The European Union says it will refer the controversial ACTA anti-piracy trade agreement to the institution’s highest court, the European Court of Justice, to check whether it complies with the EU’s fundamental rights.

EU trade chief Karel De Gucht is leading the process. He said: “We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess ACTA’s compatibility with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or that of protection… Let me be very clear: I share people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms… especially over the freedom of the internet.”

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year we’re teaming up with the creators of an awesome new event which runs alongside MWC, called Heroes of the Mobile Fringe Festival. Consider this the “Off Broadway” or Fringe Festival of MWC, where you get to actually talk about the real issues in the mobile startup ecosystem in a lively debate format.

This interactive event will feature some of the most innovative and interesting startups and investors on the scene. Sponsored by Oracle, GetTaxi, Telesocial and Swiftkey (with further sponsorship opportunities available), this should be a great way to kick start your week in Barcelona.

So here are the details for our TechCrunch @ Barcelona Lunch Meetup:

I must admit I was sceptical when Housebites first launched last year. It seemed a quaint little business attacking a hugely established market but in a way which looked, as least from the outside, to be unscalable. The premise of Housebites is this: the average person likes the convenience of take-out food (in the UK it’s called takeaway) but the food itself is usually unhealthy and processed. So why not capture all those wanna-be chefs, connect them with customers via location and, voila, you capture a potentially big business? It seemed all very well, but I figured they’d find a handful of chefs, but vetting them would be too slow. After all, Airbnb had scaled because anyone could register their apartment and start trading. How do you do that with your kitchen when you might actually poison someone?

I’m happy to say I was wrong – Housebites is now growing at a fair clip, now with 10,000 registered users. As CEO and founder Simon Prockter told me in the interview below, Housebites has tapped into a very disruptive model which could well change the whole restaurant industry. But more of that in a moment.

Vienna and San Francisco based Super angel fund Speedinvest, launched just over 6 months ago, has announced it’s made four investments to date. According to Founder and CEO Oliver Holle, the fund has invested more than €1 million in those four startups and doubled that sum through co-investors.

The investments made are rather diverse, ranging from VoiP to an already well-known social sharing app. Sipwise, a VoiP vendor based on an open source framework catering to small regional ISPs and cable providers received funding together with local VC fund tecnet. The company eventually entering the US market as well. Furthermore, the fund invested a “6-digit” amount into Finderly, a social commerce site, that focuses on consumer electronics and Soup.me, which launched at Social Media Week last week and which aims to become the digital hub for one’s online presence, much like about.me or flavors.me.

Following the trend towards global platforms for raising money, such as Kickstarter, Ammado, which connects charities with donors, has raised €7m, and signed up several multinational partners. The investment round was led by Belgiun-based Saffelburg Investments, which put in €5.5m and John Ryan, founder of Rovi, who put in about €1.5m. Set up in 2005 by Anna Kupka and Peter Conlon, the latter has put in €8.7m to date. which means Ammado has raised a total of €15.7m so far.

Ammado aims to be the first truly global donation platform, working in 78 currencies, 30 payment methods and 12 different languages, all embedded in a widget. It sells into large corporates, which then use the platform to allow others to donate to their chosen charity, with Ammado taking a cut of each transaction. Companies that use Ammado so far include AstraZeneca, Nokia, Seimens and Coca Cola. Colon was previously co-founder of MV Technology, sold to Agilent in 2001 for €100m in cash.

Tribe of Noise is an online music community connecting musicians with business professionals who want music. Artists can share a few songs for free in return for exposure, new revenue streams and new business opportunities with partners.

Now the startup is partnering with Getty Images. The lathers global sales force is ‘s going out there to sell music licenses to Getty’s customers (tv broadcasters, filmmakers, multimedia pro’s etc). Yes, this time stock images they are selling or stock music, but music but with high quality content from real, local artists.

The trend in the startup acceleration industry is specialization. There are accelerators focused on health (Rock Health, Healthbox, Blueprint Health and SXSW Health) or B2B accelerators (such as Tech Wildcatters). There is even one which specializes on women-led startups in the mobile space, named predictably WomenInnovateMobile. Yes, I know…

But today’s news is about a cloud software accelerator funded by Runa Capital and Parallels. Both companies have been founded by Serguei Beloussov, the Russian entrepreneur turned investor. Parallels, a virtualization and hosting software company, is a rare global success story in Russia.  Runa Capital, which originates in Russia, funds growth-stage companies globally.

Bambuser, a live mobile video streaming startup along the lines of Qik, has become something of an underground hit in the last couple of years because of its ability to stream video over poor mobile connections. That’s made it a favourite of emerging markets, in part because it supports over 200 different mobile devices, from cheap Nokias to the latest iPhone. During the Arab Spring last year it was used by protesters to document various uprisings across the region. The platform has lately been used to great effect by anti-government protesters in strife-torn Syria. But this morning the government blocked 3G and desktop Web access to the service.

Yesterday BBC News was carrying Bambuser’s live stream of black smoke billowing from a site in Homs, the scene of much of the uprising against the Syrian regime.

Top executives often get perks just because of who they are, like freebies and travel upgrades. The American Express’ Centurion Card for instance is also known as “the black card” for this reason. Eric Kuhn started FoundersCard in 2009, deciding to bring the same rewards specifically to entrepreneurs and founders who put their neck on the line to take ricks and create value.

FoundersCard is now a membership community that boasts over 5,000 members who pay up to $495 annually to get discounts and deals from a lot of businesses like phone deals, car hire, “Silver access” on Virgin Atlantic amongst others. In total it has about 96 companies offering benefits. We gather it can sometimes work in US hotels.

They recently told TechCrunch that about 55 percent of their members are in technology, 16 percent in entertainment, 6 percent in fashion, 9 percent in finance, and the rest “other”. That’s a lot of tech founders.

We’ve heard they are looking at expanding internationally, and has started supporting and catering to their international members. That almost certainly means Europe. But is it really that good a deal?

E-commerce platform eSellerPro, an eCommerce software provider for multi-channel sellers, has secured a follow-on investment of £1m from Notion Capital, following the £1.8 million Notion put in 2010. The money will go towards the product and entry into new markets.