The ruling yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court names Katherine Jackson as special administrator, granting her temporary control over personal property that may be in the hands of others, according to a copy of the filings.
Katherine and Joseph Jackson are seeking control over their late sons estate in anticipation that others will step forward with inaccurate claims they have a will, the family said in court filings. A will Michael Jackson drafted in 2002, dividing the estate among his children, mother and charities, is expected to [...]

Jackson, who died June 25 at age 50 in Los Angeles, owned 50 percent of Sony/ATV, which holds rights to more than 200 songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, as well Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond and others. His stake is worth about $1 billion, said Ivan Thornton, a private-wealth adviser who has worked with Jackson and his family.
Sony/ATV will continue to hold the Lennon and McCartney catalog, said the person, who asked not to be named because the matter isnt public. The U.K.s Daily [...]

Jackson, 50, died yesterday in Los Angeles. An examination begins today to determine the cause of death, the Los Angeles County coroners office said. Tokyo-based Sony had planned before his death to start selling five of the stars CD packages including “Thriller” and “Bad” from July 8 in Japan.
Sony owns the rights for Jacksons “Off the Wall,” “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Dangerous” and “HIStory” albums, the company said in a statement. The singer sold an estimated 750 million records worldwide and was recognized by the Guinness Book of [...]

Sony Corp., Nintendo Co. or Microsoft Corp. should have used this weeks Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show in Los Angeles to lower prices of their systems, Activision Chief Executive Bobby Kotick, whose company makes “Guitar Hero,” “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft,” said in an interview yesterday. Such a move would spur industry growth, he said.
“I was disappointed not to see any sort of aggressive price cutting,” Kotick said. “Of all the things that the hardware companies need to be doing right now, its recognizing [...]

Multi-Fineline depends on Sony Ericsson for 45 percent of its revenue, while Skyworks Solutions Inc. receives 18 percent of its sales and Flextronics gets 11 percent from the mobile- phone company, according to New York-based supply chain researcher Connexiti LLC.
“We believe theyll miss Street expectations by at least 2 percent, and we believe the stock is going to follow,” Richard Davenport, an analyst with Connexiti, said in an interview. “All three of these companies have had big runs in percentage terms in the past six weeks. [...]

“We are having conversations with YouTube,” Paula Askanas, a spokeswoman for Sony Pictures Television in Los Angeles, said yesterday in an interview. She declined to provide additional details.
No major U.S. movie studio posts full-length films on YouTube. Sony Pictures offers 60 older films, including “Stripes” and “Groundhog Day,” as well as vintage television shows, at its Crackle.com Web site. Hulu.com, whose owners include NBC Universal Inc. and News Corp., shows advertising- supported full-length movies.
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Its the first time Google has made its vast trove of scanned public-domain books available to an e-book device, and vaults the Sony Reader past Amazon.com Inc.s Kindle as the device with the largest available library, at about 600,000 books.
The scanned books were all published before 1923, and include works like Charles Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities” as well as nonfiction classics like Herodotus “The Histories.”
The books are already available as free downloads in the Portable Document Format (PDF), which works well on computer screens but not on e-book readers. Google will provide the books [...]

The store will be called Sony StyleComcast Labs and ensconced in the Comcast Center, the newest skyscraper in Philadelphia and headquarters of the nations largest cable operator.
The store, more than 3,400 square feet, will show off such things as home broadband equipment that would enable people to surf at 100 megabits per second - roughly 17 times the average speed of cable broadband. Comcast plans to roll out service that fast by years end.
Sony will display a new TV running Comcasts TV interface. It uses Tru2way, which is software that cable providers are rolling out to standardize their systems so [...]

Sony, the worlds second-largest consumer-electronics maker, gained 1.4 percent to 1,691 yen as of the 11 a.m. break on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while the Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 3.2 percent. Thats the stocks highest level since Feb. 16.
Stringer will take over as president from Ryoji Chubachi April 1, while keeping his current roles, Tokyo-based Sony said Feb. 27 after Japanese share markets closed. The reassignment of Chubachi, who also headed the electronics division, will allow quicker decision-making at the producer of Bravia televisions to [...]

Stringer, 67, will assume the expanded role from April 1, Tokyo-based Sony said today. Chubachi, 61, will become vice chairman in charge of product safety, quality and environmental issues.
The reassignment of Chubachi, a 32-year veteran at Sony, may help clear the way for Stringer to reorganize the company as the global recession erodes sales. Sony is cutting 16,000 workers and shutting plants to weather a slump that forced the worlds second-largest maker of consumer electronics to forecast a record 260 billion yen ($2.7 billion) full-year operating [...]