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A slipper was hurled at Team Anna members during a public rally in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun city on Saturday.

According to reports, Team Anna members Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Manish Sisodiya were present on the stage Replica watches, when the slipper was thrown.

Team Anna began their election tour from Uttarakhand today.

Kumar Vishwas, a close aide of veteran social activist Anna Hazare Replica handbags, had earlier on Friday made it clear that his team would urge the voters to vote for clean candidates and boycott the corrupt ones.

Vishwas had earlier this month rubbished reports that his team has invited yoga guru Baba Ramdev to campaign in poll-bound Uttarakhand.he Election Commission had declared that voting in five states, including the most populous Uttar Pradesh would be held between January 28 and March 03. (ANI)

MANILA Replica Watches, Philippines — The Cleveland Cavaliers have reportedly hired a firm to investigate the circumstances of former player James LeBron’s decision to bolt his hometown and join Miami in the off-season.

Yahoo! Sports reported that Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert paid a law firm hundreds of thousands of US dollars to check if the Heat broke National Basketball Association tampering rules with regards to free agency.

Two-time Most Valuable Player LeBron left the Cavs after 7 seasons Replica handbags, to join fellow all-stars Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami.

But Gilbert insisted he is already over LeBron’s decision.

Gilbert had been highly critical of his former franchise player and even promised Cavaliers fans that his team will win a championship before LeBron can deliver one in Miami. — report from ANC’s Dateline Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – PBA board chairman Rene Pardo yesterday welcomed Barako Bull’s offer to take a leave of absence in PBA second conference to give way to Smart Gilas, hoping the move will be “a win-win proposition for Barako Bull, the national training team and the league.”

“We’ll take a look at it and discuss the matter so we can come up with a good decision,” Pardo told The STAR.

“Personally, I see this development solving the problem of the Commissioner’s Office. With Barako sacrificing its slot for Smart Gilas, we keep a 10-team roster which fits the schedule. This also gives Barako time to rebuild its team for the third conference Replica Watches,” Pardo also said.

“I will elevate the Barako offer to the board for clearance and approval. I assured them (Barako management) we will settle the matter in a fair and reasonable manner,” said league commissioner Chito Salud.

The Barako Bull management confirmed The STAR’s exclusive report yesterday that they’re offering their slot in the second conference to Smart Gilas.

“We received a letter from the Commissioner’s Office about the Smart Gilas concern. I saw it as an opportunity to be of help to the national cause,” Barako Bull team owner George Chua told The STAR.

Chua said it is worth taking a sacrifice for national interest.

“In the first place, this is just for one conference. This sacrifice is worth nothing compared to achieving national pride with Smart Gilas hopefully qualifying in the 2012 London Olympics,” Chua added.

The amiable businessman-sportsman promised they would be back in the third conference.

“Since the PBA has a concern on its schedule, we’re taking the opportunity to help. We’re volunteering our franchise. It’s worth sacrificing for national interest,” said Barako Bull alternate governor Raffy Casyao.

Meanwhile, Rain or Shine, Air21 and Meralco figured in a three-way trade involving six players and two draft rights.

Under the deal, Meralco will get Sol Mercado and Paolo Bugia, Air21 will acquire Jay-R Reyes while Ronjay Buenafe, Ronnie Matias, Beau Belga will go to Rain or Shine plus two future picks.

Rain or Shine initiated the trade after Mercado had said he wanted out of the team.

The deal, however, is subject to approval of the PBA commissioner.

On speculations regarding their exit in the near future, he said: “It’s hard to say. The reality is that teams come and go in the PBA.”

Meantime, he stressed he wants to support Smart Gilas.

“We want Smart Gilas have the opportunity to participate in the upcoming conference,” said Chua.

“It will surely provide renewed and more exciting interest from the viewing public through its competitive impact which is mutually beneficial to Smart Gilas and the PBA. It’s indeed a great sacrifice for us to come up with this offer,” Chua added.

Barako’s offer is likely to get the board’s approval. In such eventuality, Salud said it’s either Barako retains its players or be put in a dispersal draft.

“We’ll honor our obligations to our players. But we’ll wait on what the board decides,” said Casyao.

“I will evaluate things and make my recommendation to the board,” said Salud.

The Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas has formally requested the PBA that the national team be allowed to play as guest team in the second conference.

Smart Gilas hopes to use the PBA import-laden tourney as a training ground for its campaign in the Fiba Asia championship in Wuhan, China late this year.

Before Barako made its offer, Salud said SBP’s request might find rough sailing in the board because an 11-team roster will disrupt the league’s schedule for the entire season.

The SBP also welcomed the Barako offer.

“Now that there’s a team willing to sacrifice for the country, maybe the request can be accommodated,” said PBA board member and SBP vice chairman Ricky Vargas.

Some quarters, however, are speculating Barako Bull is leaving the PBA for good.

The Energy Food and Drink franchise has been in the league since 2000 Replica handbags, having its glorious moments with three championships over a span of five seasons starting in 2001.

Barako posted winnings marks (above .500) in all but four seasons of its participation in the league. It had its best mark of .698 in 2003.

By Victoria Slind-Flor

(This is a daily report on global news about patents, trademarks, copyright and other intellectual property topics. Adds Osram item in patent section.)

Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) — Among Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s more than 17,000 patents, a group of 18 may prove most useful in Google Inc.’s effort to fend off litigation targeting the Android mobile platform.

The inventions date back to 1994 and form the heart of three Motorola lawsuits against Apple Inc., making them among the stars of the portfolio, said David Mixon, a patent lawyer at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Huntsville, Alabama. They cover technology essential to the mobile-device industry, including location services, antenna designs, e-mail transmission, touch- screen motions, software-application management and third- generation wireless.

“Any patent owner, before they consider litigation, is going to carefully evaluate their patents to withstand an attack,” Mixon said in a telephone interview. “You don’t want to hold any back. You want to pick your strongest patents.”

Google is counting on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Libertyville, Illinois-based Motorola Mobility to strengthen its patent lineup as Apple and Microsoft Corp. challenge Android, the best-selling smartphone operating system in the second quarter. Google had been issued fewer than 1,000 patents as of the start of this year. Motorola Mobility would add another 17,000, as well as about 7,500 pending applications.

Android was introduced on handsets three years ago to further Google’s advertising business and is provided free to device makers including Motorola Mobility, Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. The platform accounted for 43.3 percent of the smartphone market last quarter replica handbags, according to Stamford, Connecticut-based research firm Gartner Inc. Cupertino, California-based Apple had an 18.2 percent share.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, which arbitrates patent-related disputes, has fielded more than a dozen cases in the past year related to smartphones and tablets. Because Google doesn’t profit directly from Android, it has been able to sit mostly on the sidelines while its partners were sued.

Google has been sued twice by competitors over Android — Oracle Corp. and Skyhook Wireless Inc. — and has never led a patent-infringement case against another company. It declined to comment for this story, as did Motorola Mobility and Apple.

An ITC judge last month found HTC’s Android phones infringed two Apple patents, which may spur a U.S. import ban.

“We’ve been saying for some time that we intend to protect the Android ecosystem,” David Drummond, chief legal officer at Mountain View, California-based Google, said during a conference call with analysts last week. “It’s under threat.”

The balance of power is shifting toward Google with this acquisition of Motorola Mobility, so the option for settlements and cross-licensing will become “inevitable,” said Ron Epstein, CEO of Epicenter IP Group LLC, a Redwood City, California-based patent brokerage.

One patent from 2001 disables a “touch sensitive” sensor when a smartphone is near a user’s head to prevent inadvertent hang-ups or dialing. Another from 1994 aims to increase data storage, while a third enables users to control when a global positioning system sends their location data over a network.

In a patent-infringement case that started yesterday at the International Trade Commission, Microsoft accused Motorola Mobility of infringing seven of its patents and requested a halt to imports of certain Motorola phones. The trial is the first smartphone dispute to be heard since Google announced it would buy Motorola Mobility.

In addition to the Apple fight, Motorola Mobility has claimed Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft infringes some of its patents over video technology and is seeking to block imports of the Xbox video-game console.

Apple filed its own patent-infringement complaints against Motorola in October at the ITC and in federal court in Madison, Wisconsin. Apple also filed a civil suit in March accusing Motorola Mobility of “a pattern of unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive conduct” and said the company demanded higher licensing rates than for other competitors over three years of talks. Microsoft has made the same allegations over Motorola’s licensing demands, which Motorola has denied in both cases.

