Microsoft News Tracker

Some Microsoft news items from this week that didn’t get a post of their own.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer will only have to travel to Iowa once to testify in the antitrust trial which started Friday with 100 pages of jury instructions that took five hours to read.

Microsoft settles patent dispute with Belkin. Originally mentioned here.

Gosh, Microsoft adCenter is expanding the pilot for contextual ads.

Microsoft snuck out a beta of Windows Live Search for Mobile and apparently the product version of Windows Live Messenger for mobile browsers.

Microsoft names Maria Martinez as the new CVP of Worldwide Services. She replaces Rick Devenuti who announced his retirement in October.

Elizabeth Montalbano at InfoWorld has the Belkin story:

Microsoft Corp. Tuesday filed a patent-infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against Belkin Corp. for importing products the software company claims infringes on a patent it holds for peripheral device technology.

According to Microsoft, Belkin uses a technology called “U2″ in several of its mouse products. U2, for which Microsoft holds a patent, enables a computer peripheral device to auto-sense whether the device is plugging into a PS2 or USB port on a computer and to connect to it.

Microsoft has been in licensing discussions with Belkin about U2 for more than two years but has reached no agreement, which is why the software company is filing the complaint, said Tom Burt, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft, in a statement via e-mail.

Microsoft had started licensing U2 in March and apparently a number of firms have taken them up on it.

Meanwhile, in the never ending Eolas patent case, Microsoft’s request for a new judge in a retrial was granted. They had requested a new one in January.