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E.U. Rules Against Patent Play by Google’s Motorola Unit

The preliminary finding, which could lead to formal antitrust charges, comes as part of the commission’s battle to ensure that powerful companies with large patent portfolios do not block other companies from using technologies that are vital for smartphones and tablet computers.

“I think that companies should spend their time innovating and competing on the merits of the products they offer — not misusing their intellectual property rights to hold up competitors to the detriment of innovation and consumer choice,” said Joaquín Almunia, the European Union’s competition commissioner, in a statement Monday, before a news briefing on the topic.

The case focuses on how Motorola Mobility sought to legally block Apple in Germany from using a so-called “standard essential” patent that is part of the GSM mobile and wireless standard on which Europe relies.

A statement Monday by the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, said Motorola Mobility’s seeking the injunction against Apple amounted to “an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by E.U. antitrust rules.”

Google officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility, worth about $12.5 billion, cleared its biggest hurdles by winning regulatory approval in the United States and Europe in February 2012.

But in a warning at the same time, Mr. Almunia said his decision to approve that acquisition would not exonerate any wrongdoing concerning patents “by Motorola in the past or all future action by Google.”

In a statement at the time, Motorola Mobility said that it was “confident that a thorough investigation” would show it had honored its “obligations and complied with antitrust laws.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 6, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of the American and European approval of Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. It was in February 2012, not February of this year.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/technology/07iht-google07.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

British Reporter Says He’ll Name Names in Phone Hacking Scandal

The reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, 49, who was the chief reporter for the now-defunct tabloid The News of the World, gave the warning in a statement issued through his lawyers in connection with his wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation. Mr. Thurlbeck was one of the first people arrested by Scotland Yard in a renewed investigation of the phone hacking this year, but he has denied publicly having played any part in the illegal interception of cellphone voicemails.

Mr. Thurlbeck remained on the News International payroll into September, when he was fired. He has accused the company of having unfairly dismissed him for being a whistleblower. In his statement on Friday, he suggested that both sides “retain a dignified silence until we meet face to face in a public tribunal,” a hearing on his suit.

“There is so much I could have said publicly to the detriment of News International but so far have chosen not to,” he said. “At the length, truth will out.”

News International declined to comment on Mr. Thurlbeck’s statement.

With his statement, Mr. Thurlbeck appeared to have joined other current or former News International employees who have shown a readiness to contradict one another in public about newsroom wrongdoing at The News of the World — in particular, who authorized the phone hacking, who at the newspaper and at News International knew about it, and when.

The discrepancies apparently in accounts given this summer by Murdoch executives to a parliamentary committee investigating the scandal will be explored further in additional hearings called by the committee this fall.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=f231f1789ff06b9eb23ce83b03ee2758

E.U. Rules Against Patent Play by Google’s Motorola Unit

British Reporter Says He’ll Name Names in Phone Hacking Scandal

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