(BN) SpaceX Says Cargo Mission to Space Station Back Online

(Bloomberg) Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s cargo supply trip to the International Space Station had a bumpy start after engines malfunctioned on the unmanned craft.

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of the Hawthorne, California-based company known as SpaceX, announced the problem in a Twitter posting about a half hour after today's 10:10 a.m. launch of the Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Three of the four groups of engines known as thrusters didn't activate. SpaceX will need to control at least two sets of thrusters on the ship to link up with the space station, said James Oberg, a space consultant in Dickinson, Texas, and a former mission-control specialist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"They need two opposite pods working to change its flight path," he said in a telephone interview. "If they cannot make those maneuvers, they will pass under the station."

Oberg described the malfunction as a "routine contingency" and one "that all good flight-control teams prepare for."

The supply craft managed to successfully deploy its solar arrays, which supply electrical power to the ship. Even so, George Diller, a NASA spokesman, said it's "undetermined" whether the ship is still on track to rendezvous with the space station tomorrow as planned.

"They're still working through the problem," he said in a telephone interview.

Cargo Run

The craft was launched from a Falcon rocket. After reaching orbit, it had a problem with "a propellant valve," according to an e-mailed statement from Christina Ra, a SpaceX spokeswoman.

"One thruster pod is running," she said. "We are trying to bring up the remaining three. We did go ahead and get the solar arrays deployed. Once we get at least two pods running, we will begin a series of burns to get to station."

The capsule is carrying more than 1,200 pounds of scientific experiments, food and other cargo. It's scheduled to return March 25 with more than 2,300 pounds of equipment.

The mission is the company's second regular cargo delivery and third trip to the space station. SpaceX completed its first resupply mission in October following a test flight in May. The company has a $1.6 billion contract with the NASA for at least a dozen resupply flights.

NASA is relying on SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB), based in Dulles, Virginia, to help resupply the station after retiring its shuttle fleet in 2011. The agency depends on Russia to carry astronauts to space at about $63 million per seat.

(BN) Facebook Buys Microsoft’s Atlas Ad-Campaign Service

(Bloomberg) Facebook Inc. (FB) said it will acquire Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s Atlas Advertiser Suite business, adding campaign-measurement tools that help it step up competition with Google Inc. (GOOG) for online-display advertisements.

The team from Atlas will remain in Seattle, where the business is based, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook said in a blog posting yesterday. Atlas tools help companies choose and place ads on websites and monitor their effectiveness.

Facebook, owner of the world's largest social-networking service, is seeking to accelerate revenue, which is projected by analysts to slow for a fourth straight year in 2013. Atlas will help in challenging Google, which gained ad-serving technology in its $3.24 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2008. Google will have 18 percent of the U.S. display-ad market in 2013, compared with Facebook's 15 percent, according to EMarketer Inc.

"If marketers and agencies can get a holistic view of campaign performance, they will be able to do a much better job of making sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time," Facebook said in the posting.

With Atlas, Facebook will be able to gauge how an ad campaign is performing on its own service and on other sites around the Web, Brian Boland, director of monetization product marketing, said in an interview. Using that data, the company can help advertisers craft better marketing campaigns, including on its own service.

'Better Tools'

"One of the key things that we've heard loud and clear is around measurement and how important measurement is to them," Boland said. "This is a step toward building better tools in the market."

Facebook plans to improve the service for advertisers, and that includes building out capabilities to measure promotions on mobile devices, he said. While Atlas gives Facebook access to advertising across the Web, the deal doesn't signal that the company is looking to start offering ads that widely.

"It is not any step toward an ad network," Boland said.

The deal is part of Microsoft's effort to unwind the unsuccessful $6.3 billion 2007 purchase of AQuantive Inc., which developed Atlas. Microsoft wrote down almost the entire value of the deal last year.

Microsoft has focused more attention on building search- based advertising, at the expense of the graphical-display ad business that includes Atlas and the AQuantive assets. Still, Microsoft wants to ensure that Mountain View, California-based Google has competition. That made Facebook, a Google rival and Microsoft partner, an attractive choice for a buyer.

As part of the deal, Microsoft will remain a user of Atlas, said Dave O'Hara, chief financial officer for the Redmond, Washington-based company's online services division.

"We thought they had a good vision of where they want to go," O'Hara said. "We're still a very large presence in the online advertising business and will be for many, many years."

(BN) Apple Award Cut With New Trial for Some Samsung Products

(Bloomberg) Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s $1.05 billion victory against Samsung Electronics (005930) Co. in a patent infringement case was cut almost in half by a judge who ordered a new trial for some Samsung products.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, today reduced the jury's damages award by $450.5 million and said Samsung deserves a new trial on infringement claims over its Galaxy Prevail and other smartphones. Koh rejected Apple's request to enhance the jury's award, saying the amount Samsung owed was heavily disputed and the jury wasn't bound to accept either side's damages estimate.

"It is not the proper role of the court to second-guess the jury's factual determination as to the proper amount of compensation," Koh said in her ruling.

Apple is entitled to additional damages for sales of infringing products that weren't considered by the jury, Koh ruled, saying she intends to calculate the amount beginning on Aug. 25, the day after the jury reached its verdict. As the case has been appealed, Koh said she would delay considering evidence of actual post-verdict sales and pre-judgment interest until the appeals are completed.

Koh encouraged both companies to seek appeals court review of her today's order before any new trial.

Samsung and Apple, the world's two biggest smartphone makers, have each scored victories in patent disputes fought over four continents since Apple accused Asia's biggest electronics maker of "slavishly copying" its devices. The companies, competing for dominance of a global mobile-device market estimated by researcher Yankee Group at $346 billion in 2012, are fighting over patents even as Apple remains one of Samsung's biggest customers.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr and Samsung spokesman Adam Yates didn't immediately return e-mails seeking comment on the ruling.

The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11- cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

(BN) Intuitive Robot Probe Threatens Trend-Setting Surgeries

(Bloomberg) The safety of robots made by Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) is being probed by U.S. regulators, raising questions about the prospects of one of the hottest technologies in health care.

The Food and Drug Administration asked surgeons at key hospitals to list the complications they may have seen with the machines, which cost about $1.5 million each and were used last year in almost 500,000 procedures. The doctors were also surveyed on which surgeries the robots might be most and least suited for, and asked to discuss their training, according to copies of the survey obtained by Bloomberg News.

