Judge throws out Proview's iPad suit vs Apple

A California judge tossed out a lawsuit in which the Chinese firm Proview Electronics Co Ltd accused Apple Inc of tricking them into selling the `iPad' name for less than it might have.

Proview, which is also suing Apple in China over alleged illegal use of the iPad name, filed a lawsuit in California superior court in February, saying the US consumer electronics company deceived it by purchasing the rights to the name through a special-purpose vehicle.

Last week, judge Mark Pierce dismissed the case, agreeing with Apple's argument that the two parties had agreed to settle any disagreements in Hong Kong.

Apple says it bought ownership of the trademark in various countries from Proview, once a global monitor maker, but the Chinese company argues that the US firm dealt with only one unit of Proview and it retains rights to the iPad name in China.

An Apple spokeswoman reiterated the company's previous statement that Proview is "unfairly trying to get more from Apple for a trademark we already paid for."

SpaceX rocket lifts off for space station trial run

An unmanned rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday on the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.

The 178-foot (54-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:44 a.m. (0744 GMT) from a refurbished launch pad just south of where NASA launched its now-retired space shuttles.

Less than 10 minutes later, the rocket delivered its cargo - a Dragon capsule with 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of supplies for the station crew - into orbit.

"Feels like a giant weight just came off my back," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter after Dragon deployed its solar panels, the first of several key milestones that must be met before the spacecraft is cleared to dock at the station.

"Every launch into space is a thrilling event, but this one is especially exciting because it represents the potential of a new era in American spaceflight," John Holdren, President Barack Obama's chief science adviser, said in a statement.

NASA is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over the task of flying cargo - and eventually astronauts - to the $100 billion space station, which orbits about 240 miles above Earth.

Currently, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than $60 million per person. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo to the station.

If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.

The Aerospace Industries Association said the launch was a milestone for U.S. space flight and showed how collaborative investments by government and industry could help the United States remain an important player in space.

"Continuing collaborative investments in NASA's commercial crew program will be crucial to ending our dependence on Russia for astronaut launch," said AIA President Marion Blakey. "This launch, along with other investments NASA and industry are making, shows that our nation still has the right stuff."

SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences Corp, already hold contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station.

SpaceX also is among four firms vying to build space taxis to fly astronauts, tourists and non-NASA researchers.

Separately, NASA contributed nearly $400 million to SpaceX's $1.2 billion commercial space program, which includes development and up to three test flights of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules.

The U.S. Air Force is closely following launch efforts by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences in hopes of introducing competition to the launches of national security satellites later this decade. At the moment, most big military and intelligence satellites are launched into space by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing Co (BA.N) and Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N).

An analysis by the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that a similar program under traditional NASA procurement would have cost four to 10 times as much, said NASA's Alan Lindenmoyer, who manages the agency's commercial spaceflight initiatives.

Tuesday's launch followed a last-second cutoff of Falcon's planned liftoff on Saturday. Engineers later traced the problem to climbing pressure in an engine chamber due to a faulty purge valve.

"It looks like we probably could have flown with the condition," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said. “"Once we separated from the ground, things would have settled down a bit, but it was still the right thing to do."

Dragon will take about a day to reach the space station's orbit. It will then spend another day practicing maneuvers and testing its communications systems and navigation aids. If all goes as planned, NASA is expected to clear Dragon for berthing at the space station on Friday.

“"Everything is looking really good," Musk told reporters after launch. “I would count today as a success no matter what happens the rest of the mission."

'Flame cyber weapons' found in Middle East

Security experts have discovered a highly sophisticated computer virus in Iran and other Middle East countries that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that claimed responsibility for discovering the virus.

Kaspersky researchers said on Monday they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.

Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.

"This is one of many, many campaigns that happen all the time and never make it into the public domain," said Alexander Klimburg, a cyber security expert at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs.

A cyber security agency in Iran said on its English website that Flame bore a "close relation" to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country's nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.

Iran's National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

Kaspersky Lab said it discovered Flame after a U.N. telecommunications agency asked it to analyze data on malicious software across the Middle East in search of the data-wiping virus reported by Iran.

STUXNET CONNECTION

Experts at Kaspersky Lab and Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security who have spent weeks studying Flame said they have yet to find any evidence that it can attack infrastructure, delete data or inflict other physical damage.

Yet they said they are in the early stages of their investigations and that they may discover other purposes beyond data theft. It took researchers months to determine the key mysteries behind Stuxnet, including the purpose of modules used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Iran.

"Their initial research suggest that this was probably written by the authors of Stuxnet for covert intelligence collection," said John Bumgarner, a cyber warfare expert with the non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit think tank.

