venture will introduce an iBook more compact than its predecessors and with a design similar to that of the titanium G4 PowerBook .