The answers may sway debate on whether robotic surgeries promoted as being less invasive are worth the extra cost. The findings may also determine the outlook for Intuitive. The da Vinci surgical system and related products generated most of the Sunnyvale, California-based company's $2.2 billion revenue in 2012, and helped boost market value 70 percent over three years to about $23 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The surveys were sent to hospitals that belong to a product safety network overseen by the FDA. What the agency is trying to determine is whether a rise seen in incident reports sent to the agency are "a true reflection of problems" with the robots, or the result of other issues, said Synim Rivers, an agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail. "It is difficult to know why the reports have increased," she said.

Incident reports are sent to the agency by patients, medical professionals and companies. They "can contain incomplete, inaccurate, duplicative and unverified information," Rivers said.

'System Redundancy'

Intuitive fell 11 percent yesterday to close at $509.89. The stock recovered today, rising 7.9 percent to $550.03 at 9:42 a.m. New York time when at least four analysts reiterated their recommendations of the shares. Jeremy Feffer, a Cantor Fitzgerald LP analyst, raised his rating to buy from hold, saying "We see limited risk of this investigation materializing into significant punitive measures against the company."

The adverse event reports sent to the FDA outline serious complications, including those involving gynecological surgeries that make up about half of the procedures involving Intuitive's robotic system. They include damage to ureters and bowels as well as instances when instruments broke off from the robot and fell into patients. Reports also cited burns to various organs or vessels, most repaired during the surgery itself.

Many of the reports were filed by Intuitive Surgical and state that no robot malfunction was found or that the problem came from user error. Several originated from patients, who aren't identified.

Early Warning

The robots are "extremely safe," said Myriam Curet, Intuitive's chief medical adviser, in a telephone interview. "There is a lot of redundancy in the system to make it as safe as possible." The percentage of deaths and injuries involving the company's da Vinci robotic system, "is extraordinarily small," she added, and "hasn't grown" over time.

While the number of adverse-event reports to the FDA is small compared with the total number of procedures, the agency's reporting system has in the past served as an early warning system on concerns about medical-device safety.

"One of the risks is that the FDA could recall parts of the product or certain instruments, or somehow put restrictions on certain surgeries," said Michael Matson, an analyst with Mizuho Securities USA in New York. "But I don't think that's very likely,"

A rise in adverse events isn't necessarily alarming because the number of surgeries done with the robot has been growing rapidly, said Matson, who is based in New York and has a buy recommendation on Intuitive.

Stock Pressure

"The bigger concern would be that the patients would get scared," he said. "Part of what's driven this market is people seeking out robotic surgery; hospitals market it and the patients seem to think it's better."

Intuitive's stock is likely to be under pressure until the company can prove the safety worries aren't a significant issue, Matson said. In the meantime, "there's going to be an overhang," he said.

In robotic surgery, the physician sits at a video-game style console several feet from the patient, peering into a high-definition display while using foot pedals and hand controls to maneuver mechanical arms equipped with surgical tools. A camera provides a three dimensional view of the work being done inside the patient.

Martin Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore who has researched the marketing of the systems, said safety should now become part of the debate.

Cost-Benefit

"Patients need to know the truth about robotic surgery," Makary said in a telephone interview. "The Achilles-heel feature" of the robot is its lack of tactile feedback, which can spur "inadvertent injuries if added caution is not taken."

Among surgeons, there has been an intensifying debate about whether the benefits of robotic surgery justify the increased costs. A report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Feb. 20 found that surgery to remove the uterus with the Intuitive robot costs thousands of dollars more without reducing complications, compared with standard less-invasive surgery.

Data Examined

Examining data from 264,758 women who had a hysterectomy for benign conditions at 441 U.S hospitals, the study found that robotic operations cost hospitals $2,189 more per procedure than performing the same surgery without the robot.

A version of the letter sent to doctors by the FDA in January said the survey was being done because "a recent review of medical device report data is showing an increase in patient adverse reports." A revision of the document requested by Intuitive and sent again on Jan. 22 deletes that wording, according to the company.

The first version was a draft that was sent out inadvertently, the FDA's Rivers said. The agency only realized this after the company contacted the regulators, she said.

"We do not ask companies to weigh in" on this type of survey, she said.

The first version of the letter "did not accurately characterize what assumptions can or should be made from the number of reports in the FDA database," Rivers said.

(BN) Hong Kong Investor Backs Ciris’s Microbial Coal-to-Gas Process

(Bloomberg) Ciris Energy Inc., a closely held U.S. company that uses naturally occurring microbes to convert coal to natural gas, received about $25 million from a Hong Kong-based investor to fund projects and expand internationally.

The undisclosed investor is providing $15 million in project financing and $10 million as equity in the company, Chief Executive Officer Jay Short said in an interview today. The capital will be used to expand into new sites in the U.S. and other countries, with a focus on Asia, Short said.

The investment follows $12 million Ciris received in March 2012, a deal led by ConocoPhillips (COP), Short said. That financing round also included returning investors Braemar Energy Ventures, Rho Ventures LLC, Khosla Ventures and Energy Technology Ventures, a partnership between NRG Energy Inc. (NRG), General Electric Co. (GE) and ConocoPhillips.

The latest financing was a very "late-stage venture round," Short said. "This is the last, what you would call, VC-type round." Short declined to say where Ciris is considering expanding into Asia.

The company's technology relies on microorganisms that already exist underground, which are stimulated to consume coal and emit methane. The process may enable extraction of natural gas in more areas and others previously thought to be tapped out, Short said.

"We can go into a coal-bed methane field that is no longer producing gas and add nutrients to it and get on the order of 10 to 20 times more gas than the field ever had in the first place," Short said.

Gas that's extracted from coal seams with conventional methods is also generated by microbes. Ciris's technology accelerates that natural process, Short said.

"It takes months for this to work, which is pretty good when you consider that the original gas took thousands of years to make, if not longer," Short said.

The company is collecting data from its first major project, a 160-acre site in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, Short said.

(BN) Zynga’s Online Gaming Push Faces Hurdles From Casinos

(Bloomberg) Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), the leader in social gaming, is running into obstacles in its effort to offer real- money gambling, as states such as New Jersey legalize Internet betting with conditions favoring existing casinos.

