ReadWriteWeb

There is already a well-functioning administrative body for handling intellectual property disputes between U.S.-based companies and parties in foreign countries. It's the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), and if you've followed the many disputes brought by Apple against mobile phone makers, by mobile phone makers against Apple, and among IP portfolio holders such as Qualcomm and Broadcom, no doubt you've heard of USITC.

So why didn't Congress consider the Commission as a solution for the burning problem of resolving piracy matters with unknown parties outside U.S. borders? That's a question being asked, and possibly even answered, by an alternative bill introduced last week to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP bills in the House and Senate, respectively. This morning, a cavalcade of leading tech companies known to oppose SOPA already have signed on as supporters of the USITC-based alternative.

It's hard to believe that it is May already as a third of the year is complete and summer is almost here. With graduation season upon us, perhaps the entrepreneurs of tomorrow will want to take a look at the most popular startup stories from this week in our Weekly Wrapup. This week we've got more pitch deck suggestions, dealing with PR disasters and learning from failure. Also, we discuss some new data surrounding angel-backed companies, founders as long-term CEOs and how intellectual property effects innovation.

We've talked now and then about college programs that are making strides to provide students with entrepreneurial training, but the Harvard Business School (HBS) has so far not come up in our discussions. This might seem odd that one of the top business schools in the nation doesn't gather much attention from things like The Princeton Review's ranking of entrepreneurial programs, but one HBS grad may have an answer to that puzzle.

While business plans are a must in this environment, the startup world can hardly be considered predictable. Companies like Flickr, Seemic and Redux were all launched with different original concepts. Nevertheless, the market embraced the new products and each of these companies has done well in carving out a niche. But not every 180 degree shift can be successful, ReadWriteWeb looks at one theory on how to reduce risk while changing focus.

By now, we are all familiar with Mark Zuckerberg's success story. The explosive international growth of Facebook to over 200 million users continues to land the young founder and CEO in top news stories worldwide. Recently, Time Magazine named Zuckerberg one of the world's most influential people of 2008, and Fast Company named Facebook number 15 in its list of the world's 50 most innovative companies of 2009. At just 23 years of age, Zuckerberg even briefly made Forbes' 400 richest Americans list, temporarily giving him the title of World's Youngest Billionaire.

However we have heard very few stories about Zuckerberg and the inspiration behind Facebook during the period prior to February 4th, 2004, the day he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. In this post we tell that story.

Meebo, the leading Web-based IM service, has reached its current level of popularity by providing Web access to popular IM interfaces like AOL, MSN, and GTalk. Meanwhile, in parallel, there has been another growing segment of instant messaging taking hold in popular social networks. It was only a matter of time before Meebo extended its functionality to embrace this growing market - and now it's happened with Meebo's Facebook and MySpace IM integration.