In today’s Bulldog wrapup of tech and life science news:

  • A N.C. General Assembly committee is to discuss possible Uber regulations
  • IBM lands a $1.25 billion outsourcing deal with Lufthansa
  • GSK’s Ebola vaccine is safe in early tests
  • the FTC settles complaint with TRUSTe
  • SAP will pay Oracle $359 million to settle a long legal battle

The details:

  • Uber Regulation Coming?

The legislature’s Revenue Laws Study Committee on Tuesday morning will spend a fair amount of time hearing about digital dispatch services like Uber (essentially – a ride sharing for fee service), says WRAL reporter Mark Binker. This appears to be a discussion about laying down regulation from the state level.

No definitive action will (or could be) taken, but it still may be an interesting discussion, he adds.

Check out the agenda online at: 

http://www.ncleg.net/DocumentSites/committees/revenuelaws/Meeting%20Documents/2013-2014%20Meeting%20Documents/11-18-2014/Draft%20agenda.pdf

  • IBM’s $1.25 Billion Deal

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has signed a seven-year contract worth $1.25 billion to provide technology outsourcing services to German airline Lufthansa.

Some 1,400 Lufthansa employees will transfer to IBM as part of the deal.

  • GSK’s Ebola Vaccine Is Safe So Far in Tests

GSK’s (NYSE: GSK) potential Ebola vaccine has been safely tested in some 200 people who are healthy, Reuters reports.

The first tests are intended to determine the vaccine’s safety. 

“The safety data here have looked very satisfactory so far,” Adrian Hill of Oxford University who is leading the British part of the trial said in a statement. “The response we have seen from people coming forward to take part has been remarkable.”

  • FTC Settles with TRUSTe

Federal regulators said a respected Internet privacy company gave its seal of approval to commercial websites and mobile apps but failed to check whether they were indeed meeting standards for safeguarding customers’ data.

The company known as TRUSTe describes itself as a leading independent authority on consumer privacy. But the Federal Trade Commission said it deceived consumers by not following through on annual reviews of websites and apps that carried its privacy seal. The FTC also said the San Francisco-based company let websites describe TRUSTe as a nonprofit service, even after it became a for-profit business in 2008.

“Seals and certifications are persuasive to consumers,” the FTC said in a blog post, after announcing Monday that TRUSTe had agreed to a legal settlement in the case. “So it’s important that representations conveyed by those remarks are truthful.”

TRUSTe agreed to a legal settlement without admitting wrongdoing. It will pay $200,000 to the FTC and file detailed reports on some of its practices in the future. In a company blog post, CEO Chris Babel said TRUSTe regrets not living up to “our own standards” but characterized the problems as isolated. He said the company conducted compliance reviews in a majority of cases.

The company’s privacy seal is displayed by a variety of popular websites and mobile apps, from NFL.com to the messaging service WeChat. TRUSTe also certifies such products as downloadable software and cloud computing services.

But from 2006 to early 2013, according to the FTC, the company failed to conduct more than 1,000 annual reviews of companies to which it had already granted a TRUSTe seal, even though TRUSTe promised in its literature that it checks every year for continued compliance with its standards.

  • SAP to pay Oracle $359M

Business software maker SAP is paying rival Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) $359 million to settle a bitter battle over the theft of copyrighted instruction manuals and other technical information.

The resolution disclosed in a Thursday court filing comes seven years after Oracle Corp. sued SAP AG for a scheme engineered by a small software services company called TomorrowNow. SAP, which is based in Walldorf, Germany, bought TomorrowNow for $10 million.

A jury initially awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages, but a federal judge lowered the amount to $272 million.

An appeals court in August rejected Oracle’s request to reinstate the original damages and ruled the Redwood Shores, California, company was entitled to $356.7 million in damages or a new trial.

Oracle chose to accept $356.7 million in damages plus $2.5 million in interest.