Samsung is having mixed results in its ongoing patent fight with Apple. In the United States it was handed a setback by a Federal Judge, but a United Kingdom court judge handed it a victory over Apple. According to Courthouse News, a Federal Judge who previously issued a temporary injunction that effectively banned the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphones in the U.S. (for violating Apple's patents) refused a request by the company to allow it to continue selling the device while it appeals the ruling. U.S.

Earlier this week iOS users noticed that a number of their apps were suddenly broken and unplayable. Over 70 apps including popular titles like Angry Birds were broken after a new update from Apple was deployed. It turns out the real culprit was Apple's DRM scheme, FairPlay. The short story is that, after the update was deployed, the DRM failed to recognize the game or app in question as "valid" and even uninstalling and reinstalling the app wouldn’t fix the problem.

In an interview with Reuters, the US Court of Appeals (Chicago) judge who recently tossed the patent litigation case between Apple and Motorola described patent litigants as "animals" and said that many companies should not have patent protections.

Apple may have to shut down its stores in Italy for 30 days, according to this BBC report. Apple's troubles stem from warranties and disclosing them properly to customers in Italy - a problem that earned them a 900,000 euros fine in late 2011. Instead of that standard warranty, Apple has been telling customers about its own paid-for service contract.

Apple's tenacious battle with China-based Proview over the last year over the iPad trademark in the country is finally settled. Apple has agreed to pay the company that owns the mark in China $60 million. Although Apple has said that Proview already licensed the use of the trademark in the region, Proview managed to win a number of major legal victories in the region that put Apple on defense.

An article on Webwereld.nl posits that Apple may have falsified evidence it used in its court case that led to Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 being banned in the European Union. Apple's main argument in that case is that consumers have a hard time distinguishing between the Galaxy Tab and the iPad. The evidence in question is a photo of the iPad side-by-side with the Galaxy Tab. In the picture it looks like both devices are of a similar size.

Not to be outdone by Microsoft's new Surface tablet, Google announced a new tablet of its own that it hopes can compete with Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire line. Google's new tablet, the Nexus 7 will be an Android-based games ready device using Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor. The tablet will be manufactured by Asus, runs on Android 4.1 ("Jelly Bean"), offers a 1280 x 800 display, a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, a 12 core GPU, and will support the Google Play marketplace.

Another day, another court doing the dirty work of one corporation against another. This time around it is Samsung who finds itself in the unenviable position of having the sale of its products banned in the United States.

According to a Financial Times report Apple has been fined AUS $2.25 million ($2.29 million USD) by the Australian government for falsely advertising that its new high definition iPad was compatible with high-speed 4G networks in the country.

Time's Techland points out some interesting statistics that many of us didn't know about Apple's iPad and iPhone devices: it costs less than $2 USD a year in electricity to charge. Of course, depending on where you live, and how hands-off your state government is in regulating your local utility company that cost might be slightly higher or lower.

According to this Eurogamer report, Sony has bid over a half a million dollars to secure top level web domains related to several of its products. Sony has bid a whopping $550,000 to secure ownership of three web domains: .sony, .xperia and .playstation. On a related note, Apple bid $185,000 for .apple, and Microsoft has bid for 11 different web domain names including .bing, .windows, .skype and .xbox for a total cost of $2.035 million.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Posner has rejected the claims of both Apple and Google-owned Motorola Mobility in a long-running patent fight between the two companies. Judge Posner rejected both companies’ damages claims. The trial was to begin on Monday.

"I have tentatively decided that the case should be dismissed with prejudice because neither party can establish a right to relief," Judge Posner wrote in his order yesterday.

Florian Mueller, patent law expert and proprietor of the wonderful web site Foss Patents, passed along a note letting us know that the Federal Trade Commission recently sent a letter to the International Trade Commission asking the organization not to ban the sale of the iPhone, iPad or Xbox 360 related to complaints filed by Google.

While Apple had its fingers crossed and was probably wishing on stars, a federal judge isn't feeling it. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said on Monday that she could not rule on an Apple motion seeking a preliminary injunction against Samsung Electronics that would halt the sale of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S. because the appeals court still has jurisdiction on the case.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian parliament has decided that an enquiry is necessary to investigate the "imbalance in pricing" for online content and services in the country compared to other global territories.

According to a GigaOM report Apple and Chinese company Proview Technology may soon resolve their ongoing legal battle over the use of the "iPad" name in the region.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin shared his "growing concern" with UK newspaper The Guardian over what he calls "very powerful forces" trying to restrict freedom on the internet. In an interview with the newspaper, Brin said that the efforts by governments and companies such as Facebook and Apple to control online activity are "scary."

