Along with antitrust legal wrangling, U.S. District Judge Gerard E. Lynch also tossed several claims brought under state laws “without prejudice, meaning the P2P company may still press the same matters in a state court.

Limewire claimed the labels refused to negotiate licensing agreements with the company because the recording industry wanted to monopolize online music distribution. Limewire contends that, instead of brokering a deal, record companies told the company it must first adopt a filtering system approved by the labels. Another option presented by the labels was for Limewire to reach an agreement with P2P company iMesh, which has major label approval.

But the judge wasn’t buying Limewire’s antitrust talk, and ruled that Limewire did not present any facts suggesting the labels’ actions were “anything other than independent decision-making by each company to refrain from doing business” with Limewire.

Google vs Yahoo

What does your choice of search engine say about you?

While there hasn’t been a definitive study indicating whether Yahoo users have more fun or Google pilots live in higher income brackets, two separate news items that recently emerged within 48 hours of each other seem to indicate that not all search engines attract the same people.

Case in point, Yahoo and Google.

Google says the #1 search term “googled” in 2007 was “iPhone,”Reuters reported.

What makes this more interesting is that “iPhone” didn’t officially exist as a word the year before, although speculation about a cell phone / iPod device manufactured by Apple was often referred to as such.

And the #1 search term on Yahoo for 2007? “Britney Spears.”

Now we’re not saying that Google users are more technology-oriented than Yahoo searchers, or that Yahoo users are into gossip while Google searchers are more into hard news, facts and knowledge.

Nor do we know if anyone queried any of the search engines for instances of Britney using an iPhone. Guess we’ll have to keep “googling” for that answer.