SAP requests Oracle court gag

Enterprise software maker SAP has filed a motion in a Californian district court to prevent lawyers acting for Oracle from making “extrajudicial statements” until a copyright infringement battle between the two companies is over, says IT News.

The move by SAP followed an 8 October blog in the New York Times by Joe Nocera, accusing SAP of “brazen theft of intellectual property” and suggesting that the newly-appointed HP chief and former SAP chief Leo Apotheker knew about it.

SAP's motion noted that the blog was written by the fiancee of the publicist for Oracle's law firm in the case.

Gemalto has slapped Google, HTC, Samsung and Motorola with a lawsuit alleging the companies' use of the Android operating system violates three of its patents, reports Wireless Week.

The digital security firm claims Android's software development kit uses its patented Java Card technology and Dalvik virtual machine without permission.

Gemalto wants the court to ban the companies from manufacturing, selling and importing Android apps, devices and the platform's software development kit. “This lawsuit is necessary to protect our investment in innovation," an unnamed Gemalto spokesman said in a statement.

Apple has joined 11 other technology giants including Google, AOL and Yahoo, in an attempt to get a US court to dismiss a patent infringement lawsuit bought against them by a company controlled by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen IT ProPortal.

The iPhone maker filed its petition to the US court, claiming that Interval Licensing, the company that claims ownership of the disputed patents, had failed to provide sufficient information on exactly how these 11 corporations, including Apple, infringed on its patents.

“As the US Supreme Court noted in Twombly, it is in this type of situation in which courts should use their “power to insist upon some specificity in pleading before allowing a potentially massive factual controversy to proceed,” the company said in the petition.