Hulu.com confirmed Wednesday that it would offer consumers paid access to an expanded offering of online content in addition to the free content it already provides. The new service, called Hulu Plus, will offer more than 120 seasons and 2,000 episodes of at least 33 television shows from Fox, NBC, ABC and other networks for $9.99 monthly. Significantly, Hulu Plus allows consumers to watch Hulu.com’s content on their wireless devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Memory supplier Micron Technology is seeing several promising trends and said Q3 results improved from a year earlier. But shares fell 13 percent Tuesday and closed at $8.67 after it offered in an earnings call a conservative forecast for DRAM bit growth.

Though CEA and the ITI Council made peace with New York City and green groups in settling their lawsuit to stop the now-moot city e-waste program from taking effect (CED June 29 p1), both sides in the dispute couldn’t resist taking parting shots late Monday even as they hailed the settlement agreement.

Conventional book sales will plunge $2 billion during the next four years as electronic versions surge to $6 billion in annual revenue, Barnes & Noble Chairman Leonard Riggio said Tuesday at an analyst meeting in New York.

A decision on Abt Electronics’ bid to buy inventory from defunct Flanner’s Home Entertainment is expected in about a week, Abt General Manager Phil Hannon told us.

A month to the day after New York Gov. David Paterson signed his state’s e-waste measure into law, CEA and the ITI Council said Monday they settled their e-waste lawsuit against New York City and its co-defendant, the Natural Resources Defense Council. CEA and ITI filed their lawsuit last July 24 seeking a preliminary injunction blocking the New York City e-waste program from taking effect and a declaration from the court that the program’s direct collection requirement was unconstitutional.

The “machine-or-transformation” test is not the only one determining patent eligibility, ruled the U.S. Supreme Court Monday in its long-awaited Bilski vs. Kappos ruling. Courts must remain open to other standards in patents of the Information Age, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority. The high court declined to set specific rules lower courts could follow. The court also declined to set specific parameters for determining the patentability of business methods, saying the patent before it should be rejected as “an unpatentable abstract idea,” without defining what that means.

Previously undisclosed details about allegations that an ex-Koss Corp. executive embezzled $31.4 million from her company over more than five years (CED Feb 2 p1) are contained in a new Koss lawsuit in which the company seeks to pin the blame on its former auditing firm for failing to uncover the illegal activity.

Tech and Internet companies may well have breathed sighs of relief after learning that financial industry revamp legislation agreed upon Friday by the House and Senate did away with provisions they didn’t like (CED May 24 p6). Several groups said they were especially glad the FTC’s authority would not be expanded. The bill now goes back to the House and Senate for final floor votes.

The North American market for silicon TV tuners will reach 3 million units in 2011 as the chips start replacing can tuners, Microtune Chief Financial Officer Justin Chapman said Friday at the Sidoti & Co. investor conference in New York. Microtune is banking on its MT3141 analog demodulator/silicon tuner, which is expected to start production late this year, grabbing a large share of the growing market, Chapman said.