Zynga, which offers the world's most-popular free-to-play poker game, has surged 46 percent this year largely on investor optimism the company will reign over real-money online betting, much as it has in social gaming.

The bet may be a longshot. The laws benefit casinos, such as Caesars Entertainment Corp. (CZR) and MGM Resorts International (MGM), which dominate gambling, and may require others to seek them out as partners. The need for alliances will probably also play out in other states, said Skip Bronson, chairman of U.S. Digital Gaming, a Beverly Hills, California-based firm looking to enter the market.

"I can't tell you what games will be allowed or what the tax rates are going to be," Bronson said. "But I can guarantee in all the states, it's the existing stakeholders that will have their way."

The U.S. market for online gambling may reach $7.4 billion a year by 2017, according to Manchester, U.K.-based researcher H2 Gaming Capital. So far, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware have passed laws letting residents play in their states. In Delaware, the state lottery will run the business with three horse tracks and is seeking bids from technology partners.

Nevada's law, signed on Feb. 21, lets land-based casino operators offer online poker only, according to Greg Gemignani, a Las Vegas attorney specializing in gaming law. New Jersey's law, signed by Governor Chris Christie on Feb. 26, lets existing operators offer all current games. Their hardware must be located in Atlantic City.

Online Alliances

Christie was trying to protect Atlantic City casinos that have lost business to neighboring states, according to Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association.

"If we are talking about the social-gaming companies, then we are talking about mergers or working agreements," Fahrenkopf said.

Caesars, the largest operator of U.S. casinos, licenses technology from Gibraltar-based 888 Holdings Plc (888), according to Seth Palansky, a spokesman for the Las Vegas-based company's interactive business. Caesars, with resorts in Nevada, Atlantic City and other U.S. markets, has said it may sell shares in the division to stoke growth.

MGM Resorts, with the biggest presence on the Las Vegas Strip, and Boyd Gaming Corp. (BYD), its partner in the Borgata casino in Atlantic City, have arrangements with Bwin.Party, which runs Internet gambling from Gibraltar.

Zynga U.K.

In the U.K., Zynga has partnered with Bwin.Party to offer games such as "FarmVille" slots for real-money betting. The company is aiming to go live with the effort in the first half of this year, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus said at a Feb. 25 investor conference.

In the absence of federal legislation, gambling is being introduced state-by-state in the U.S. In Nevada, Zynga sought a preliminary finding of suitability, a vetting of the company prior to applying for a license, according to A.G. Burnett, chairman of the state's Gaming Control Board.

"Entities such as Zynga can obtain service-provider licenses to provide services to the operators," Burnett said in an e-mail. The actual operator has to be a resort hotel or an entity under full or shared control.

License Process

Dani Dudeck, a Zynga spokeswoman, declined to elaborate on the company's plans for online gambling in the U.S. beyond comments made by Pincus.

"We've said that we have applied for an operator license in Nevada, and I think that process, we've heard, is 12 to 18 months," Pincus said when asked on the Feb. 25 call how soon the company could be offering its products in the U.S. The company applied for the suitability finding in December.

Nevada legislators took the additional step of adopting a "bad actor" clause in its law to exclude operators that were taking bets from U.S. residents before it was legal.

"The Legislature wanted operators that were reliable, that had more at risk than some servers in a facility somewhere," Gemignani said.

Elsewhere, proposals also favor incumbent operators. In California, Zynga's home state, a bill sponsored by state Senator Roderick Wright limits online betting to Indian casinos, card clubs and horse tracks, according Arthur Terzakis, staff director of the Senate Standing Committee on Governmental Organization.

Online companies always have the option of becoming land based. Rational Group, the Isle of Man-based company that operates PokerStars, the world's leader in real-money online poker, has agreed to buy the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, one New Jersey's 12 licensed casinos. The deal requires regulatory approval.

(BN) Dow Says Spread of Herbicide Tolerant Weeds Accelerate

(Bloomberg) Dow Chemical Co. (DOW), the biggest U.S. chemical maker by sales, said the spread of weeds resistant to the glyphosate herbicide made by Monsanto Co. (MON) is accelerating, creating opportunites for products it plans to begin introducing this year.

About 65 million acres of U.S. cropland harbored weeds last year that aren't killed by glyphosate, the world's best-selling herbicide, Antonio Galindez, president of Dow AgroSciences, said today in a webcast from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Agriculture Conference in Miami. Infested land rose 25 percent in 2011 and 51 percent last year, he said.

Glyophosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, Monsanto's brand for the weed killer.

Dow expects to earn $1.5 billion selling a its 2,4-D herbicide and crops engineered to tolerate it, Galindez said, repeating earlier forecasts.

Dow should receive U.S. approval to sell a reformulated version of 2,4-D in months, he said. Corn that tolerates 2,4-D should be approved later this year, with soy approval expected in 2015 and cotton in 2016, he said.

(BN) Google Defeats Publishers Over Web Copyright in German Vote

(Bloomberg ) Google Inc. (GOOG) and other news aggregators may continue to show short news items on their Internet sites without being required to pay, German lawmakers decided in a parliamentary vote today in a blow to publishers including Axel Springer AG (SPR) and Bertelsmann SE.

A majority of lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition allowed companies such as Google to display "single words or very small text excerpts" referring to publishers' websites at no cost. For content exceeding these limits, publishers retain the exclusive right of use, according to the bill.

Publishers, pressed by falling revenue from newspapers and magazines, argued search engines and aggregators like Google News should pay for displaying short excerpts from news stories. Google, which doesn't display ads on its news aggregator pages in Europe, argued its so-called "snippets" are actually helping publishers by driving traffic to their sites.

The bill by Germany's Justice Ministry gives publishers one year during which they have the sole rights to commercially use their journalistic content. Google's director of public policy in Europe, Simon Hampton, in November called this a "complete reversal of the legal situation today" and a reversal of current Web practices.

French Settlement

"As a result of today's vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped," Google said in a statement. "However, the best outcome for Germany would be no new legislation because it threatens innovation, particularly for start-ups. It's also not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries."

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and French President Francois Hollande earlier this year signed an agreement to settle disputes with French news sites. Under the accord, Mountain View, California-based Google will help publishers lift Web advertising sales and set up a 60 million-euro ($78 million) fund to boost their digital publishing efforts.

