"Vonage has sued AT&T over the long-distance company's new Internet-based phone service, saying AT&T's "CallVantage" name was too close to Vonage's brand name," reports Reuters.

"A French court has approved MandrakeSoft's plan to exit bankruptcy protection, a boost that accompanies a return to profitability for the Linux seller." reports CNet.

"The European Commission's order for Microsoft to ship a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player could stifle innovation and help Microsoft's rivals instead of promoting fair competition, the US Department of Justice's antitrust chief says." IDG News Service also quotes Assistant Attorney General Hewitt Pate's statement that: "Sound antitrust policy must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies. A contrary approach risks protecting competitors, not competition, in ways that may ultimately harm innovation and the consumers that benefit from it."

Yesterday I took part in a Microsoft conference call for European journalists (see below). Later, there was a similar call for US journalists, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer taking part. You can listen to it or read a transcript here.

Two chief execs spoke at OracleWorld: ZD Net lets you watch the video clips and vote here.

Hewlett-Packard shares tumbled by 11% in after-hours trading on Tuesday after it announced a disappointing quarter's financial results. HP's sales were $17.3 billion: up by 5% "but $200 million shy of Wall Street estimates", according to USA Today. "HP's PC division lost $56 million in the quarter."

IBM has cut more than 600 jobs in its microelectronics business as "part of our effort to re-establish profitability," said a spokesman. IBM chopped 1,000 jobs last year. However, it has not affected supplies of the latest Mac processors. "They've been doing a great job supplying us with G5s," Apple told CNet.

HP boss Caly Fiorina has kept pretty quiet since the $19 billion Compaq takeover, but she has recently given a couple of interviews, including this one at CNet.

"Travelers at the world's busiest airport are waiting less at security checkpoints thanks to the tinkering of a 15-year-old Boy Scout. Josh Pfluger and his scouting pals went into his Rockford garage and hammered out a shoe-scanning device now in daily use at O'Hare International Airport," reports AP.

Business 2.0 has a very odd story about how Adobe is beating Bill Gates, and I think it's odd because it is based on a couple of very odd ideas. First, Adobe is supposed to have "beaten Gates" because Microsoft's Picture It! software hasn't replaced PhotoShop. But anybody who actually looked at Picture It! would recognise that it's a cheap program aimed at home users, not a PhotoShop rival at all. In fact, Adobe is able to command amazingly high prices for its software precisely because it hasn't faced competition from Microsoft, which typically slashes prices at least in half, and usually a lot more. The second odd notion is that Microsoft's forthcoming XDocs program, renamed InfoPath, is supposed to rival Adobe Acrobat. Again, I don't see how this idea could survive five minutes actually looking at the two products. XDocs is an XML-based forms authoring application based on customer-written schema. (Who said SGML?) I can't image why anybody would decide to use that to create a PDF of, say, an advertising brochure, and that's by far the most common sort of thing Acrobat is used for. Of course, the Business 2.0 piece isn't any sort of technical article, it is the Tech Investor column, and tech investors are not exactly known for having a clue. But if there are tech investors who seriously think that Picture It! competes with PhotoShop, surely it would be a public service just to tell them not to be so daft.

"Remember, to survive in the New Economy Pt. II, you must recall Andrew Mellon's famous words, Gentlemen prefer bonds."