A federal judge has finally granted Apple's motion to intervene on behalf of iOS developers who have found themselves in a legal battle against Lodsys. It took the court nearly a year to come to this decision. This ruling allows the iOS platform holder to argue in court on behalf of developers who have been sued over alleged patent infringement for using the iOS system's in-app purchasing APIs. Apple has licensed the technology from Lodsys so it will argue in court that developers who use the platform do not infringe on the patent because Apple already obtained a license.

VantureBeat reports that antivirus firm F-Secure has released a free automated removal tool for the Flashback Trojan that has infected so many Mac OS X systems. The removal tool, available here, is in a zip file. Once you download and unzip it, follow the instructions to find the virus on your system.

Registered sex offenders of all designations residing in the state of New York will no longer be able to interact with children in some online console and PC games. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office has convinced several platform holders and game companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Warner Bros. and Disney Interactive Media Group to shut down the communication privileges of registered sex offenders.

According to data from a new market tracking app called VU Global (Distimo and CSS Insight), the Apple App Store enjoyed $5.41 million in daily sales throughout the month of January. The report breaks the figures down by iOS platforms: iPhone saw $3.34 million, while iPad saw $2.07 million in daily sales during the month of January.

"The strong growth in downloads and revenue for Apple and Android comes at a time when consumers typically rein back their spending after Christmas", said Paolo Pescatore, director of applications and content at CCS Insight.

According to CNBC's freshly released All-America Economic survey, Apple products are now in over half of America's homes. The report notes that 51 percent, or 55 million, of U.S. households now own at least one Apple device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac or Macbook). The survey says that the average household has 1.6 Apple devices, but also concludes that most Americans own three Apple devices. Around one-quarter of those surveyed said that they planned to buy one more Apple device in the next year.

We have heard whispers that iOS developers use companies to manipulate their app rankings on the Apple App Store, but one such developer speaks frankly with Digiday about the practice and why he'd like to see it go away. Applications of iOS platforms have a hard time getting visibility on Apple's App Store because there are so many apps competing for the same business. 

Taken with a grain of salt and small amount of indifference, a study from data-driven review site Bundle that found that Mac users were cooler than PC users is kind of amusing. Their conclusion, based on an analysis of the spending habits of 700,000 PC and Mac buyers, is that Mac users were more "fashion-forward" and "style-conscious" than PC users.

Last week EA Mobile removed Battlefield 3: Aftershock from the Apple App Store because users complained about stability and a lack of content. Now we have learned that another recently released iOS title, The Simpsons: Tapped Out, has been yanked from Apple's App Store. This time out EA says that it pulled the popular free app from the marketplace because of an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction to the game. 

As reported by CNN (by way of Eurogamer), Apple is now valued at $500 billion - as much as the gross national product of countries such as Poland, Sweden, Saudi Arabia or Belgium. The company is also closing in on Microsoft, which was once valued at $600 billion (it's currently worth about $267 billion). Only three other companies have managed to surpass that milestone number: ExxonMobil, Cisco, and General Electric.

Proview Electronics has opened up another front in its war against Apple of the iPad name: the United States. The company that is suing Apple in China over use of the "iPad" brand in China, has filed an additional lawsuit in the Superior Court of the State of California in Santa Clara. The lawsuit, filed on February 17, alleges that Apple committed fraud when it used a front company - a law firm called IP Application Development Ltd. - to purchase the iPad trademark from Proview on Dec. 23, 2009 for 35,000 British pounds ($55,000 USD).

Despite complaints about poor working conditions and suicides, people in China looking for a job continue to flock to Foxconn. A Reuters UK article written by James Pomfret and filed after visiting Foxconn's main recruitment center (Longhua, China) claims that thousands of workers from rural regions wait on a daily basis outside the company's plant to take aptitude tests in the hope of gaining employment.

Earlier this month Electronic Arts released the free-to-play, ad-supported Battlefield 3: Aftershock game on the Apple App Store. It seemed to be doing well, but apparently the game has been yanked. The sudden removal of the game isn't all that much of a mystery: EA looked at the negative reviews the game was getting and decided that it needed to make some drastic changes. The average user review score for the game was right around 2.5 stars.

If you missed last night's episode of ABC's Nightline, it has made its way to YouTube. If you prefer to catch it at its source, ABC News, then you can simply follow this link. Why would you want to watch Nightline? Last night the late-night news program ran an 18-minute long story on Foxconn, the notorious assembly plant used by Apple and other technology companies that has been accused of treating its workers with much disregard and a lack of compassion.