The search-engine operator in 2011 removed some Belgian newspaper content from its search engine after an appeals court upheld a 2007 ruling granted in favor of newspaper association Copiepresse, forcing Google to remove links and snippets of articles from Google.com and Google.be.

Google later agreed to restore French- and German-language newspapers in Belgium to search results without displaying the papers' full articles.

The bill was passed in the Bundestag with 293 votes in favor, 243 against and three abstentions.

(BN) Victoria’s Secret Plans to Open First Stores in Hong Kong

(Bloomberg ) Limited Brands Inc.'s Victoria's Secret, the lingerie chain known for its supermodels called "Angels," is planning its first stores in Hong Kong, where surging demand from shoppers has sent retail rents to a record.

Limited Brands this year will open two 1,500-square-foot (139-square-meter) Victoria's Secret shops at the International Finance Centre in the Central business district and at New Town Plaza, a favored stop for mainland Chinese shoppers near the city's north, according to an e-mail from Robin Hoffman, a spokeswoman for Columbus, Ohio-based Limited Brands.

An influx of mainland Chinese visitors has fueled consumption of branded apparel and accessories in Hong Kong, which commands the world's highest occupancy costs in some of its areas. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF) and Gap Inc. are among international clothing labels that have opened flagship stores in the city in the past 18 months.

Both IFC and New Town Plaza malls are owned or part-owned by Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. (16), the world's biggest developer by value.

Brenda Wong, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong-based Sun Hung Kai, declined to comment on its tenants.

Limited Brands, while "very, very optimistic" about Victoria's Secret's potential outside of North America, has been measured in openings to ensure its stores run well, Chief Executive Officer Les Wexner said in an October presentation to investors.

"We're very aware that China will be the biggest market on the planet at some point," Martin Waters, president of international business at Limited Brands, said at the October investor meeting. "We just don't feel pressured by the time to go and do that immediately. We've got so many building blocks to put in place."

(BN) Wind Power to Compete With Fossil Fuels by 2015, Make Says

Onshore wind power will become competitive with traditional fossil fuels in Europe, the U.S. and Asia by 2015, Danish researcher Make Consulting said.

Worldwide, the technology is an average of about 10 percent above grid parity -- the level at which it's able to compete with other technologies if all are subsidy-free -- according to a paper e-mailed today by Make. Larger and more efficient machines will help wind become competitive within two years, and further drive down costs through 2020, Make said.

"Wind will be a very competitive power generation technology in 2020, cheaper than all the fossil fuel technologies" in the European Union, Robert Clover, research director at Aarhus, Denmark-based Make, wrote in the study. In the U.S., "in 2020 wind will be one of the most competitive power generation technologies, cheaper than coal and nuclear technologies and at least comparable to gas."

The forecast shows how renewables are moving from expensive carbon-cutting technologies to more mainstream forms of power generation. Investment in new renewable energy generating capacity in 2010 for the first time surpassed spending on new fossil fuel plants, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Global wind installations rose about 10 percent to a record 44,711 megawatts last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based industry group.

Graphics in the report show the levelized cost for onshore wind at below 75 euros ($98) per megawatt-hour in Europe in 2020, a level comparable to nuclear -- without factoring the costs of decommissioning old atomic plants -- and above only hydro power and geothermal, which are "limited" in their use by geography and geology, according to Make.

Buying Fuel

Levelized costs factor in the lifetime costs of building plants and buying fuel for power generation. In the U.S., the 2020 estimated cost of onshore wind, at just below 60 euros per megawatt-hour, is greater only than combined cycle gas turbines and geothermal. In the Asia Pacific region, nuclear, gas and geothermal are all deemed cheaper than onshore wind in 2020.

London-based analyst Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates onshore wind currently has a global average levelized cost of energy of about $85.11 per megawatt-hour, a level similar to coal and about 10 percent higher than gas. It puts the cost of offshore wind at $225.80.

Offshore wind power, with its more expensive infrastructure, is still likely to be close to grid parity in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020, according to Make. In Europe, it may reach that benchmark in 2023, and in the U.S., it'll take until 2026, Make said.

LinkedIn Amid User Growth Optimism

(Bloomberg ) While LinkedIn has characteristics of a consumer Web company -- offering a free service and selling ads -- it also has an expanding paid subscription business for corporate customers and premium users.

"The company's Recruiter product and broader Talent Solutions platform have become extremely valuable for recruiters," Harper wrote in a report today. "We view LinkedIn with a very large competitive moat around its platform given strong network effects, a highly visible revenue stream and the ability to rapidly innovate with new products."

Paid Subscribers

With its paid subscribers, LinkedIn's growth more closely resembles so-called software-as-service providers like like Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), Workday Inc. (WDAY) and ServiceNow Inc., Sena said.

Salesforce, which provides web-based customer relationship management software, traded at 12 times sales one year after its 2004 IPO, Sena wrote. LinkedIn trades at 10 times sales this year and seven times revenue for 2014, higher than consumer Internet companies, according to his analysis.

"While LinkedIn has a large consumer-facing audience component, its businesses are increasingly akin to software enterprise providers," Sena wrote. Those companies have "sticky subscription revenue streams, vast addressable markets" and high margins, he said.

(BN) Amazon.com, NY Yankees, Marvell: Intellectual Propeperty

(Bloomberg ) Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), the world's largest online retailer, received a U.S. patent on a method of improving employees' performance.

Patent 8,121,888, issued Feb. 21, covers techniques for "facilitating improvement of results of human performance of tasks."

Seattle-based Amazon said in the patent that those who perform a task in a fashion that is only partially satisfactory may be given only a partial payment rather than the full payment amount "associated with fully satisfactory performance of the task."

The "task requester" can also use this technology to give the person who is performing the task information and opportunity to improve the results, and then receive the full payment.

Amazon applied for this patent in December 2007, with the assistance of the Seed IP Law Group LLP of Seattle.

Source Vagabond Systems Gets Additional Patent Case Sanctions

Source Vagabond Systems Ltd., an Israeli fabric manufacturer, was hit with an additional $12,745.35 in sanctions in a patent-infringement case.

Tirat Carmel, Israel-based Source Vagabond filed suit in federal court in Manhattan in August 2011, accusing Oakland, California's Hydrapak Inc. of infringing patent 7,648,276. This 2010 patent covers a sealing device for a flexible container for liquid.

