Nov 2 Newspapers Online 11-02-2013 | General

Rockstar, the consortium that bought the Nortel patents for $4.5 billion, sued Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Huawei and four other companies for patent infringement in U.S. District Court in Texas. Rockstar is jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony.

Google is accused of infringing seven patents. The patents cover technology that helps match Internet search terms with relevant advertising, the lawsuit said, which is the core of Google's search business.

A Google spokesman declined to comment. Representatives for Samsung, Huawei, HTC and Rockstar could not immediately be reached.

Samsung, Huawei and HTC all manufacture phones that operate on Google's Android operating system, which competes fiercely with Apple and Microsoft mobile products.

In 2011 Google placed an initial $900 million bid for Nortel's patents. Google increased its bid several times, ultimately offering as much as $4.4 billion.

After losing out to Rockstar on the Nortel patents, Google went on to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, a deal driven partly by Motorola's library of patents.

"Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe," the lawsuit said.

Rockstar is seeking increased damages against Google, as it claims Google's patent infringement is willful, according to the complaint.

It comes just days after a person claiming to be part of the group posted an online video threatening to hit out at the country's infrastructure.

The video protested Singapore's new licensing regulations for news sites.

The hacker, dubbed The Messiah, said the paper's report on the video was misleading.

The hacker left a comment on a section of the site saying: "Dear ST: You just got hacked for misleading the people!"

The message alleged that the Straits Times reporter who blogged on the video "chose to conveniently modify the sentence 'war against the Singapore government' into 'war against Singapore'".

"That in our opinion can be very misleading," the hacker posted.

The post added "the media has also misled our intentions by stating that we had plans to attack the infrastructure of Singapore on the 5th of November".

"That is ONLY our intention if the internet framework gets implemented. Not otherwise," it said.

Under new rules, unveiled by the Media Development Authority earlier this year, sites "that report regularly on issues relating to Singapore and have significant reach among readers" require individual licences.

Singapore Press Holdings, the firm the runs the Straits Times, said in a statement it had the taken down the affected blog from its site and also made a police report.

The paper also reported that the government's IT Security Incident Response Team - set up to co-ordinate responses to a cyber intrusion, had alerted all government agencies after the video was posted on YouTube on Tuesday.

AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson has said there is a "huge opportunity" to invest in mobile broadband in Europe and he would buy wireless assets if they were available at the right price.

AT&T is the second-largest mobile provider in the United States after Verizon Wireless. But it is not adding new customers in its home market as fast as Verizon, and it is also ceding market share to much smaller rival T-Mobile US.

Vodafone sold its stake in Verizon Wireless to its joint venture partner Verizon Communications Inc for $130 billion in September, leaving it with a pan-European business spanning Britain to Romania and operations in the Middle East and Africa.

AT&T has been eyeing Europe since the beginning of the year and has considered options including Vodafone and Britain's largest mobile carrier EE, a joint venture of Orange and Deutsche Telekom, sector bankers have previously told Reuters.

A Bloomberg report on Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation, said AT&T was examining how it could divide Vodafone up after a deal, keeping some assets and disposing of others. The companies have not entered formal negotiations, the report said.

Shares in Vodafone were up 2.9 percent to 231 pence at 1104 GMT, the biggest gainers on the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip stocks.

Espirito Santo analyst Robert Grindle said it was logical for AT&T to consider its options regarding Vodafone, following its U.S. exit.

Mr Kerry is the most senior Obama administration official to have commented directly on an issue that has upset America's European allies.

He said he will work with the president to prevent further inappropriate acts by the National Security Agency.

His comments come as Asian countries have protested at claims that Australia was involved in a US-led spy network.

China has demanded an explanation of the reports, while Indonesia has summoned the Australian ambassador to Jakarta.

