Cellphone rivals Motorola Inc and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd have reached a technology licensing agreement, ending more than two years of litigation. Motorola shares rose 4 percent on Friday as investors turned their focus to the value of Motorola's technology patents, for which RIM will make a one-off payment and pay ongoing royalties.

Today, Yahoo! and Nokia, announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them. Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! will leverage each others' strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices. As part of the alliance: Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!'s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as "powered by Ovi." Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia's Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as "Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!" Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.

Google on Tuesday said it will acquire Global IP Solutions Holding, which makes processing software for voice and video over IP, for $68.2 million. The deal means that Google will own the voice and video conferencing engine behind its competitors' instant messaging systems. Global IP Solutions (GIPS) provides best-in-class voice and video processing in IP communications. GIPS enables its customers to deliver unmatched quality, with a faster time to market and less risk than alternative solutions. Its customer list includes Nortel, Oracle, Samsung, WebEx, Yahoo!, AOL and other key players in the VoIP market. The purchase of GIPS comes a day before Google's I/O conference. Given Google's acquisition of Gizmo5 and its existing Google Voice service, the search giant appears to be collecting enough assets to give Skype and others competition on the consumer and business fronts. GIPS's software can also be layered into Google Apps in multiple areas as a business collaboration tool.

Google has announced that it will soon bring an end to its online sales of its Nexus One handset. The company will still show off Android phones on its site, but purchases will be done the old-fashioned way: through mobile service providers. Google's direct sales model was an attempt to radically alter the business model for mobile handsets. Instead of buying a phone from a carrier, with a contract and a subsidized up-front cost, the company was hoping to cut out the network. Customers would buy the phone directly from Google, paying the full fee up-front, and then putting in a SIM of their choice. This, however, ignored the realities of the phone market, as the company soon discovered. Its approach to tech support-send an e-mail and maybe get an answer eventually-was always doomed to failure. Given how important phones are to our lives and our lifestyles, that was never going to be acceptable. Customers might not like calling call centers, but if there's one thing worse than being stuck on hold waiting for the muzak to end, it's not being stuck on hold at all, because there isn't even anyone to call. A month after launching the phone the company relented, giving its customers the ability to talk to someone. But this was not the only problem with its sales model. As it wrote in the announcement, "it's clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone." A phone is something that people want to touch, to see how heavy it is, what it looks like in person, how good the screen is, if it fits nicely in their pocket-for many of us, the phone is an extension of ourselves, which is why we see so many different shapes and styles of handset on the market. So expecting people to be happy buying a handset that they cannot even touch, much less play around with, was a bridge too far.

"La nascita dello store dedicato all'editoria digitale - ha dichiarato Franco Bernabè, Amministratore Delegato di Telecom Italia - rappresenta un'importante opportunità per costruire assieme agli editori un nuovo modello di business, completamente diverso da quelli già adottati in altri Paesi, lasciando alle case editrici la più ampia autonomia in termini di scelte commerciali e di determinazione dei prezzi".

At the Intel Investor Conference on Tuesday, Intel's Paul Otellini opened his remarks by taking a step back to survey the results of the major restructuring that Intel has been implementing since 2006. This change has turned Intel from a company that makes chips into a company that sells platforms, software, and services-the whole stack. "The company has been transformed in a way that is remarkable, and in the aggregate reflects a different kind of company than we've ever had before," Otellini said. Much of this transformation was about getting costs down (read: layoffs) and boosting per-worker productivity, but the most interesting and important part of the story was the software and services piece. Early on in his talk, Otellini set the tone by naming silicon process technology and software as two of Intel's key differentiators from the competition. At a later point in the talk, he went on to explain that back in 2000, "we were just a chip company... over the years we've added a number of things. We've got platforms, software, and services increasingly being added."

Porsche plans to grow quite a bit between now and 2015, with a goal to hit 150,000 global sales: Detlev von Platen, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, reportedly told Automotive News that the task could be accomplished with the help of Volkswagen technology. Von Platen says, "It makes sense to think about some synergies in terms of research and development, and these discussions are taking place at the moment with VW."

HTC Corporation today filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) to halt the importation and sale of the iPhone, iPad and iPod in the United States. HTC claims five HTC patents are being infringed on by Apple. "We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones."

The so-called BlackPad RIM tablet is being pushed out to early next year. The move marks the third time in two weeks that a would-be tablet maker has shelved product preparations aimed at challenging the Apple iPad. Last week, Hewlett-Packard pulled the plug on its Slate tablet and Microsoft reportedly withdrew plans for the Courier device.

