The Supreme Court on Monday will hear the arguments in the Bilski’s business method patent case.

Technology industry is holding it’s breathe as it is going to be the first review of patentable subject matter since 1981 and decision of the court in the concerned case could make rules for years to come.

Speaking on the issue, analyst Emery Simon of Business Software Alliance said, “Technology companies care about this case because it will define what you can and cannot get a patent on.”

Putting many eager waits at rest, Spotify has announced on its official blog that the much anticipated HTC Hero is now available from 3UK in its retail as well as online stores.

Under the announced two year contract deal, 3UK customers will be given a HTC Hero which is preloaded with the Spotify Android application, a 24 month Spotify Premium subscription, 750 minutes and unlimited texts, all for ￡35 a month. For the phone, however, customers will be required to give an initial outlay of ￡100.

Sugar firm Tate & Lyle is the latest firm which has joined the growing number of firms to shut their pension schemes. The decision will affect the firm's current workforce of 400 employees. The scheme has already been shut for the new joiners since April 2002. 

"With a view to containing our pension costs and reducing balance sheet volatility, we have commenced consultation with employees who are active members of the UK Group Pension Scheme on the closure of that scheme to future accrual from April 2011", the firm said.

Department store John Lewis has again been able to witness a rise in weekly sales with increase as the demand and purchase of fireworks went 8 percent up from the last year figures. Shoppers in large number visited John Lewis store which has boosted the sales by 7.8% from last week.

In a EuroMillions claim that shattered the earlier British winning record of ￡35.4 million, two winning tickets were brought to UK. Each ticket-holder will get half of a total lottery money which stands at a whopping ￡91 Million.

Twitter initiated its ‘Project Retweet’ on Thursday when it made new retweet function available to a selected number of users.

Twitter is testing the new feature before launching it across its entire network.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, wrote on his blog, “We've just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild.”

Germany's Deutsche Telekom said that T-Mobile USA lost 77,000 subscribers during the third quarter, bringing its dollar revenues down by 2.3 per cent year-on-year to $5.4 billion.

T-Mobile lost 140,000 customers and gained 63,000 customers during the third quarter.

However, Deutsche Telekom sales jumped 3 per cent to settle at €3.8 billion, while key operating profit soared 5 per cent to €1.1 billion.

US President Barack Obama signed on Friday an extension and expansion of the home-buyer tax credit into law.

Recent move of the government is expected to boost housing market.

Earlier on Thursday the US House approved the extension of $8,000 tax-credit for first time home buyers until April 30.

The concerned tax-credit program was scheduled to end on November 30.

Those who lived in a home for more than five years can qualify for a tax-credit worth $6,500 if they purchase a new home.

Sales of new cars soared 32 per cent in October year-on-year, the highest rise in the last ten years.

Figures compiled by the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders revealed that as many as 168,942 new cars were registered in October as compared with 128,352 in the same period of 2008.

The Government's 'cash-for-bangers' scheme played a vital role in pushing the car sales up as it accounted for about a fifth of new car purchases.

An honest detection from doctors appeals that expectant parents be notified against using fetal heart rate monitors at home to listen to their unborn baby's heart beat.

The device is chiefly intended for the experts to understand the infant position and hear the heart beat to make definite that baby is fine; conversely, the anxious parents use the device with exercised hands and hence neglect the impediments to be detected by doctors.

On Thursday, the Researchers with the American Institute for Cancer Research released a concerned report regarding the rise of the cancer cases each year due to excess body fat in Americans.

The cancers most closely linked to excess weight are breast, endometrial, kidney, colorectal, pancreatic, esophageal and gallbladder, with the consequences of breast cancer, at about 33,000 cases a year, followed by endometrial cancer, at more than 21,000 cases, in addition to the colorectal cancer with more than 13,000 cases per year.

The rate of unemployment in United States has reached 10.2 per cent in October, the highest in the last 26 years.

The Labor Department said employers hacked 190,000 jobs in October, worse than 175,000 job-cuts expected by economists.

The rate of unemployment was 9.8 per cent in September.

Currents unemployment figures have provided Republicans with a chance to criticize government’s spending.

Republicans said current rate of unemployment confirmed that a $787 billion economic stimulus wasn’t effective

Rentokil's beleaguered City Link parcel delivery unit got a boost in profits owing to recent postal strikes.

As per rough estimates, Royal Mail strikes could benefit the City Link in the range of £1 to £2 million.

The Communication Workers' Union has resorted to a series of strikes in a row over pay and modernization of the department.

Alan Brown, CEO of the company, said, "The customers who switch into parcel-delivery services will switch back to Royal Mail later on, so it tends to be a pretty short-term benefit."

The number of people declared insolvent in England and Wales soared to a record high during the third quarter of this year.

The figures compiled by the Insolvency Service revealed that personal insolvencies jumped to 35,242, representing an increase of 28.2 per cent from a year ago.

This was the highest figure of personal insolvencies recorded since records began in 1960.

Scottish media group STV said that a new series of police drama Taggart would be produced next year even if ITV refuse to re-commission it.

Taggart has still not been re-commissioned by ITV for the next year and negotiations are going on over the future of the contract.

The dispute emerged earlier this year when ITV launched £38 million legal action against STV over claims of unpaid fees.

But STV retaliated by launching a £35 million counter claim over alleged abuses in ad sales and video-on-demand rights.