In other developments:

Major technology companies including Google, Apple and Yahoo have called for the US government to do more to rein in the NSA's activities. A German MP said ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden is willing to travel to Berlin to help investigations into the alleged surveillance of Angela Merkel's phone. Indonesia's foreign minister said reports that the NSA used Australian embassies to eavesdrop on Asian countries would indicate a "serious breach" of diplomatic rules. In his comments, Mr Kerry also defended the need for increased surveillance, saying it had thwarted terrorist attacks.

"We have actually prevented airplanes from going down, buildings from being blown up, and people from being assassinated because we've been able to learn ahead of time of the plans," Mr Kerry told a conference in London via video link.

"I assure you, innocent people are not being abused in this process, but there's an effort to try to gather information. And yes, in some cases, it has reached too far inappropriately.

"And the president, our president, is determined to try to clarify and make clear for people, and is now doing a thorough review in order that nobody will have the sense of abuse... we are going to make sure that does not happen in the future." he said. Mr Kerry, in his remarks to a conference organised by the Open Government Partnership, said that while some surveillance may have been excessive, claims that up to 70 million were being monitored were an "exaggeration".

Claims about the extent of US surveillance of targets such as European leaders have strained Washington's diplomatic relations with some of its key allies.

'Serious breach' Last week it was alleged that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone had been tapped for up to 10 years.

Drones have a negative bias in the media, says Cummings, because they are essentially seen as spy cameras. But most people don’t realise that when they are on a plane they are effectively travelling on a drone. The fly-by-wire technology that exists on all Airbus and many Boeing craft is the exact same technology that exists on drones.

The reason why drones are the answer to the future is that the truth is we are terrible drivers. Humans inherently have a half-second lag in almost any quick response that they need to have, like a ball rolling out in a street or seeing an aircraft in the sky and you have to take evasive action. Even a half-second delay can mean the difference between life and death, and computers and automated systems don’t have that – they have microseconds.

So, our transportation network of the future, both on the ground and in the air, will actually be safer when we turn it over to computers.

There really aren’t any technological hurdles to this idea, says Cummings. The biggest hurdles we have are psychological and cultural, in terms of giving up the car. But no new tech needs to be developed to have your own personal flying car. What we have to do is improve production and reduce manufacturing costs, and what that means is that we need more robots. So this is almost a self-circular process, where we need robots to build robots to make them cheaper.

Should we worry about the machines rising up and taking over? No, what Cummings says she is worried about is hackers and terrorists who want to do wrong. One of the things she is working on is trying to develop technology that allows any flying robot to be able to fend off any attack and be able to navigate itself without any GPS or any other external signal. There are lots of different possibilities for what your personal air vehicle could look like. You could own your own in your driveway or garage, and you could jump in it. Or we could have a shared network like the plane version of Zipcar. People should be excited about this: it promises much in terms of safer travel, and in parts of the world where the road and air networks are poor, people will be able to get the goods and services they need. So, when we look at globalising this concept of personal air vehicles, it means we will see the quality of life improve dramatically for everyone around the world. For more World-Changing Ideas, click here.

"Speaking the truth is not a crime," read the letter from the former U.S. spy agency contractor, who has taken refuge in Russia. He gave the letter to German lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele, who presented it to the media in Berlin on Friday.

The Obama administration has said it cannot provide enrollment figures from HealthCare.gov because it doesn't have the numbers. The federal website, where residents of 36 states can buy new healthcare plans under President Barack Obama's law, was launched on October 1.

"We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven't given it to date," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers on Wednesday.

But the documents, which are labeled "war room" notes and appear to be summaries of issues with the problematic website beginning on October 2, indicate a mere six enrollments had occurred by that morning - the day after the website was launched and almost immediately crashed.

"High capacity on the website, direct enrollment not working," the October 2 notes said. By later that day, "approximately 100" enrollments had taken place.

"As of yesterday, there were 248 enrollments," said the notes from the morning of October 3.

The documents were released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has been demanding information from the administration about the website's problems. The committee is chaired by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican opponent of Obamacare.