In a Feb. 21 court filing, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon added the sanction to the $187,308.65 in attorney fees for filing a frivolous suit. This brought the total award to $200,054. She said in her order that the additional sanction was for time and money Hydrapak and the court wasted on a motion to reconsideration of the verdict.

The case is Source Vagabond System Ltd. v. Hydrapak Inc., 1:11-cv-05379-CM-JLC, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Trademark

Yankees Can Stop Others' Use of 'Baseball's Evil Empire' Phrase

The New York Yankees have the right to block others from using a phrase first uttered by the president of the rival Boston Red Sox.

An appeals board at the U.S. Patent office confirmed the Major League Baseball team's right to bar a sportswear company from using "Baseball's Evil Empire."

According to the board's opinion, Red Sox President Larry Lucchino said in 2002 that the Yankees' "evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America." Lucchino was referring to the Yankee's successful pursuit of Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras.

The team opposed a 2008 application by Evil Enterprises Inc. of Bridgehampton, New York, which sought to register "Baseball's Evil Empire" for use on clothing and hats.

According to the board's opinion, the Yankees brought in "hundreds of news articles, stories and blog entries demonstrating that 'Evil Empire' is used as a shorthand reference or nickname" for the Yankees. The team had also "implicitly embraced" the name by using music from "Star Wars" movies at games played in Yankee Stadium, the board said.

"Evil Empire" is a phrase most baseball fans would recognize as a nickname for the Yankees, the board said, thus entitling the term to a broad level of protection under U.S. trademark law.

The applicant's plans to sell similar merchandise to what the team sells also worked against the application because the two entities' goods would be marketed in similar ways, causing possible consumer confusion, the board said.

Copyright

Chu, Coble Start New Congressional Caucus for Content Industry

A member of the U.S. Congress who has many of the major motion picture studios in her district started a new organization focused on the content industries.

U.S. Representative Judy Chu, a California Democrat, has joined with U.S. Representative Howard Coble, a North Carolina Republican, to start the Congressional Creative Rights Caucus, according to a statement from Chu's office.

The statement specifies that the purpose of the caucus is to educate congress and the public about "the importance of preserving and protecting the rights of the creative community in the U.S."

Chu acknowledged that the film industry has a "strong economic presence" in her district, producing 140,000 jobs in film and television in Los Angeles County, and the studio members of the Motion Picture Association of America paying $437 million to local businesses.

Coble, who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, said the works created by the content industries "are among our most precious exports" that "cannot be duplicated anywhere else in the world."

Google Raises Censorship Risk in EU Court Fight on Data Control

Google Inc. (GOOG) shouldn't have to remove content from its search engine that was lawfully published elsewhere, the company argued in a case at the European Union's top court that will set boundaries between freedom of expression and data-protection rights.

The operator of the world's largest search engine isn't a data "controller," it is "a mere intermediary in terms of the data which it indexes," Google lawyer Francisco Enrique Gonzalez-Diaz told a panel of 15 judges at the EU Court of Justice hearing yesterday. Direct requests for personal information to be removed from a search engine -- even if it was put online by a newspaper -- would be "a fundamental shift of responsibility from the publisher to the search engine" and "would amount to censorship."

The dispute raises questions about the scope of EU privacy rules when it comes to personal data on the Internet; the rights of search engines to use any online data to remain commercially successful; and who ultimately is in charge of what happens with the data. The Luxembourg-based court's ruling will be binding on courts across the 27-nation bloc.

The case was triggered by about 200 instances of Spain's data-protection authority ordering Google to remove information on people. The information in yesterday's case concerned a Spanish man whose house was auctioned off for failing to pay taxes. Newspaper La Vanguardia published the information in 1998 and years later it could still be found via a Google search.

Mountain View, California-based Google is liable because it allows easy and quick access to information that wasn't easily found online before, he said.

"People shouldn't be prevented from learning that a politician was convicted of taking a bribe, or that a doctor was convicted of malpractice," Google said in a blog post.

Data protection is presently policed by separate regulators across the EU. The bloc's executive body wants to simplify the system so companies deal with only one.

The case is C-131/12, Google Spain, S.L., Google Inc. v. Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos, Mario Costeja Gonzalez.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Ex-Netgear Employee Gets Prison Sentence in Trade Secrets Case

A former employee of Netgear Inc. (NTGR) was given a prison sentence following his conviction for trade-secret theft.

Suibin Zhang was sentenced to three months in prison, a three-year term of supervised release, 200 hours of community service and he is required to pay $75,000 in restitution to Marvell Semiconductor Inc. by May 13.

In May 2012 Xhang was convicted of trade secret theft related to downloading of trade secrets from a secure database. According to a government statement released yesterday, Zhang used his position as a project engineer at San Jose, California's Netgear to get access to Marvell's secure database.

He used his Netgear account to download trade secret information and loaded it into a laptop issued by Broadcom Inc. (BRCM) of Irvine, California, a Marvell competitor for which he went to work after leaving Netgear, the government said.

Among the purloined trade secrets were hardware specifications, datasheets, application notes, board designs, and design guides, the government said.

Zhang received a less severe sentence than the government sought. According to a sentencing recommendation the government filed with the court, a 15-month prison term was sought, together with $150,000 in restitution and a $5,000 fine.

The case is U.S. v. Zhang, 5:05-cr-00812-RMW, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

Obama Order Not Enough to Shield Networks From Hacks, Aide Says

Legislation beyond President Barack Obama's executive order is needed to protect critical U.S. networks from cyber-attack, said Michael Daniel, the White House's cybersecurity coordinator.

"An executive order is actually very limited in what it can do," Daniel said yesterday at a computer security conference in San Francisco. "We definitely need Congress to act and to update our laws and our statutes."

Daniel didn't elaborate and wasn't available for an interview after speaking.

Obama issued an executive order Feb. 12 outlining policies for greater sharing of government hacking data with companies, particularly operators of vital infrastructure such as power grids. The executive order directs the government to develop voluntary cybersecurity standards for those companies and instructs U.S. agencies to consider putting those standards into existing rules.

Cyber espionage targeting U.S. companies gained renewed attention last week when network security firm Mandiant Corp. reported China's army may be behind a hacking group that has attacked at least 141 companies worldwide since 2006.

