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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has denied Google's application to trademark "Nexus One."

For Google, the rejection is not yet final, giving the search giant a chance to submit more evidence as well as new arguments.

"Registration of the applied-for mark is refused because of a likelihood of confusion with the mark in U.S. Registration No. 3554195," wrote the USPTO.

No. 3554195 is a trademark of the word "Nexus" that was registered years ago by Integra Telecom, an 11-state wireline phone provider.

For their part, Integra thanked the USPTO for protecting its trademark and says they hope to work out a deal with Google. Adds John Nee, Integra's vice president of corporate communications: "Google hasn't contacted us since the PTO issued its objection but we hope we can work together to achieve our respective business goals."

Earlier this month, Apple sued rival smartphone maker HTC over violations of patents related to the iPhone, accusing HTC of infringing on up to 20 patents relating to the popular smartphone's hardware and user interface.

Taking its time in doing so, HTC has responded today, vowing to fight the charges.

"HTC disagrees with Apple's actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done," said HTC CEO Peter Chou, via a press release. "We will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible."

If Apple succeeds in the case, they will get an injunction on HTC, barring the company from importing and selling any of their infringing devices in the U.S. The company is also seeking monetary damages.

Joystiq is reporting today that "USB Mass Storage Device Support" should hit the Xbox 360 console sometime within 2010, most likely with the upcoming Spring 2010 dashboard update.

Citing a document written by a "senior software development engineer," the support will allow gamers to save and consequently load game data from USB devices, a much wanted feature.

With the support available, gamers can download Arcade games, DLC or other content right to their storage device, although it is unclear what capacity cards will be made available (minimum must be 1GB and max must be 16GB). The source also claims that "installation of a full disc-based title" is also a possibility, although the disc will still need to remain in the tray, for authentication purposes.

In regards to the minimum and maximum posted above, the document says: "The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller."

Amazon has introduced the Mac version of its Kindle software today, expanding the platforms on which it is available to include PCs, Macs, the Kindle device, iPhones and BlackBerrys.

The software is available for free via Amazon, and lets users purchase and read e-books on their computers. Amazon offers 450,000 titles via the Kindle Store.

Additionally, Amazon said an iPad Kindle app would be available in April.

Despite selling a standalone e-reader device, Amazon says e-book sales are much more profitable, so Kindle sales are not top priority. However, Amazon remains the market leader for e-book sales and e-readers.

Omar Ramos-Lopez, an angry ex-employee of the Texas Auto Center in Austin took out his revenge on his former employer by remotely shutting down 100 cars, using the company's computer system.

After hacking into the vehicle immobilization system, Lopez either deactivated the starters of the cars, or activated the horns, leaving them honking all night.

80 of those affected complained to the company about missing school, work, or of having to get their car towed, or repaired.

The system, run by Pay Technologies (PayTeck) is only supposed to be used if a car owner fails to pay their loan or lease obligations.

Lopez was arrested and charged with breach of computer security.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has confirmed that they will eventually offer a Chinese version of the extremely popular social network, although a time frame was not given.

The confirmation came at a panel discussion earlier this week after Chinese activist Ai Weiwei asked: "Is it possible to provide a Chinese access on Twitter? I need a clear answer, yes or no."

"I would say yes. It's just a matter of time," said Dorsey, in response.

Ai Weiwei calls Twitter a very important part of the future of China, which has practically forbidden a free flow of information and censors search engine results. "In China, we cannot see YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, and very soon, maybe not see Google," he adds.

Why is Twitter so important? "At 140 words, in Chinese, you can really write a novel. You can discuss most profound ideas really to democracy, freedom, poetry," Ai Weiwei notes, via PCWorld.

Dorsey adds that he wants Twitter in China, but technological and political hurdles need to be jumped, including finding a way for Chinese characters to be universally supported via phone SMS. Getting inside "the Great Firewall" would also be a problem.

Following in Ubisoft's footsteps, Electronic Arts has confirmed that upcoming games from the publisher will include the very controversial "always on" DRM scheme that forces gamers to be connected to the Internet at all times or lose the ability to play their games.

The first EA title to include the DRM will be Command & Conquer 4.

While gaming, if you ever lose connection to the Internet, or even if EA's servers go down for any reason, you will not be able to play C&C4, not even in single player mode.

Ubisoft learned the hard way that the system is flawed and does nothing but push legitimate buyers over to pirated versions, which allow for full playback without DRM, but it seems clear that EA will have to learn the same lesson on their own terms.

