News : Nokia files patent lawsuits against HTC, RIM

Wounded cellphone maker Nokia has turned on one of its former allies in the patent protection battlefield by filing lawsuits against rival smartphone maker HTC as it steps up its efforts to raise funds.

Nokia, based in Finland, filed several lawsuits in Germany covering 45 hardware and software patents, ranging from power management to data encryption technologies against HTC, Canadian rival Research In Motion and tablet-maker ViewSonic.

In the United States it filed against HTC and ViewSonic, including a complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC. The moves follow Nokia's comments last month that it will seek to raise more revenues from its patent portfolio. It is also a departure from its alliance with HTC when it had for years fought alongside the Taiwanese company in patent battles against German patent firm IPCom.

HTC said it would not comment on the legal action until its lawyers had seen the filings. "HTC has been a licensee of Nokia on wireless essential patents since 2003. We are waiting to receive a complaint," the company said in an emailed statement. Nokia's announcement of the newest round of smartphone lawsuits comes on the same day a court in Germany ruled that Microsoft had infringed Motorola Mobility's patents.

The court ordered the world's largest software maker to remove its popular Xbox 360 gaming consoles and Windows 7 operating system software from the German market. Last week, ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor's cut Nokia's credit rating to "junk" status, as the company battles falling sales as well as doubts over its product strategy. Nokia has one of the widest patent portfolios in the industry, along with Ericsson and Qualcomm . It has gone through two major legal battles in the past, first against Qualcomm and then against Apple .

Terms of Nokia's settlement with Apple in June 2011 were not disclosed but analysts put the figure at hundreds of millions of dollars. In its complaint filed at the ITC on Wednesday, Nokia alleged that HTC infringed on nine of its patents and asked for the HTC Sensation 4G and Inspire 4G and eight other models of mobile telephones and two tablets to be banned from sale in the United States.

The patents are for technology like synchronizing information, including calendars, between the smartphone and mainframe computers, extending battery life and allowing mobile phones to be compatible with different signal systems. Nokia also filed lawsuits in federal court in Delaware, accusing HTC of infringing on the same nine patents and adding nine additional patents, including technology for adjusting across time zones.

"Nokia proved the enormous strength of its patent portfolio by getting Apple to pay up after a protracted and acrimonious battle in multiple courts," said patent expert and blogger Florian Mueller. "HTC and ViewSonic are patent lightweights compared to Apple and can't possibly win against Nokia," said Mueller. Also in Delaware, Nokia accused tablet maker ViewSonic of infringing on 17 patents, many of them the same patents that Nokia accused HTC of infringing on.

A ViewSonic representative said in an emailed statement that the company was aware of the legal action and was taking appropriate measures to protects its interests.

RIM declined comment.

Source :  Thomson Reuters 2012

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News : Zuckerberg seizes wealth, power in Facebook IPO

Facebook's debut on Wall Street will make 27-year-old co-founder Mark Zuckerberg a multi-billionaire with firm control of the world's leading online social network. After Facebook's initial public offering of stock, Zuckerberg will own 57.3 percent of the hot Silicon Valley company in a stake valued at more than $15 billion based on how shares are expected to perform.

"Because Mr. Zuckerberg controls a majority of our outstanding voting power, we are a 'controlled company' under the corporate governance rules for NASDAQ-listed companies," Facebook said in an amended filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Zuckerberg will immediately sell 30.2 million shares, with a projected value of about $1.05 billion, with the bulk of the money going to pay taxes on 60 million shares he will be acquiring for a pittance by exercising stock options.

"Most great people care primarily about building and being a part of great things, but they also want to make money," he continued. "Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services." A video released as part of a 'roadshow' to woo investors featured Zuckerberg casually discussing Facebook and its vision. "In middle school I used search engines like Google and Yahoo! and I just thought they were the most amazing thing," Zuckerberg said. "The thing that seemed like it was missing was always just people," he continued. "The most interesting stuff that you care about the most is actually what's going on in the lives of your friends, or the people around you."

Facebook's stock market debut will be the latest chapter in the life of the New York-born computer prodigy who has become a Silicon Valley legend. Zuckerberg has been the subject of Hollywood blockbuster "The Social Network," Time's "Person of the Year," and cracked the Forbes list of the 20 richest people in the world. Despite it all, Zuckerberg still sports t-shirts, jeans and sneakers, his trademark hoodie and a mop of brown, curly hair. Born on May 14, 1984, Zuckerberg was raised in Dobbs Ferry outside New York, one of four children of a dentist father and a psychiatrist mother.

Zuckerberg began writing computer programs at the age of 11 and went to high school at the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, where he was captain of the fencing team, before entering elite Harvard University. He launched thefacebook.com, as it was then known, from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004, with roommates and classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. The stated goal then was the same as it is today: "Making the world more open and connected." Zuckerberg left Harvard in May 2004 for Silicon Valley, where he received his first major funding -- $500,000 -- from PayPal co-founder Thiel followed by nearly $13 million the next year from Accel Partners.

Despite recurring privacy complaints, Facebook has gone from strength to strength, growing from 50 million members in 2007 to more than 900 million today. "At Facebook, we're inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information," Zuckerberg said in his letter. "We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones -- the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they're thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want," he continued. "Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries."

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