Business / Technology

Google today confirmed reports that it’s selling its Motorola Mobility smartphone business to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. Interestingly, Google will keep the “vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio, including current patent applications and invention disclosures,” the company said in a joint news release with Lenovo. “As part of its ongoing relationship with…

Google has hired Blaise Agüera y Arcas, one of Microsoft’s distinguished and engineers and one of the creators Microsoft’s Photosynth. Photosynth allows users to capture and piece together images into 3-D, immersive environments, and then share those 3-D creations. Arcas, who also helped develop Bing Maps, will work on machine learning at Google, according to a More

Home page of the NORAD Santa Tracker 2013 (Photo from Microsoft)

[This post has been updated with information on Microsoft's/NORAD's and Google's Santa Trackers.]

NORAD is again partnering with Microsoft this year to power its popular Santa Tracker, after first switching from Google to Microsoft last year to do so.

The NORAD Santa Tracker, which is now live, is a  showcase this year for Internet Explorer.

Among the interesting tidbits to come out of the recently concluded Microsoft-Motorola patent trial is this fact: The presiding juror was Mary-Claire King, a University of Washington professor and a renowned geneticist who played a leading role in the identification of breast cancer genes. King, who declined to comment on the trial, led the…

The jury in a long-running patent trial between Microsoft and Motorola has decided in Microsoft’s favor, saying that Motorola breached its agreements to provide  licenses to certain of its patents on fair and reasonable terms.

The U.S. District Court jury in Seattle, which deliberated for about three hours, awarded Microsoft about $15 million in damages — about half of what Microsoft had sought.

This means that Microsoft has won both rounds of a patent battle in which the court decided that Motorola’s patents in the case were worth far less than Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, had initially asked Microsoft  for.

[Update 9:20 p.m.: My story from today's Day 1 of the trial is here.]

From earlier:

[Note: I will be at the courthouse starting at 9 a.m. Monday to cover the opening day of this trial. Jury selection is scheduled to take place in the morning; opening statements may start as soon as this afternoon. Follow along on Twitter at @janettu.]

Microsoft and Motorola head to federal court in Seattle today for the start of part 2 of a patent trial that has become part of the larger battle between Microsoft and Google, which now owns Motorola Mobility.

A jury will decide whether Motorola breached its agreement to provide certain of its industry-standard patents to Microsoft on fair and reasonable terms.

Microsoft today filed a lawsuit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seeking a court order forcing Customs to enforce an import ban against certain Motorola smartphones.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Washington D.C., accuses the U.S. agencies of “arbitrary refusal to enforce an order” of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).

Microsoft this afternoon joined several other high-tech companies in urging the U.S. government to permit more transparency on some of the national security requests it makes of tech companies.

The move came after reports broke last week in The Guardian and The Washington Post about a U.S. government surveillance program code-named PRISM, which targets primarily foreigners. It  allows the U.S. government access to  user information from computer servers of Microsoft and eight other technology companies.

“Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including FISA orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues,” the company said in a statement.

Microsoft was referring to orders issued by the government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The tech companies are not allowed to disclose the number or scope of FISA orders it gets, or even, according to The New York Times, to acknowledge that those orders exist.

On Thursday, Microsoft released an updated version of its recent YouTube app for Windows Phone, after Google had complained that the app was violating YouTube’s terms of service.

Today, Microsoft has pulled that updated version, which had addressed some of Google’s concerns, telling users to instead download its old YouTube app while it works with Google to create an updated app that complies with all of Google’s requirements.

“Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks,”  the two companies said in a statement. “Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time.”

Though the current app is being removed from the Windows Phone Store, it will still work on Windows Phones for those who’ve already installed it.

The U.S. International Trade Commission has decided to make final a judge’s preliminary ruling that Microsoft’s Xbox console does not infringe on a Motorola patent.

The decision brings to a close a case in which Motorola — now owned by Google — had sought an import ban into the U.S. of all Xbox consoles, claiming that certain technologies used in the Xbox violate Motorola’s patents. (Xbox console are manufactured mainly in China.)