Syngenta Sues Bunge for Refusal to Accept Modified Corn

Syngenta AG, the world’s largest maker of agricultural chemicals, sued a unit of Bunge Ltd. over claims that it’s illegally refusing to accept corn produced from the company’s bioengineered seeds.

Bunge, which operates a network of grain elevators and receiving stations, posted a notice on its website and at several locations that it is “unable to accept” delivery of corn or soybeans produced by Syngenta’s Agrisure Viptera seeds and another product made by DuPont Co., according to the complaint.

Bunge said in the notice that the seed products haven’t received international approval from major export destinations, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Sioux City, Iowa.

The product complies with all U.S. regulatory requirements, Syngenta said yesterday in a statement.

Syngenta’s Viptera seed is intended to be an alternative to Monsanto Co.’s corn seeds. The two companies have a lengthy past history of litigation over patents for soybean seeds that finally settled in 2008.

“When a product has been legally approved, growers should be able to use that technology without subsequently being subjected to arbitrary actions,” David Morgan, president of Syngenta Seeds Inc., said yesterday in the statement.

Viptera, which received U.S. regulatory approval last year, is genetically modified to combat damaging insects such as corn earworm and fall armyworm. The technology has been approved for cultivation in Canada, Argentina and Brazil, and for import in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan, Syngenta said in its statement. Approval is pending in China and is expected early 2012, the company said.

Bunge spokeswoman Deb Seidel didn’t immediately return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment on the complaint.

The case is Syngenta Seeds Inc. v. Bunge North America Inc., U.S. District Court for Iowa, Northern District of Iowa, Western Division (Sioux City).

Osram Files Patent Infringement Complaint Against LG Innotek

Siemens AG’s Osram and Osram Opto Semiconductors filed a complaint against LG Innotek Co. Ltd. with the Korea Trade Commission, the company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.

Osram also filed nullity suits and infringement actions against patents and companies of LG Group and Samsung Electronics Co. in Korea, the company added.

This follows LG’s patent complaint filed last month at the U.S. International Trade Commission against Osram. That dispute is over technology used in LED displays for TV sets and monitors that require less energy than traditional lighting.

The ITC in Washington is a quasi-judicial agency that arbitrates trade disputes, and has the power to block products that infringe U.S. patents. It typically completes its investigations in 15 to 18 months.

For more patent news, click here.

Trademark

Amazon Files Application to Register ‘Lab 126’ as Trademark

Amazon.com Inc., seller of the Kindle electronic book device, has applied to register “Lab126” as a trademark, according to the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

According to the application, filed Aug. 16, the Seattle- based company plans to use the mark for “design and development of computer hardware and software.”

Amazon plans to release a tablet device powered by the Android system in October.

For more trademark news, click here.

Copyright

Rapidshare Gets Second Round of Fines in Downloading Case

A Swiss company that enables unauthorized downloading of six publishers’ copyright-protected titles was hit with an additional 160,000 euros ($230,000) in fines for failing to comply with an earlier court order, according to a statement from the publishers.

Rapidshare AG of Cham, Switzerland, was ordered in May 2010 to quit making available to the public 149 works from the six publishers. The publishing houses are Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group LLC, a subsidiary of Macmillan; Cengage Learning Inc.; Elsevier Inc; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.; and Pearson Education Inc., according to the statement.

At the time of the May court action, Rapidshare was fined 150,000 euros for its past actions.

The Regional Court of Hamburg, in a July 25 decision, said Rapidshare continued to violate its orders Replica Watches, and that 100 of the disputed works were still available between July 16 and July 18. The company didn’t use a word filter that would have prevented the unauthorized uploading, according to the publishers’ statement.

In December 2010 the company hired Washington-based Dutko Worldwide to call on members of Congress and argue it shouldn’t be the target of U.S. infringement actions, according to Deutsche Welle.

For more copyright news, click here.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

IP Moves

IMC Licensing Adds Former Thinkfire Trademark Group

IMC Licensing, an intellectual property licensing agency, acquired Thinkfire Trademark Licensing and brought three former Thinkfire officials onboard, the Louisville, Kentucky-based company said in a statement.

