The U.S. Government is making structural changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements, but it is only a symbolic move. The country needs a real catalyst to spark innovation in fuel efficiency technology.

For those unfamiliar with CAFE requirements, these rules govern the minimum average fuel standards that each automotive company must meet with the vehicles it creates. While the government has made minor adjustments to the requirements for each category of vehicles, these rules are far out of sync with the original intentions.

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The time has come for our politicians to drastically increase the CAFE requirements on new vehicles. The technology is available for at least a 10% to 20% increase in current standards. A significant increase in the standards would encourage the core parts of the industry to further increase funding in engine technologies and would offer a real opportunity for new technology firms.

Realeyes3D has secured €7.5 million (USD 9.3 million) in venture capital. This round of funding was led by Atlas Venture and Partech International and had participation from first round investors Siemens Acceleration in Communications and I Source Gestion.

For those not familiar with Realeye3D, the company creates and implements technology related to camera phones. It is best known for Phone2Fun suite of products that allows users to send handwritten messages, postcards, and fax-quality scanned documents from a standard 1 Megapixel camera phone. In essence, the user takes a picture of any document (e.g. handwritten note, article, diagram) and the “scan” can then be sent directly or embedded in other documents, such as a greeting card with a handwritten note.

The German government has created a $320 million (262 million Euro) venture capital fund to support technology-based startups within the country. A European Commission website referenced the creation in pointing to the Partners for Innovation website this past week.

Industry analysts see the creation of the High-tech Startup Fund (High-Tech Gründerfonds) as an attempt to reform previous German federal venture capital programs begun several years ago.

Since its announcement, Google’s digital library initiative has polarized both consumers and copyright holders.

On first view, Google’s plan to scan books and make them available through their search engines appears to violate copyrights on these books, and many large publishers have geared for a fight with the search giant. However, at closer inspection, Google only plans to allow searching within these texts and does not plan to make full text or even large sections available to users. This, likely, falls under the terms of fair use.

InternetWeek’s Christopher Heun takes an unbiased and thorough look at the legal hurdles behind the Google Print Library Project in a new article.

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As authors ourselves, The Technology Suits strongly supports the rights of copyright holders to be compensated for their creations. We also believe in taking an unbiased view on new technologies such as the Google Print Library Project. There are obviously pluses and minuses to new technologies and their ability to make content more readily available. It is important that creators of content stay up to date with these to protect their creations, expand their audience and receive proper compensation.