Obama's order reflected provisions of a Senate bill blocked last year by Republicans after being opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby. Opponents said the bill's voluntary standards would amount to burdensome regulation and fail to keep pace with evolving threats in cyberspace.

Since the executive order was released, administration officials have said they support certain liability protections for companies that incorporate the voluntary standards and share cyber threat information with the government and each other.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, and the panel's top Democrat, C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger of Maryland, reintroduced a proposal Feb. 13 to give legal protection for companies that share cyber threat information with each other. The bill passed the House last April and failed to advance in the Senate after Obama threatened a veto, saying the measure didn't go far enough to boost computer defenses and failed to protect privacy of consumer data.

The White House has declined to comment on the reintroduced Rogers-Ruppersberger bill while saying any cybersecurity measure must incorporate privacy and civil-liberties protections.

Administration officials including U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel pledged last week to put diplomatic pressure on countries implicated in thefts of trade secrets and seek stronger international enforcement of intellectual-property protections.

(BN) GSK, VirnetX, Tivo, LVMH, Kolon: Intellectual Property

(Bloomberg ) ViiV Healthcare Ltd., a joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) and two other drugmakers, plans to license pediatric versions of its HIV drug abacavir to a patent-sharing body backed by the United Nations to improve children's access to treatment.

ViiV will grant the voluntary license to the medicines patent pool for the drug in the 118 countries where 99 percent of children with HIV live, it said in a statement yesterday.

About 3.4 million children have HIV worldwide, and 72 percent of those in need of treatment don't have access to appropriate care because of a lack of affordable medicines, according to ViiV. ViiV and other drugmakers including Gilead Sciences Inc. also work with generic licensing partners in countries including India and South Africa to produce low-cost version of HIV therapies to sell in developing countries.

"This agreement with the medicines patent pool builds on the existing 13 licenses granted to our generics partners," Chief Executive Officer Dominique Limet said in a statement. "The overarching goal of our efforts is to improve the lives of children living with HIV."

ViiV is Glaxo's joint venture with New York-based Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Japan's Shionogi & Co. (4507)

VirnetX $368 Million Jury Verdict Against Apple Upheld by Judge

VirnetX Holding Corp. (VHC)'s $368.2 million jury victory against Apple Inc. (AAPL) over patents for virtual-private-network technology was upheld by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, denied Apple's requests for a new trial or a reduction in the damage award. VirnetX lost its bid for an order that would have limited Apple's ability to provide virtual private networks on its products, and the judge ordered the two sides to confer within the next 45 days to work out a license for future use of the technology.

A federal jury in Tyler in November said Apple's VPN on Demand and FaceTime features, used on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as well as Mac computers, infringed four VirnetX patents. There was "substantial evidence" to support both the finding of infringement and the damage award, Davis wrote yesterday.

"We are extremely pleased with the court's order in our suit against Apple," VirnetX Chief Executive Officer Kendall Larsen said in a statement. "We look forward to negotiating a license with Apple that includes an ongoing royalty agreement."

Officials with Cupertino, California-based Apple didn't immediately return e-mail messages seeking comment.

VirnetX, based in Zephyr Cove, Nevada, had asked for at least $708 million in the trial, while Apple argued the patents were worth no more than $9.1 million. VirnetX also said it would drop its U.S. International Trade Commission case against Apple over other patents and instead pursue further damages in the Texas court.

VirnetX had won a $200 million settlement from Microsoft Corp. in 2010 over the same technology and has claims pending against Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) A trial on the Cisco claims is scheduled to begin March 4.

The case at trial is VirnetX Inc. v. Cisco Systems Inc., 10-cv-00417, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Tyler).

TiVo CEO Expects to Keep Virgin Media as Customer After Buyout

TiVo Inc. (TIVO), the developer of digital-video recorders, expects no change in its relationship with Virgin Media Inc. (VMED) after the U.K. cable operator is bought by a competitor that has introduced its own set-top box.

"Virgin is doing dramatically well with TiVo," adding about 1.4 million customers last year, TiVo Chief Executive Officer Tom Rogers said yesterday in an interview.

Rogers said he sees no disruption in the relationship with Virgin Media, the cable company that John Malone's Liberty Global Inc. (LBTYA) plans to buy for $16 billion in cash and stock in a deal announced on Feb. 6. TiVo has rapidly expanded business with pay-TV operators after favorable court rulings upheld key patents, Rogers said.

The digital-recording pioneer widened margins in 2012 by selling advanced set-top boxes with more storage and the ability to record several shows at once. TiVo is transforming itself from a video-recorder provider into one that can shift content around the home and on the go, Rogers said.

Liberty Global, based in Englewood, Colorado, and operating in European markets, introduced its own Web-enabled set-top box in 2012, Horizon TV. The company plans to expand the product, now in Holland and Switzerland, to Ireland and Germany, CEO Michael Fries said on a Feb. 14 conference call.

TiVo's net loss widened to $15.8 million, or 13 cents a share, in the period ended Jan. 31, from a loss of $7.2 million, or 6 cents, a year earlier, according to a statement yesterday. Analysts had projected a loss of 12 cents, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Revenue grew 34 percent to $88.9 million. That exceeded analysts' projections of $84.4 million, the average of 11 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The company added 209,000 subscribers in the quarter, down 11 percent from 234,000 added a year ago, ending the year with more than 3.1 million. TiVo is pursuing patent infringement litigation against Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Motorola Mobility and Cisco Systems Inc. over use of recording technology in the set-top boxes they make. Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) is a defendant in both cases.

Trademark

American Cruise Lines Says American Queen Violated Settlement

American Cruise Lines Inc., a Connecticut-based travel company, sued a competitor in a trademark dispute and is seeking at least $12 million in damages.

HMS American Queen Steamboat Co. LLC of Memphis, Tennessee, is accused of violating a settlement agreement of a previous trademark suit involving the use of the term "Great American Steamboat," according to the complaint filed in federal court in Delaware on Feb. 26.

American Cruise Lines said that as part of the settlement, it agreed to pay $125,000 to American Queen for the right to the term. Additionally, both parties would agree that neither would use "Great American Steamboat" in a "cooling off" period from Nov. 5, 2012, to Feb. 9.