Flame appears poised to go down in history as the third major cyber weapon uncovered after Stuxnet and its data-stealing cousin Duqu, named after the Star Wars villain.

The Moscow-based company is controlled by Russian malware researcher Eugene Kaspersky. It gained notoriety after solving several mysteries surrounding Stuxnet and Duqu.

Their research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan and Syria.

The virus contains about 20 times as much code as Stuxnet, which caused centrifuges to fail at the Iranian enrichment facility it attacked. It has about 100 times as much code as a typical virus designed to steal financial information, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg.

GATHERING DATA

Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.

Kaspersky Lab said Flame and Stuxnet appear to infect machines by exploiting the same flaw in the Windows operating system and that both viruses employ a similar way of spreading.

That means the teams that built Stuxnet and Duqu might have had access to the same technology as the team that built Flame, Schouwenberg said.

He said that a nation state would have the capability to build such a sophisticated tool, but declined to comment on which countries might do so.

Intel's plans for virtual TV come into focus

Intel is counting on facial-recognition technology for targeted ads and a team of veteran entertainment dealmakers to win over reluctant media partners for its new virtual television service.

But so far it's proving a challenge to get the service off the ground, thanks to an unwillingness on the part of major media content providers to let Intel unbundle and license specific networks and shows at a discount to what cable and satellite partners pay.


Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, has kept its strategy to launch a slimmed down cable TV service under wraps as the tech giant risks getting into a completely new line of business.

According to five sources who have been negotiating with Intel for months, the company is emphasizing a set-top box employing Intel technology that can distinguish who is watching, potentially allowing Intel to target advertising.

The set-top box pitched by Intel doesn't identify specific people, but it could provide general data about viewers' gender or whether they're adults or children to help target advertising, two sources said.

Intel's plans put it in the middle of Silicon Valley's battle for the living room. Heavyweights such as Apple, Amazon and Google believe the $100 billion US cable television ecosystem - dominated by major distributors such as Comcast and DirecTV Group and program makers like Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc. - is ripe for disruption for reasons ranging from shifting viewer habits to ever-increasing programming costs.

While none of these companies have so far been able to make major inroads, Intel thinks it can build a better set-top box and over-the-top subscription service to deliver TV content to consumers, even though the initiative catapults it into virgin market territory. A successful TV service showcasing Intel technology could be a big step toward making its chips prevalent in more living room devices.

"If they can create a virtual network and it incorporates proprietary Intel technology, they could certainly bring something different to the subscription TV model." said JMP analyst Alex Gauna.

Intel's offering aims to exploit one of the TV industry's major issues: the reliability, or lack thereof, of Nielsen ratings data on audiences. Nielsen has long been the dominant provider of TV ratings, but the accuracy of its data has come under attack by some network programmers, who argue that its polling system of 50,000 homes is antiquated for the digital age.

For its part, Intel claims that the new interactive features in its set-top box would add greater value to TV advertising and help offset reduced revenue from licensing fees for network owners.

"They've told us the technology is going to be so much more interactive with ads that you can make more money. But it's just a little unproven," said one executive who has been involved in the talks.

An Intel representative declined to comment for this story.

Apple still dominates world`s top brands

Apple has maintained its place as the world's most valuable brand over the past year, leading a group of technology-related companies that dominate the top 10, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The iPhone and iPad maker has boosted its brand value by 19 percent in the past year to $183 billion, or 37 percent of its market capitalisation, according to the annual BrandZ study by leading brands and market-research agency Millward Brown.

Facebook, with a market value of $82 billion after its initial public offering last week, was the fastest climber in the top 100, seeing its brand value rise by 74 percent to $33.2 billion to put it in 19th place.

Seven of the top 10 were technology-related firms, although McDonald's and Coca-Cola kept their respective number four and number six rankings.

Marlboro moved up a notch to seventh place despite anti-smoking campaigns in much of the world.

Nick Cooper, Managing Director of Millward Brown Optimor which produced the study, said the strength of technology brands was a measure of the central and transformative role it plays in contemporary life.

"It's all pervading," Cooper told Reuters, "and there's a lot of excitement and new news. This is where it's all happening. That tends to increase not only the demand and financial performance but also the role of brand."

Millward Brown, part of global advertising group WPP, takes as its starting point the financial value of the company or the part of the company that produces the brand, and combines it with the brand's ability to create loyalty.

"When cars first appeared or when air travel first appeared, they became liberating. It's the turn of the technology sector at the moment," said Cooper.

Business technology brands also featured prominently in the top 10, with IBM switching places with Google to rise to second place. Microsoft kept its position at number five.