PALM MOVES INTO E-BOOKS AS LITIGATION LOOMS
This week saw Palm launch two new versions of its handheld PDA - the models m500 and m505. The new models include improved internet connectivity and plug & play facilities plus support for multimedia expansion cards and, in the case of the m505, an improved colour screen.

In addition, in a move described as laying the foundations for the company to become a leading e-book content provider for handheld computers, Palm has acquired the Peanutpress.com, which currently has the e-book rights to over 2000 business and consumer titles. Peanutpress will now be renamed Palm Digital Reader while its e-book reader software, which will also run on the rival Pocket PC platform, become Palm Reader.

Meanwhile NCR has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against both Palm and Handspring, alleging that they violated its 13-year-old patents on such devices. NCR, best known for making data warehousing software, ATMs and point-of-sales networks for retailers submitted a 10-page filing to Delaware district court on 14th March.The suit claims that NCR's researchers designed a PDA-type device 20 years ago, and the company subsequently took out two patents in 1987 for a method of doing financial transactions using a credit-card-sized terminal connected to a docking station. Palm has yet to make an official comment but Handspring said they believed the lawsuit was "without merit".

In the last couple of weeks Sony, Compaq and Handspring have all announced new versions of their PDA products and Hewlett-Packard is expected to launch a new version of its Journada handheld later this week. The Sony, Palm and Handspring devices, which all run the Palm OS operating system, have an estimated 87 percent share of the global PDA market. Systems based around the rival Microsoft Pocket PC software have a 12 percent share.

BUTTERWORTHS COMPLETE HOT DOCS HAT TRICK FOR CAPSOFT UK
Capsoft UK has achieved a hat-trick in the UK legal market by licensing its HotDocs software to legal publisher Butterworths Tolley. Capsoft say the deal confirms the software as the de facto standard for legal publishing in the UK - it has already been used in the digital products of Croner CCH and Sweet and Maxwell for several years.

The decision by Butterworths to adopt HotDocs follows an in-depth review of all the document assembly options on the market. The publishing deal with Capsoft UK covers the next four years and will allow the publisher to convert all of its 10,000 legal forms and precedents to HotDocs format. The scheme is complemented by their recent acquisition of Capsoft UK's former subsidiary Everyform, the free internet forms site, which also uses HotDocs to automate its forms.

In addition to the publishing licence, Capsoft UK will also supply Butterworths with training and development services. Developers at their Woking IT centre have already started the conversion process, and the first HotDocs forms will be introduced into Butterworths Tolley's online services during this summer. Legal News Media figures suggest HotDocs currently has over a 90 percent share of the UK legal document assembly market..

IR35 - WAITING FOR THE JUDGE
Proceedings in the High Court in London, in the application for judicial review being brought by the UK's Professional Contractors Group against the Inland Revenue over the proposed IR35 tax rules, have now been adjourned. The judge - Mr Justice Burton - is expected to deliver his judgment next week. Comments made by the judge, during the last day of the proceedings seam to suggest he is not convinced by the arguments that IR35 is an illegal tax and should be thrown out.

OFTEL CRITICISED OVER UNBUNDLING FARCE
The House of Commons trade & industry committee has criticised the UK's telecoms watchdog OFTEL for its "almost farcial" handling of the introduction of high speed internet access via the unbundling of the local loop at local telephone exchanges run by BT. The committee said OFTEL should have intervened at an earlier stage than it did and that, as a result of its delays, the UK was in danger of slipping behind other countries in the adoption of broadband technologies.

Singling out OFTEL for criticism, the committee's report says "The situation is in danger of becoming farcial. This sorry tale does not suggest a high level of administrative competence among those involved... We understand that OFTEL has had very little hands-on experience of the practicalities of local loop unbundling and that some senior officers had not even visited an exchange. The episode has shown up some weaknesses in OFTEL's grasp of the technical issues involved".

MONDAQ APPOINTS FIRST EDITOR
Mondaq, an online information provider for professional services firms, has appointed Dr Selina Samuels as its first editor. Samuels' background in editorial publishing and she has a PhD in English from the University of London as well as degrees in English and Law from University of New South Wales, Sydney. Readers of this ezine can now access the latest intellectual property plus IT, internet and telecoms news stories on Monday directly from the Legal Technology Online web site.

