properties

Popular real-estate research site Zillow.com now has an Android app, which you can use to check real estate and home values while on the go. The app even syncs with your Zillow.com account to give you access to all of your saved homes and searches, from anywhere.

If you've never used Zillow, it's a powerful service that tracks current real-estate listings, rentals, and even recently sold properties. What's more, it uses local data and its own set of algorithms to come up with estimated values, or Zestimates, of just about any home in the U.… Read more

Today's jury verdict that Google's Android didn't infringe Oracle Java patents no doubt left many at Google breathing sighs of relief.

As Android programming evangelist Tim Bray tweeted, "F***ing A."

Google took this case to the brink, refusing to settle on either Oracle's copyright or patent infringement charges, and has emerged with minimal scarring so far. Some copyright issues remain unresolved, and there are always appeals. So far, things look a lot better than the prospect of the $2.6 billion Oracle sought. But it ain't over 'til it's over, as … Read more

Every now and again, a court case comes along that stands to rewrite the legal rules of the computing industry -- and we might just be at such a juncture right now.

Oracle's suit against Google over Java and Android could be one such case. It's putting to the test the notion that application programming interfaces -- APIs -- can be copyrighted.

In a partial verdict today, a jury gave Oracle a hard-fought "yes" when U.S. District Judge William Alsup asked it, "As to the compilable code for the 37 Java API packages in … Read more

Apple and Samsung have been given a Monday deadline to pare down the number of claims each plans to make in their intellectual-property lawsuits against each other.

Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California today ordered the companies, which are suing each other over smartphone and tablet products, to reduce the size of the case to make it more manageable for a jury to consider, according to a PC World report.

Apple and Samsung each offered to drop claims from the case, but a lack of cooperation left 16 patents, six trademarks, … Read more

"Hey, George Lucas: Come on and cross the Bay. The water's just fine."

That appears to be the message from hundreds of people who have signed an online petition urging the "Star Wars" filmmaker to locate his new 260,000-square-foot technical production facility at Vallejo, Calif.'s Mare Island.

The petition comes after Lucasfilm decided to abandon long-held plans to build the new facility on a piece of property it owned in bucolic Marin County, about 30 minutes north of San Francisco and across San Pablo Bay from Vallejo.

That decision was the result of … Read more

Steve Jobs is famous for borrowing a phrase that may or may not have originated with Pablo Picasso: "Good artists copy, great artists steal." He said in "Triumph of the Nerds" that Apple "has always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

Yet in recent years, Jobs was outraged over Android's similarities to iOS. He branded HTC thieves and said he was "willing to go to thermonuclear war" against Google over what he called "grand theft Android." Now, CEO Tim Cook seems to have picked up Jobs' outraged-victim torch, saying … Read more

Sun Microsystems' years-long effort to profit from Java has come to this: the chief executives of two of tech's most powerful companies, Oracle and Google, being grilled in court.

Scrapping over copyrights, patents, and licensing deals is an ignominious outcome for a technology that a decade and a half ago spooked Microsoft and seemed poised to inject dynamism into a largely static Web. Back when it debuted, Java was a brand that carried impressive power.

Though Java has been technologically influential, its brand clout with the average person has diminished as other software such as Apple's iOS and … Read more

Google will no doubt come up with slick iterations of Motorola's hot Droid Razr mobile phone. And it may someday use the Motorola brand to launch a new tablet.

But make no mistake, Google is picking up Motorola to get its hands on the company's vast patent portfolio.

So says Allen Lo, Google's new deputy general counsel. Lo, who oversees Google's patent law group, joined the Web giant in January from Juniper Networks, where he was associate counsel. Prior to that, Lo was in private practice as an intellectual property lawyer, and he worked for three … Read more

So you're facing a patent lawsuit. Or maybe you want to sue someone. Get out your checkbook, because this isn't going to be cheap.

A survey conducted last year by the American Intellectual Property Law Association to find median litigation costs for patent infringement suits produced jaw-dropping (at least for a startup) numbers: For a claim that could be worth less than a $1 million, median legal costs are $650,000. When $1 million to $25 million is considered "at risk," total litigation costs can hit $2.5 million. For a claim over $25 million, median … Read more