Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was no stranger to legal battles involving the patent system. Apple is currently waging war on a number of Android vendors and the company’s former CEO vowed to crush Google’s mobile platform before his untimely passing last year. ”I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple boss. “I’m going to d...

Sprint on Monday announced that the carrier is issuing another round of notes due in 2017 and 2020 in an attempt to generate approximately $2 billion in capital. The investment would allow Sprint to fund general operations, build out its LTE network and possibly help fund the Clearwire as it continues to struggle. “The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering of the Notes for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, redemptions or service requirements of outst...

Motorola Mobility announced on Wednesday that its Motorola Mobility Ventures arm has invested in a social networking startup called Shaker. The firm, based in Israel, says its social network is “similar to interacting in the physical world,” and that it “creates a natural setting using your Facebook profile and allows people to meet around mutual friends and shared interests.” Motorola’s MOTOBLUR user interface found on several of its Android smartphones allows users to access mu...

Wireless telcos in the United States are poised to invest as much as $53 billion in 4G wireless network technology and buildouts over the next five years, resulting in as much as $151 billion in gross domestic product growth. A new report from accounting and consulting firm Deloitte suggests that that 4G expansion by U.S. wireless companies could also create as many as 771,000 new jobs between 2012 and 2016. Deloitte sees $25 million as the minimum 4G investment from telecommunications companies over the next...

Pasedena, California-based investment management firm Primecap Management Co. recently doubled its investment in BlackBerry vendor Research In Motion. According to a recent regulatory filing, Primecap now owns 26.4 million shares of RIM stock valued at about $577 million as of Monday’s close, and the stake represents approximately 5% of RIM’s total outstanding shares. According to Bloomberg, Primecap’s stake at the end of the second quarter of this year was approximately 2.5%. As numerous an...

Microsoft secretly participated in a recent $25 million funding round for Israel-based navigation solutions provider Waze, Israeli tech site TheMarker reported last week. Microsoft makes very few investments each year according to TheMarker’s source, but the tech giant apparently took quite an interest in Waze’s unique brand of navigation apps. “Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. 100% powered by users, the mor...

Visa has made an undisclosed investment in payments startup Square in exchange for a seat on the firm’s board of, Reuters reports. Square is a portable credit card reader that was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. It allows iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad owners to charge for goods and services on-the-go, but came under some scrutiny earlier this year when VeriFone’s CEO slammed the product in a blog post. On April 21st, Apple and Square announced that the Square credit card reader was availa...

No one likes letting a perfectly good operating system go to waste. Reuters is reporting that just as Nokia begins to divest in the MeeGo operating system, other companies are starting to dig in. The publication writes that electronics giant LG has joined the likes of ZTE and China Mobile in a “working group” that aims to develop a MeeGo-based smartphone. “It [Nokia's absence] is opening opportunities for the others to come in,” said a member of MeeGo’s steering committee. ...

It may soon be possible for you to own your own slice of the Angry Birds empire. Days after announcing $42 million in Series A funding, Rovio’s board chairman has expressed interest in seeking an initial public offering in the United States, according to statements made to Finnish business magazine Talouselama. “The plan is to seek an IPO in New York, but the specific timing and details are still open,” Ville Heijari, a Rovio spokesperson confirmed to Reuters in an email on Friday. Angry Bir...

It looks like everyone’s favorite themed, fowl-flinging game — Angry Birds Seasons — has been updated to celebrate the March 17th holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. The game has been updated with fifteen new levels, and although the fledglings aren’t actually packing pig-slaying shillelaghs (don’t worry, they are in our heads), the game is littered with shamrocks, leprechaun hats, and pots o’ gold. The company definitely has a little bit of that “luck of the Irish...

Taiwanese handset giant HTC has announced a “strategic investment” made in the digital media-delivery company Saffron Digital. “Saffron Digital has developed an incredible expertise in mobile multimedia delivery,” said Peter Chou, HTC’s CEO. “This ability to deliver optimized content in the future will be a key asset as content becomes more and more complex and localized. We are excited to be working with Saffron to increase our global service delivery capabilities and exp...

Social networking giant Facebook may be looking to conquer another market, Wall Street. After news spread of a $500 million investment — $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russia’s Sky Technologies — Facebook was given a valuation of $50 billion by market analysts and firms. The eleven figure price tag was placed upon the privately held company even as the government’s Securities and Exchange Commission has, purportedly, launched a formal inquiry into Facebook’...

You can say what you want about the quality of AT&T’s network — and we know you will — but at least they are trying. In a barrage of press releases this morning, AT&T announced that it has spent over $3.5 billion on its network during the first six months of 2010. Some of the investments include $1.1 billion in California, $350 million in Illinois, $275 million in New York City, $225 million in New York, and $200 million in Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Anyone out there see...

With all of the money RIM is dumping into its U2 sponsorship, a bit of irony shined through earlier this week when Palm announced its secondary stock offering. The big news that came alongside Palm’s offering was that Elevation Partners, already Palm’s largest investor, gobbled up another 2.2 million shares of Palm for a cool $35 million. The private equity firm now owns a total of 67.8 million common shares of Palm stock in addition to its 376,000 preferred shares, totaling about 42 percent of th...