Billions at stake in smartphone wars

When a dauntingly technical lawsuit thumped onto the tables of a small district court in Wisconsin, the global mobile phone industry sat up and took notice, according to the Guardian.

The suit, in which Spansion, a maker of flash memory chips, alleged that Samsung smartphones infringe one of its patents, was not just a local spat but the latest battle in the smartphone wars that have drawn in the industry's biggest players.

Billions of dollars are at stake for companies including Apple, Google, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, Nokia and Microsoft. The legal struggle could even lead to the iPhone being banned from sale in the US - if Nokia gets its way in one dispute that has gone to the International Trade Commission.

Phoenix Media, owner of Alternative WFNX/Boston and the Boston Phoenix newspaper, is being sued by social media giant Facebook, reports Radio NK.

Facebook claims the station's online music player and a 'band guide' and a restaurant search on the newspaper's Web site infringe on its patents.

Facebook's suit follows a suit by Phoenix Media unit Tele-Publishing that accused Facebook of violating Tele-Publishing's patent for a network that provides personal pages.

Google has been slapped with another privacy lawsuit, this time over its toolbar, notes Daily Finance.

A New York man alleges the toolbar software transmits users' Internet activity to the company, as well as misleads people into believing they can disable that transmission of personal data to the company.

The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in San Jose, is seeking class-action status. The toolbar complaint is the latest privacy-related lawsuit to hit Google, which has also faced a firestorm of criticism over its Street View cars, which inadvertently collected some users' personal information such as e-mail addresses and passwords.