THE NEWS WRAP: Elance-oDesk relaunches as Upwork

Freelance marketplace Elance-oDesk is relaunching as Upwork more than a year after the merger that saw the oDesk and Elance platforms come together under the one banner.

Chief executive Stephane Kasriel said in a statement the rebrand will see a stronger focus on faster hiring, better collaboration and professional growth.

“The Elance site will remain unchanged in the immediate future,” he said.

“We’ll keep you posted as we transition to a single platform. In the meantime we won’t be adding innovation to the Elance platform—although our teams will continue to support Elance and provide you with a high quality experience.”

Motorola coughs up $US10.2 million to Fujifilm over copyright infringement

Motorola is being made to pay more than $10 million in damages for using Fujifilm’s patented technology on its headsets without permission.

“We are pleased with the verdict related to three out of the four patents and are evaluating our options on the one patent on which we did not prevail,” a Motorola spokesperson told Reuters.

Fujifilm originally sued Motorola in 2012, accusing the company of breaching four patents to do with digital camera and Bluetooth functions.

Software company Zendesk reports $US42.2 million revenue for first quarter

Software firm Zendesk has reported $US42.2 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2015, up 68% from the previous corresponding period.

However, the company also posted a net loss of $US19.2 million.

Zendesk, which specialises in providing cloud-based customer service software to businesses, launched in Denmark in 2007 and expanded into Australia three years later.

Founder and chief executive Mikkel Svane said in a statement the company had started 2015 with “solid financial results”.

“We expanded our geographic reach and landed a growing number of small and medium sized business and enterprise customers with a wide variety of use cases, reinforcing our competitive advantage,” he said.

“Our ‘low-touch’ online model exceeded our expectations, affirming the continued health of our core business.”

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 142.2 points, falling 0.79% to 17,928.2. The Aussie dollar is currently trading at around 79.4 US cents.

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