Joining IMC are Carla E. Dearing, Drew Kastner and Boris Peres.

Kastner has done IP work for Comcast Corp.’s NBC Universal unit, Cablevision Systems Corp., and for the IP holding unit related to the late baseball star Mickey Mantle. He and his partner Boris Peres spun the trademark licensing services out from Warren, New Jersey-based Thinkfire Services USA.

Kastner has an undergraduate degree from Boston College and a law degree from Rutgers University.

Peres was the founder and chief operating officer of Velox Semiconductor, a spinoff from Emcore Corp. before he joined Thinkfire. He has also served as an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co., where he worked with clients in the Internet, pharmaceutical and technology industries.

He has a doctorate in electric engineering from Cornell University.

Dearing has previously worked in product and market development for Morgan Stanley & Co.’s Morgan Stanley Capital International unit, and before that was a founder of a financial service advisory and fund administration firm that was ultimately acquired by State Street Bank.

She has also serves as the assistant vice president, strategic initiatives, for the University of Louisville’s Office of Health Affairs.

She has an undergraduate degree in economics and political science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago.

–With the assistance of Brian Womack in San Francisco, Susan Decker in Washington, Sophia Pearson in Wilmington, Delaware, Jack Kaskey in New York. Editors: Mary Romano, Peter Blumberg

To contact the reporter on this story: Victoria Slind-Flor in Oakland, California, at vslindflor@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net.

Business Exchange E-mail Print READER DISCUSSION

By Justin Blum

(Updates with Justice Department letter in 14th-15th paragraphs.)

July 6 (Bloomberg) — Congressional investigators looking into a U.S. law enforcement program to track guns shipped illegally to Mexico are examining whether government-paid informants were involved in smuggling weapons.

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, and Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, have been investigating a program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that allowed illegal purchases in the U.S. in an effort to link guns to Mexican drug cartels.

The lawmakers said they want to know whether suspects identified in that program were serving as informants for other law enforcement agencies without ATF’s knowledge.

“The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities,” the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that was released today.

The ATF operation, called Fast and Furious, has prompted criticism from lawmakers. Holder has said he asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate.

Two of about 2,000 guns that ATF allowed to be carried away were found at the Arizona murder scene of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December 2010, according to a report released in June by Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Assault-Style Weapons

The operation sought to show a connection between straw buyers of assault-style weapons in the U.S. and Mexican drug trafficking organizations working on both sides of the border, according to the report.

Congressional investigators are looking into whether the Drug Enforcement Administration or Federal Bureau of Investigation paid any informants involved in gun smuggling, according to a congressional staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity and wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Issa and Grassley’s letter to Holder said they had “very real indications” that the gun traffickers the ATF tried to identify were “already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants.”

The letter also said acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson told congressional staff that his agency wasn’t informed about certain activities of the FBI and DEA. All three agencies are part of the Justice Department.

Managers Reassigned

Melson told congressional investigators that after public controversy over the Fast and Furious program, he reviewed documents in the case that made him “sick to his stomach,” according to the letter to Holder. Melson said he moved to reassign every field manager involved with the program after reading the documents, the letter said.

ATF wanted to provide more information to Congress and was blocked by Justice Department officials replica handbags, who took control of communication with lawmakers and told ATF officials not to respond, according to the letter.

Chris Jakim, a spokesman for the DEA, referred questions to the Justice Department. Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman Replica Watches, didn’t return phone calls. Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the FBI, didn’t return a call.

Continuing Discussions

In response to the lawmakers’ letter, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote that discussions are continuing about how to provide any information about activities of other law enforcement agencies that may be related to Fast and Furious.

Melson was originally scheduled to be interviewed by congressional investigators on July 13 and instead appeared in meetings on July 3 and July 4, according to the letter. Melson didn’t inform the Justice Department that he’d spoken with investigators until after the meetings occurred, the letter said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is trying to reduce violence tied to organized crime and drug trafficking that has caused more than 34,000 deaths since he took office in 2006.

–With assistance by Brendan Walsh in New York City and Jose Enrique Arrioja in Mexico City. Editors: Laurie Asseo, Robin Meszoly.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Blum in Washington at jblum4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

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