The notes were from meetings at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the arm of the Health and Human Services Department that has been overseeing the website, an Issa spokeswoman said. The documents were first reported by CBS News.

Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said the department will release Obamacare enrollment statistics on a monthly basis after coordinating information from different sources. This will including call centers, paper applications for insurance, and data from insurers and states. The first release of enrollment data will likely be mid-November, she said.

"These appear to be notes, they do not include official enrollment statistics," Peters said of the documents Issa's panel released.

He appealed to both sides in Syria's civil war to compromise and criticized the opposition for demanding assurances of President Bashar al-Assad's departure as a condition for the talks.

"I hope it will be possible to hold the conference by the end of this year but we understand that the influence of all sides taking part is limited," Medvedev told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday.

"It depends to a great extent on the positions of the Syrian sides. We're pushing them towards this, and I hope everyone who talks to different circles in Syria will do the same," he said.

"It's a difficult process and everyone must compromise, including opposition leaders and the Syrian government, of course."

Russia has been Assad's most powerful backer during the two-and-a-half-year-old conflict, delivering weapons, blocking three U.N. Security Council resolutions meant to pressure him and saying his exit cannot be a precondition for peace talks.

U.S., Russian and U.N. envoys are to meet in Geneva on Tuesday as part of preparations for the long-delayed conference, which Russia and the United States first proposed in May.

The latest target date for the talks, November 23, looks likely to be pushed back and sources close to the negotiations say a main point of contention is the role of the Western-backed opposition coalition.

ASSAD NEEDS GUARANTEES

Western and Gulf Arab countries opposed to Assad say the Geneva talks should be between a "single delegation of the Syrian regime and a single delegation of the opposition" led by the coalition.

Russia sees the coalition as just one part of the opposition and has suggested that several delegations, including Damascus-based figures tolerated by the government, could represent Assad's enemies.

"I think that the ideas that are sometimes put forward - let's exclude President Assad and then agree on everything - are unrealistic as long as Assad is in power," Medvedev said.

"He's not mad. He must receive some kind of guarantees or, in any case, some kind of proposals on the development of political dialogue in Syria itself, on possible elections, on his personal fate."

Assad suggested last month that he could seek re-election in a vote scheduled for next year.

On 30 October, Cecilia Abadie was pulled over and issued with a ticket for speeding and wearing the smart spectacles while driving.

Ms Abadie was cited for breaking a Californian law which prohibits people from watching TV while driving.

She is now considering whether to take legal action to fight the ticket on the grounds that the device was turned off.

Ms Abadie used her page on the Google+ social network to document her experience and share a picture of the ticket that was issued to her.

On that document, the policeman cited Ms Abadie for driving at 80mph (128km/h) in a 65mph zone on Interstate 15 in San Diego and because she was "driving with monitor visible to driver (Google Glass)". When contacted by the BBC, a spokesman for the Californian Highway Patrol said this was in violation of state vehicle code 27602.

In her comments on Google+, Ms Abadie said the officer who stopped her said wearing the smart spectacles was a danger because they could obscure her view of the road and other vehicles.

In her defence, she said she regularly drove while wearing the gadget but never turned it on. Google Glass is a wearable computer controlled by voice and touch that projects information on to a lens and in the eyeline of the owner.

Many of those who posted comments to her page said Google Glass might be covered by exceptions in the 27602 code that let a driver view a display if it shows maps, GPS or can help "enhance or supplement the driver's view".

An executive at Google said it was not aware of the alleged activity, adding there was an "urgent need for reform".

The comments follow a Washington Post report based on leaks from Edward Snowden claiming that the NSA hacked links connecting data centres operated by Google and Yahoo.

The NSA's director said it had not had access to the companies' computers.

Gen Keith Alexander told Bloomberg TV: "We are not authorised to go into a US company's servers and take data."

But correspondents say this is not a direct denial of the latest claims.