NEW MICROSOFT INITIATIVE RAISES DATA FEARS
Earlier this week Microsoft announced a set of technologies to advance its new dot.NET strategy. Code-named HailStorm, it involves a collection of "user-centric XML web services that enable developers to build solutions that work seamlessly with one another over the internet to deliver a more personalised and consistent user experience" whatever that may mean. Like a lot of Microsoft new product initiatives, HailStorm is being pitched as the basis for the next generation of personal computing but regardless of the technological issues, the announcement has also fuelled widespread legal concerns.

In the US, companies like AOL Time Warner are already talking to antitrust lawyers about whether HailStorm will further strengthen the market dominance of the Windows operating system. While in Europe, the big concern relates to privacy issues and whether HailStorm's proposed facility allowing users to centrally store and manage personal data, such as credit card details, on Microsoft servers and "selectively give the information out to third parties" would be in breach of data protection legislation.

3G MEANS MAJOR DIFFICULTIES FOR UK TELCOS ?
Speaking at London law firm Nabarro Nathanson's recent annual venture capitalist dinner, Richard Holway, a non-executive director at Ovum, the analyst and consulting company, warned that investors in UK Telcos could soon be left carrying huge losses. (The remarks were made before BT's problems hit the headlines this week.)

According to Holway: "With well over £250 billion having being wiped off the share price of just six FTSE100 telco (the six telcos referred to are BT, C&W, COLT, Energis, Telewest and Vodafone) in the last 12 months, the telcos worldwide are already facing problems and with the added burden of the 3G debt this could mean the end of some of the telcos, as we know them today.

"The Orange flotation is the first indicator that confidence has been lost in the telecoms market due to the high price paid for the 3G licences. Nobody seriously believes that 3G will not be a major success, given time, but just to service the debt and infrastructure build costs, every 3G user would have to spend $200 per year more than the average 2G user does at present. I just don't think that's on.

"I think its all very analogous to the Channel Tunnel. The Channel Tunnel has been a major success and we wouldn't dream of being without it now. But this was only achieved after the build costs were largely written off as the banks converted debt into equity and the original IPO investors found their shares had plummeted. And that is exactly what I think will happen for most of the current highly indebted 3G licence holders."

EX-CAPSOFT TRIO JOIN RIVAL RAPIDOCS
Capsoft UK's former managing director Terry Lawley and two of his colleagues - Gary Rodrigues and Tom Callway - have joined Epoch Software. All three are taking sales and management posts with the team responsible for Rapidocs, one of the leading challengers to Capsoft's HotDocs document assembly software. Lawley joins as professional services director, Rodrigues as business development director and Callway as account manager. All three departed from Capsoft UK three months ago in the aftermath of a failed management buyout bid.

TAHOE GETS THUMBS DOWN
Microsoft's new SharePoint document management system (previously called Project Tahoe) is coming in for criticism on UKLIT, a legal IT online discussion forum. The biggest concern relates to SharePoint's strategy of using the Microsoft Exchange store for its file system. According to critics of this approach, using a database for a file system creates potential performance problems. For example, the time required to save/retrieve documents is much slower than with a raw file system. In addition, the ever changing sizes of thousands of documents can cause fragmentation, requiring a periodic 'compaction' of the database.

Martin Telfer, the executive director (technology & information) at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney, added that a recent MS Exchange conference in Australia, the main topic of conversation was information store corruption. "If Exchange corrupts the information store, you have to restore from backup and replay the log files. If someone has deleted a document and wants to recover it, you have to restore from backup and extract the single item. This all takes time. For a law firm to have it's email and documents in one big, vulnerable store does not make sense."

WE ARE BACKING THE LEGAL TECH LONDON SHOW
Legal Technology News.com editor Charles Christian has been signed up by Imark to act as a consultant on its LegalTech London event, which it runs in conjunction with American Lawyer Media. As part of an exclusive three year deal, Christian will be advising on the development of the conference programme. To avoid conflicts of interest, our companion newsletter Legal Technology Insider will not be renewing its sponsorship of the Legal IT event which next takes place in February 2002. LegalTech London will be held at the new Excel venue in Docklands on 31st October and 1st November 2001. Please note these are new dates, one week later than originally scheduled.

LEGAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS.COM - FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF LEGAL TECHNOLOGY INSIDER. NEXT ISSUE 29.03.2001