Saturday, September 29, 2012

Samsung OKd on bid to rescind sales ban - San Francisco Chronicle

PATENTS

Samsung OKd on bid to cancel ban

Samsung Electronics can pursue its efforts to rescind a ban on U.S. sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer that's part of a dispute with Apple, a U.S. appeals court said Friday.

The court said San Jose U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh can have jurisdiction to consider whether to lift the ban, which had been imposed before a patent-infringement trial that ended last month. The jury found that Samsung didn't infringe a design patent that had been the basis for blocking sales in the United States.

Apple contends the ban should remain in place because the jury found the Galaxy Tab infringed other patents. Koh had refused to act because the ban was on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. She said she might permit sales if granted jurisdiction.

ELECTRIC CARS

Tesla stock up on news of more shares to sell

Shares of Tesla Motors, the electric-car maker led by Elon Musk, gained 2.8 percent Friday after the company expanded a stock offering.

Tesla stock rose to $29.28 after reaching $29.89 earlier. The Palo Alto company said in a regulatory filing Friday that it expects to sell 6.93 million additional shares at $28.25 each, an increase of 2.58 million from what it reported in a Tuesday filing.

The company said it expects to receive net proceeds of $192.7 million, or $221.6 million if the underwriter, Goldman Sachs Group, exercises its option to purchase additional shares in full. Chief Executive Officer Musk, who this week lowered the output forecast for the Model S sedan, said he will purchase as many as 35,398 shares at a price of about $1 million.

Tesla expects to deliver 200 to 225 Model S cars in the third quarter and 2,500 to 3,000 in the fourth. The company's previous forecast was for 5,000 Model S deliveries this year.

ONLINE VIDEO

Arrest of Google exec stirs debate

The arrest of a top Google executive is reviving a debate about Brazilian laws that hold services such as YouTube responsible for the videos posted on them, making the country a hotbed of attempts to stifle digital content.

Legal experts said this week that the Mountain View company violated a judge's order to take down videos on its YouTube subsidiary that target Brazilian political candidates - and that the judge was completely within the law in issuing the arrest warrant.

But they said the arrest of Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, head of Google's Brazil operations, underscores the need to modernize laws that treat offensive material on the Internet like material that is carried by newspapers, television and radio, holding platforms such as Google responsible for user-provided content.

Coelho was released shortly after his arrest Wednesday and agreed to appear before a court at an undetermined time.

ENERGY

Chevron paying big fine in Brazil

Chevron has paid a multimillion-dollar fine for several "irregularities" in connection with last year's oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's National Petroleum Agency said.

The agency said Thursday that Chevron paid the $17.3 million fine last week for 24 of 25 irregularities detected. The statement did not provide details on the irregularities. Some 155,000 gallons of crude are thought to have been released in the November 2011 spill.

The agency said it granted Chevron a 30 percent discount because it paid the fine on time and did not challenge it.

Chevron confirmed it paid the fine and said it will "implement a number of process improvements developed from lessons learned in the incident."

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