'Extending encryption'

The revelations stem from documents leaked by ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and is wanted in the US in connection with the unauthorised disclosures.

The documents say millions of records were gleaned daily from the internet giants' internal networks.

They suggest that the NSA intercepted the data at some point as it flowed through fibre-optic cables and other network equipment connecting the companies' data centres, rather than targeting the servers themselves. The data was intercepted outside the US, the documents imply.

The data the agency obtained, which ranged from "metadata' to text, audio and video, were then sifted by an NSA programme called Muscular, operated with the NSA's British counterpart, GCHQ, the documents say.

The NSA already has "front-door" access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved programme known as Prism.

Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said Google did not provide any government with access to its systems.

"We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links, especially the links in the slide," Drummond said in a statement.

"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fibre networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform."

A spokesperson for Yahoo said the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centres, and we have not given access to our data centres to the NSA or to any other government agency".

The fund products will soon be available on Alibaba's Amazon-like Taobao website, according to the report.

No-one at Alibaba was available to comment.

The approval marks a further step for Alibaba towards providing an alternative to China's tightly regulated traditional financial system.

Alibaba affiliate Alipay, whose parent company Zhejiang Alibaba E-Commerce Co is controlled by billionaire Alibaba founder Jack Ma, said in August that it had partnered with 37 funds to offer wealth management products to its customers.

AliPay's fund payment platform Yu E Bao, or "leftover treasure", launched its Zenglibao fund, managed by the fledgling Tianhong Asset Management Co, in June.

The Zenglibao fund, a money market product, is the most successful fundraising by any mutual fund in China this year, attracting 55.7 billion yuan ($9.14 billion) in assets under management from 13 million customers as of September 30.

Rivals Tencent Holdings and Baidu Inc have also launched their own financial services platforms, and Tencent has also applied for approval for various banking services, as China's Internet companies shift away from their traditional online businesses in search of greater profit.

Alibaba founder Ma has said in the past that if China's banks don't change, Alibaba would change the banks, and that a finance industry outsider was needed to "stir things up".

In September Alibaba signed a strategic pact with mid-sized lender China Minsheng Banking Corp Ltd to offer financial services, including cooperating on wealth management and credit card businesses, direct banking and information technology.

Those forays into financial services have irked China's conservative banking sector, and there has been backlash, analysts say.

This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said.

Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria.

Arsenal

Now that the equipment has been put beyond use, Syria has until mid-2014 to destroy the chemical weapons themselves.

Its arsenal is believed to include more than 1,000 tonnes of the nerve gas sarin, the blister agent sulphur mustard and other banned chemicals, stored at dozens of sites.

In a separate development, a large explosion at a Syrian army base has been reported outside the coastal city of Latakia.

Local media say the base was targeted by Israeli forces but this has not been confirmed.

Israel is believed to have targeted the same base in July and is concerned that some weapons in Syria are being moved to Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon.

OPCW head of field operations Jerry Smith told the BBC that his team had "personally observed all the destruction activities".

"They are not now in a position to conduct any further production or mixing of chemical weapons," he said.

In a statement, the OPCW said its teams had inspected 21 of the 23 chemical weapons sites in Syria.

The other two were too dangerous to visit but the equipment had already been moved to some of the other sites, it said. Mr Smith said that verifying the destruction of Syria's weapons production capability had been a "particularly challenging job" because it had to be done in the midst of a conflict, with a tight deadline.

The OPCW earlier this month won the Nobel Peace Prize but Mr Smith said his team had been too busy to celebrate because of their work in Syria. "All stocks of chemical weapons and agents have been placed under seals that are impossible to break," OPCW spokesman Christian Chartier told the AFP news agency.

"These are 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents [which can be used to make weapons] and 290 tonnes of chemical weapons," he said.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says the OPCW's task is far from finished.

More than 1,000 tonnes of chemical precursors - the raw materials - remain to be removed and destroyed by the middle of next year, which our correspondent says will be a delicate and difficult process.