Regardless of the agreement, American Queen has continued to use "Great American Steamboat" trademarks and related Internet domain names, American Cruise Lines claims. The Tennessee company is also causing its business telephone number to be associated with the mark, according to the complaint.

American Cruise Lines says its studies indicate that by the end of December 2012, 15 percent of the Internet searches for "Great American Steamboat Co." continued to be directed to American Queen's websites. The Connecticut company says it's harmed by these actions and that the public is confused and is likely to assume falsely that an affiliation exists between the disputed trademark and American Queen.

In addition to seeking a finding that American Queen has violated the settlement agreement, American Cruise Lines asked the court to order surrender of the offending domain names, and a transfer of all prospective customers names obtained after Nov. 2012 from Internet searches and telephone directory- assistance system inquiries involving its trademarks.

The Connecticut company also asked for a discontinuance of any Great American Steamboat ads that link to the "Great American Steamboat Co." trademark, and for awards of $12 million in damages, in addition to attorney fees and litigation costs.

American Queen didn't respond immediately to an e-mailed request for comment.

The case is American Cruise Lines Inc. v. HMS American Queen Steamboat Co. LLC, 1:13-cv-00324-UNA, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington). The earlier case is American Cruise Lines Inc. v. HMS American Queen Steamboat Co LLC, 1:11- cv-000889-JEI-KW, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington).

Copyright

DKNY Says 'Sorry' to Photographer, Donates $25,000 to YMCA

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC)'s DKNY label has apologized to a New York photographer whose photos were used in a DKNY window display in Bangkok without his permission, the BBC reported.

Photographer Brandon Stanton, whose images appear in his Humans of New York blog, rejected an offer from the clothing company to license the images for $15,000 according to the BBC.

He said the offer was too small and asked for more money, which DKNY refused to give him, the BBC reported.

DKNY then apologized, and, in response to Stanton's request, donated $25,000 to a YMCA in New York, with the photographer asking his fans to give the charity another $75,000 to help send underprivileged children to summer camp, according to the BBC.

Trade Secrets/Industrial Espionage

Government Told to Try Harder to Serve Kolon Industries

A criminal trade-secrets theft trial against South Korea's Kolon Industries Inc. (120110) was delayed after a federal judge ruled that the company hadn't been properly served with court papers.

U.S. District Judge Robert Payne in Richmond, Virginia, in a Feb. 22 order, said that the government is "directed to proceed expeditiously" to serve Kolon with the appropriate court documents.

In a 59-page opinion, Payne cited the deficiencies of each of the government's attempts to deliver the legal papers to Kolon. He directed the court officials to issue a summons, upon the request of the government, for Kolon to appear on June 7, or, if the summons isn't served by that date, then on the third Thursday following the delivery of the summons.

In October, an indictment was unsealed alleging the company and some of its employees engaged in what the Justice Department called "a multiyear campaign" to acquire trade secrets related to DuPont Co.'s Kevlar fiber and a second fiber made by Japan's Teijin Ltd. (3401)

The government accused Kolon of a scheme to use purloined trade secrets so it could bring its Heracron fiber to market quickly in order to compete with Kevlar. The company was charged with one count of conspiring to convert trade secrets, four counts of theft of grade secrets and one count of obstruction of justice.

Kolon allegedly targeted current and former employees from DuPont and Osaka-based Teijin and hired them to serve as consultants, then asked them to reveal their former employers' trade secrets.

In September 2011, in a civil case brought by DuPont, a jury in federal court in Virginia awarded DuPont $919.9 million for trade-secret theft. The Korean company said at the time that the case was "the result of a multiyear campaign by DuPont aimed at forcing Kolon out of the aramid fiber market," and it would appeal the verdict.

In the same case in 2012, also overseen by Payne, the court ordered Kolon to quit manufacturing Heracron for 20 years. Kolon filed an appeal and a federal appeals court granted a stay of the order.

The criminal case is U.S.A. v. Kolon Industries Inc., 3:12- cr-00138-REP, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond). The civil case is E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. v. Kolon Industries Inc., 3:09-cv-00058-REP, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia (Richmond).

(Bloomberg ) Corning Sees 3-Year Wait on Flexible Glass

Corning Inc. (GLW), the maker of glass for Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhones, said it will probably take at least three years before companies start making flexible displays using its new Willow material.

Companies are yet to come up with products that can take full advantage of Willow glass, which can be made in a roll similar to newsprint, James Clappin, president of Corning Glass Technologies, said in an interview in Beijing today. The product eventually will let companies make curved or flexible displays.

"People are not accustomed to glass you roll up," Clappin said after an event marking the opening an $800 million factory for liquid-crystal-display glass. "The ability of people to take it and use it to make a product is limited."

The Corning, New York-based company is producing the glass and making "a lot of effort" to teach "very big name" customers how to handle the spools, Clappin said, declining to elaborate. The introduction of the glass comes as companies including Google Inc. consider making wearable computing devices.

The Willow glass should be used in some simple products this year, Clappin said. Examples may include a flexible barrier for solar panels or as a thin film behind some touch panels, he said.

Corning sent out samples of the flexible glass to makers of phones, tablets and TVs in June. Chief Financial Officer James Flaws said at the time the company hoped it would be available in consumer products this year.

Computer Eyeglasses

Corning rose 1.1 percent to $12.73 at 10 a.m. in New York. The shares are little changed this year, compared with a 6.3 percent advance for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Google (GOOG) has been working on eyeglass-embedded computers and plans to introduce them in 2014. Apple has a team of about 100 product designers working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad, two people familiar with the company's plans said this month. Clappin declined to comment when asked whether Corning had any contact with Apple on this project.

Surging global sales of smartphones have helped boost earnings for 161-year-old Corning. Gorilla Glass, which was introduced in 2007, is used in more than 1 billion devices worldwide, according to the company. Corning has sold the glass to 33 electronics makers, including Samsung Electronics Co. and Sony Corp., for use in more than 900 models.

Sales of Gorilla Glass surged 44 percent to $1 billion last year. The product is the second-most profitable and the fastest growing in Corning's history, Chief Executive Officer Wendell Weeks said this month.

Gorilla Glass sales may also grow "dramatically" alongside a projected increase in demand for new touchscreen notebooks, Clappin said.

