A U.S. judge has declined to lift an unusual order that prevents Motorola Mobility from enforcing a ban in Germany on the sale of Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS and XBox 360.

The federal judge in Seattle said Monday he could revisit his order that the German ruling not be enforced if circumstances change, representatives from Microsoft and Motorola said.

Judge James Robart, who is overseeing the dispute in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, had ordered Motorola not to enforce any injunction awarded in Germany before he had ruled on the underlying patent issues. Robart said the German ruling, if enforced, would improperly affect the negotiations between the companies.
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The jury has reached a partial verdict in the copyright phase of Oracle’s intellectual property dispute with Google, and the judge has given them one more day to try to resolve the remaining issue.

The jury foreman told the court on Friday that the 12-member panel had reached unanimous agreement on all but one of the questions on the verdict form, but that they’re at an “impasse” over that final issue.

The verdict form has four questions, each broken into multiple parts. The judge had indicated previously he would accept a partial verdict from the jury, so there was tension in the courtroom Friday when it appeared the jury was about to reveal their decisions.
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Nintendo legend and video game industry icon Shigeru Miyamoto has come out strongly against Sony’s new portable video game console. He said in a recent interview that the problem with the PlayStation Vita isn’t that it’s a poorly constructed device, but rather that it just isn’t being executed properly. Nintendo certainly isn’t one to suggest handheld game systems are on the way out, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.
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Samsung has debuted its long-awaited Galaxy S III, a slick smartphone loaded with some truly sweet and stellar specs that is sure to make even the most diehard Apple iPhone fanboi slightly envious.

The handset is powered by Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and boasts a 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display (1280 x 720 pixels), an 8MP rear camera, 1.9MP front camera and Wi-Fi Channel Bonding (doubles Wi-Fi bandwidth).

The Galaxy S III also introduces what Samsung calls “natural interaction,” a featyure designed to enhance the normally mundane interaction experience between the device and user.
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The handset will update the market-leading Galaxy SII, and is also expected to be the official phone of the London Olympics. It will be introduced at an event at Earl’s Court, starting at 7pm this evening, it is believed.

Samsung has emerged as the only Android handset manufacturer capable of seriously challenging Apple. Across a broad range of devices, it already outsells the iPhone maker, although Apple remains more profitable.
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The U.S. Department of the Interior has picked Google Apps to provide cloud-based email and collaboration applications to about 90,000 staffers, choosing Google’s services over Microsoft’s Office 365.

Google had sued the U.S. agency in 2010, claiming its requirements for the contract tilted the scales unfairly toward Microsoft. Google eventually dropped its lawsuit last September.

On Tuesday, the Interior Department announced that it had chosen Google Apps for Government to consolidate a variety of email systems it currently uses.
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Apple co-founder and award-winning computer engineer Steve Wozniak is no doubt one of the most influential people in the tech industry. That means that whatever he says, or does, can actually mean big - really big. So when “The Woz” said via his Twitter account that he was visiting AT&T for a Nokia Lumia 900 unit, everyone dug the story.

Apparently Steve had a lot of nice things to say about the Lumia 900, the $99.99 Windows Phone from Nokia that’s been selling like crazy. He said that it was surprising to see how the apps appear on the Lumia’s screen and how they look better and more beautiful than the same apps used on the iPhone and Android.
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