Popular anti-virus company McAfee is reporting today that Facebook has become the target of a virus that aims to steal passwords and other sensitive information from the social network's 400 million users.

The virus comes via spam emails that state that users Facebook accounts have had their passwords reset. You are then urged to click on an attachment to "obtain new login credentials." Once opened, the attachment unleashes a group of trojans, including a password stealing software.

"This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 350 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam," adds McAfee.

For those who are scared of the virus, the email is titled "Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support." Delete it immediately.

The PlayStation Move, Sony's contender in the motion controller market, was just announced last week, and Sony has already released an ad mocking rivals the Wii and Microsoft's Natal.

The Move is used in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye camera and allows for real-time tracking of the player's body movements.

The system should retail for under $100 when it becomes available later this year.

The ad:

According to a new study by GetJar, the market for mobile apps will grow to $17.5 billion USD by 2012, with mobile application downloads jumping from 7 billion to 50 billion.

"It is easy to see how mobile apps will eclipse the traditional desktop Internet," GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs says. "It makes perfect sense that mobile devices will kill the desktop."

GetJar is the second largest App store in the world behind Apple's.

The App Store currently has 150,000 apps, the Android Market has 30,000 and other stores such as RIM's and Nokia's continue to grow.

In early February we reported on the launch of international TV streaming site TVGorge, which claimed legal availability of 120 TV shows.

Gorge was an indexing service, which didn't host any of the material on its own servers, embedding or linking from other sites instead. Most agreed the service worked well, but most also agreed that there was little chance the site was legal.

This week, the site has been effectively taken down by the MPAA, which has ordered a cease-and-desist on behalf of the studios it represents.

"TVGorge has recently been advised to remove all of our indexed content," says TVGorge, via TF. "We understand content owners have a need to protect their content and we can only hope they take the initiative to provide easy access to all of their great TV shows at an international level. If anything, hopefully we have shown them that people are desperately looking for a place to watch their favorite TV shows."

One-time extremely popular release group pirate maVen (aka Geremi Adam), has been sentenced to 10 weeks in prison this week, after pleading guilty to distributing camera versions of two feature films.

maVen (Adam), the 27-year old Canadian resident, was for at least 2 years, the most popular release group for telesync releases, although in 2006, releases stopped coming, after the FBI began investigating the group.

In April 2006, Adam was arrested after recording "Invincible" at a theater in Montreal. Despite seizing his camera and laptop, Adam was released. One month later, Adam was arrested again, accused of selling his recorded movies for profit to other release groups or on the streets.

After the arrest, the FBI went as far as to call Adam the "world leader" in Internet piracy.

According to a new report, Building a Digital Economy: The Importance of Saving Jobs in the EU's Creative Industries, illegal downloading of movies, music, games and TV cost the UK economy £1.4 billion in 2008, as well as leading to the loss of 39,000 jobs.

If the trend continues, says the report, piracy will lead to 1.2 million lost jobs and £215 billion in lost revenue across Europe.

The report was commissioned by the Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP), and endorsed by the EU's "creative industries," writes the AP.

Says Norwegian actress Agnete Haaland, President of the International Actors Federation (which also endorsed the report) added: "The fact is that piracy is killing the industry. What we are talking about is actually a criminal act. We need to change all poor attitudes towards illegal downloading and recognize that it is theft."

Earlier today we reported that the Google Nexus One is now available on AT&T, marking the second carrier the "superphone" has been made available for.

Google has announced that the Nexus One is now headed to Sprint, as well, although price and an exact release date were not part of the press statement.

"Nexus One is a powerful device that belongs on a powerful network. This is another step in our continued partnership of innovation with Google," adds Fared Adib, Sprint vice president of product development.

The Nexus One is now available, or will be available for all the major carriers, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint.

Additionally, Sprint is rumored to unveil a 4G-capable phone dubbed "Supersonic," next week.

Google has just introduced a new version of their Nexus One smartphone which supports 3G data speeds for AT&T customers in the US and Rogers customers in Canada.

The initial version of the phone offered by Google was already compatible with AT&T's network. However, data speed was limited because the frequency used for 3G data transmission by AT&T and Rogers wasn't supported.

So far the new model is available only through Google's web store. No plans have been announced to offer a subsidized version.

A CDMA version of the Nexus One, designed to work on Verizon's network, is expected very soon.