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By TIMES WIRES
Published September 27, 2006

Black, under fire, wants his Canadian citizenship back

Conrad Black, left, former CEO of newspaper publisher Hollinger International Inc., wants to be a Canadian again. Black, awaiting trial on charges of improperly taking millions of dollars from his former company, was forced to renounce his Canadian citizenship in 2001 in order to sit in the British House of Lords. In an interview with TVOntaria, Black said he is working on regaining his Canadian citizenship. Black has been spending much of his time in Toronto recently while he fends off the charges. Black has denied wrongdoing. He described himself as a "temporary resident" of Canada. "I always said that I would take my citizenship back, and if it wasn't for all these legal problems, I would have done it by now," the Globe and Mail of Toronto quoted Black as saying. "But I'm working on it, going through the normal channels like everyone else."

IBM to let public in on its patent filings

IBM, the nation's largest patent holder, will publish its patent filings on the Web for public review as part of a new policy that the company hopes will be a model for others. If widely adopted, the policy could help to curb the rising wave of patent disputes and patent litigation. The policy includes standards like clearly identifying the corporate ownership of patents to avoid filings that cloak authorship under the name of an individual or dummy company. It also asserts that so-called business methods alone - broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics - should not be patentable. The move by IBM does carry business risks. Patents typically take three to four years after filing to be approved by the patent office. Companies often try to keep patent applications private for as long as possible to try to hide their technical intentions from rivals. "Competitors will know years ahead in some cases what fields we're working on," said IBM's John Kelly. "We've decided we'll take that risk and seek our competitive advantage elsewhere."

Other chatter

MUST BE FREE RANGE TO BE BEN & JERRY'S: Unilever's Ben & Jerry's ice cream unit said it plans to stop using eggs laid by chickens held in cages as part of its policy of treating animals humanely. Within four years, all eggs used for the company's ice cream will come from free-range chickens, Ben & Jerry's said.

NEWSWEEK TO TEAM UP WITH KAPLAN TO OFFER ONLINE MBA: Well, maybe it's not quite that simple. But Newsweek is joining with Kaplan Inc., the education service provider, to offer an online business degree called Kaplan University/Newsweek MBA. Executives at Newsweek and Kaplan said they thought this was the first time a national media outlet had joined with an online degree program. The newsweekly will help Kaplan provide students with case studies of business topics and video, and online presentations, chats and interviews. Some material will be published in Newsweek and on its Web site, but some will be reserved exclusively for Kaplan.

[Last modified September 26, 2006, 23:44:46]