Bloomberg takes a look at Apple's spate of corporate acquisitions over the past six months, which has seen the company reverse a long-standing policy of making very infrequent deals with its recent purchases of Quattro Wireless, Lala Media, Intrinsity, and Siri. In particular, the report points to the growing rivalry between Apple and Google, stoked in large part on the acquisitions front by Google reportedly swooping in to snatch mobile advertising firm AdMob just as Apple was looking to finalize a deal to do so. "The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift," said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. "It looks like there's an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there's an increasing urgency on Apple's part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space. One interesting tidbit included in the report is evidence that Apple has sometimes moved very quickly when looking to make an acquisition, even giving targets as little as three hours to agree to a deal. To avoid publicity and possible rival bids, Apple in some cases has offered a target only a three-hour period in which to accept the terms of a sale, according to one executive with knowledge of the situation.

HP and Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors. The combination of HP's global scale and financial strength with Palm's unparalleled webOS platform will enhance HP's ability to participate more aggressively in the fast-growing, highly profitable smartphone and connected mobile device markets. Palm's unique webOS will allow HP to take advantage of features such as true multitasking and always up-to-date information sharing across applications. "Palm's innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP's mobility strategy and create a unique HP experience spanning multiple mobile connected devices," said Todd Bradley, executive vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP. "And, Palm possesses significant IP assets and has a highly skilled team. The smartphone market is large, profitable and rapidly growing, and companies that can provide an integrated device and experience command a higher share. Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market."

Apple has finalized a deal to acquire a small chip company called Intrinsity, Apple confirmed. Intrinsity, of Austin, Tex., made a name for itself by creating a fast chip for mobile devices in cooperation with Samsung, both a partner and competitor to Apple. Many experts in the chip industry have speculated that Apple relied on Intrinsity's chip as the basis for the main engine behind its new iPad.

Google and Apple continue to find themselves on opposite sides of the world, as Google has apparently agreed to buy a chip-design start-up populated by former Apple employees. Agnilux, a stealth chip start-up in San Jose, Calif., is Google's latest acquisition. A company spokesman confirmed the parties had reached a deal but provided no further details on one of Google's more curious acquisitions in recent memory. Little is known about Agnilux other than the fact that it was founded by former employees of P.A. Semi, the chip start-up Apple bought in 2008. The New York Times attempted to track down details about the company in February and didn't get very far, but was able to confirm that several former P.A. Semi and Apple employees were among the co-founders, as well as Scott Redman, a former software architect at TiVo.

In an interview with PC Pro, the deputy president of Sony's VAIO Business Group, Ryosuke Akahane, has revealed that the company will soon be effectively splitting its laptop business into two distinct groups. The first, called "division one," will continue with laptops designed and built by Sony as before, but the second, or "division two," will rely on laptops built by other manufacturers. Those behind-the-scenes changes may not be readily apparent to consumers, however, as the so-called division two laptops will still carry the VAIO name, and will apparently have the same "taste of VAIO" and "style of VAIO," with Sony naturally first approving all third-party designs. "We need a certain market share. And if we don't have a certain market share, it's tough to survive"

In a statement, RIM President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said: "RIM is excited about the planned acquisition of QNX Software Systems and we look forward to ongoing collaboration between Harman, QNX and RIM to further integrate and enhance the user experience between smartphones and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems. In addition to our interests in expanding the opportunities for QNX in the automotive sector and other markets, we believe the planned acquisition of QNX will also bring other value to RIM in terms of supporting certain unannounced product plans for intelligent peripherals, adding valuable intellectual property to RIM's portfolio and providing long-term synergies for the companies based on the significant and complementary OS expertise that exists within the RIM and QNX teams today."

IEEE's report "Patent Power" lists the top companies ranked by number of patents: is it really the best way to measure innovation? Shouldn't be better to measure the introduction of new products, and rank them by novelty and by widespread acceptance, in some way that reflects a more substantial measure of innovation and its impact on the economy?

Amazon's 1-Click has come under a lot of fire over the years from critics who question whether such a broad technology should be patented at all. It refers to the process by which online shoppers make purchases with a single click, having previously entered their payment and shipping information. Amazon's patent on one-click shopping has survived the scrutiny of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). In an official notice published this month, the USPTO declared its intent to issue a reexamination certificate affirming the validity of Amazon's amended version of the patent. The amended version has a slightly smaller scope, limiting the patent's coverage to online shopping cart systems rather than all one-click e-commerce. In its statement today, the USPTO declared that the new version of the patent is valid, despite the fact that it has no functional difference from the original version. This outcome, which took four years to reach, reflects the deficiencies of the reexamination process.

The Netflix contest was significant as a test case for new ideas about how to efficiently foster innovation in the Internet era - notably, offering prizes as an incentive and encouraging online collaboration to tap minds worldwide. The lessons of the Netflix contest could extend well beyond improving movie picks. The researchers from around the world were grappling with a huge data set - 100 million movie ratings - and the challenges of large-scale modeling, which can be applied across the fields of science, commerce and politics.