"We sell a lot of Gorilla Glass in cellphones, but a notebook is 10 times the size, 10 times the area," he said. "Glassmakers sell in square feet. We like area -- the bigger the area, the better."

(BN) Web Courses Fuel Falwell’s College

(Bloomberg ) Three times a week almost 13,000 students at Liberty University assemble for an hour of singing and speeches, evoking the spirit of a revival meeting that also attracts Republican politicians and Christian celebrities such as New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow.

The collegians make up just 14 percent of the student body. The Lynchburg, Virginia-based school founded by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell in 1971 has an additional 82,500 online students, more than twice as many as three years ago, making Liberty the largest, private nonprofit university in the U.S.

"When I look at those numbers it still boggles my mind," said Jerry Falwell Jr., a soft-spoken lawyer who took over the institution after his father died in 2007.

Nonprofit private and state schools alike are discovering what for-profit colleges such as Apollo Group Inc. (APOL)'s University of Phoenix and Washington Post Co. (WPO)'s Kaplan University figured out more than a decade ago. Faced with a swelling number of overleveraged student borrowers, cuts in public subsidies and paltry endowment investment returns, they are embracing the Internet as a viable alternative to educating students.

Liberty stands out because it is growing like for-profit colleges did before competition and federal scrutiny of recruiting tactics and graduation rates crimped their business, according to David Clinefelter, chief academic officer at the Learning House. While Liberty is capitalizing on a niche in the evangelical community, which accounts for about a quarter of the U.S. population, it is also helping chart a course for other schools to expand online, he said.

Tech History

"There's a science to it and Liberty is applying it very well," said Clinefelter, whose Louisville, Kentucky-based company advises schools on setting up Internet-based operations. "The margins are bigger in these online programs if the institution can figure it out."

For Liberty, using technology to reach the masses is in its DNA. Falwell was one of the original televangelists, starting the Old Time Gospel Hour program shortly after founding the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg in 1956. Liberty's Home Bible Institute began in 1976 and in 1985 the school started an external degree program using videotapes, which morphed into the online operations about five years ago.

When his father died, Falwell Jr., 50, reorganized the university, which teetered on the edge of bankruptcy in the early 1990s, while his brother Jonathan took over the church. He appointed administrators to all of Liberty's schools and colleges to coordinate and improve Web course offerings. Faculty members, which outside of the law school aren't offered tenure, were given incentives to teach the courses.

'Printing Money'

Liberty Online occupies about 40,000 square feet in the main administrative building on the Lynchburg campus and employs about 300 people who recruit, enroll and advise prospective and existing students. With most online students paying $325 a credit hour, Web-based revenue this academic year has surpassed the residential program, which costs about $27,000 for tuition, room and board.

"These stumblebums down here in this redneck town are plotting to provide volume education around the world," Ronald Godwin, 75, Liberty's provost and a former Washington Times Corp. executive, said half mockingly. "We are already printing money, but we are doing this because it is our mission."

Falwell Jr.'s father, who founded the Moral Majority and helped elect Ronald Reagan president in 1980, vowed to build a standard bearer for evangelicals akin to what the University of Notre Dame is to Catholics and Brigham Young University to Mormons.

Creation Studies

Amid the rapid growth, Liberty has stuck to its evangelical roots. In order to graduate, everyone must take creation studies, which balances the teaching of evolution with the view that God created the world, including fossils that only appear to be millions of years old. Residential students can be fined or expelled for drinking, smoking or having sex out of wedlock, among other infractions.

Faculty members are similarly held to standards and must be Christian. Led by its activist law school, Liberty is a litigant in one of the remaining lawsuits against President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, arguing that the law infringes on the free exercise of religion and its opposition to abortion.

"This dream of turning it into Notre Dame won't work for Liberty," said Adam Laats, an assistant professor in education and history at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. "Liberty University faculty will always be more constrained in the breadth of intellectual diversity they can welcome."

120 Programs

That isn't stopping the school from trying. While it was founded as a Bible college, it has been bolstering its liberal arts curriculum as its online operations expand, adding new programs of study such as cinematic arts. The law school, which opened in 2004, was fully accredited in 2010. There are about 160 programs online, from an associate degree in accounting to a doctorate in theology, according to the school website.

The interactive courses are typically offered over eight weeks and guide students through assignments, tests, papers and discussion groups. The call center in Lynchburg fields questions both over the Web and telephone.

Jasmine Lovelady, a 26-year-old online psychology major in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin, transferred from for-profit Ashford University, saying Liberty offered a higher quality education and better suited her values.

"It's more flexible," said Lovelady, who is married and works full time. "I don't have to commute somewhere to do it."

Liberty also dissects its competition, going so far as enrolling six employees from its online division at for-profit schools to monitor them.

Building Boom

As competition from other universities grows, Liberty has begun exploring whether it can offer classes in different languages with an eye on the overseas market, and is also forming a for-profit subsidiary to consult with other schools on setting up their own programs, Falwell Jr. said.

Liberty is also remaking its campus near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It has broken ground on a $50 million library, $40 million medical school, dormitories, welcome center and a 2,500-seat baseball stadium next to its football field. There's a snowless, synthetic ski slope overlooking the college from a nearby mountain. In the past two years, the university has borrowed more than $200 million to finance construction.

Falwell Jr., whose mild manner contrasts with his father, who infamously blamed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on pagans, abortionists, gays and lesbians, said the university has taken another step to becoming the next Notre Dame by applying to have its football team be eligible to play in nationally televised bowl games.

"It doesn't matter what they say about you," said Falwell Jr., echoing his father. "It's that they're talking about you."

(BN) Google to Track Effectiveness of Ads of Ads

(Bloomberg ) Google Inc. (GOOG), seeking more customers for its marketing services, is unveiling a tool to collect feedback from consumers on the effectiveness of Web-advertising campaigns.

Marketers will be able to ask online users questions to measure data such as brand awareness, Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of advertising, said in an interview. While marketers track performance based on which ads are clicked, the survey service aims to better measure whether users might later recall product names or consider purchases after viewing promotions, which can include videos, pictures or graphics.

Google is crafting new tools to help it expand beyond search-based advertising and fend off rivals such as Facebook Inc. (FB) and Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) Google got 84 percent of its revenue from ads in the latest quarter, and is expected to grab 43 percent of the 2013 U.S. digital-ad market, which is projected to grow 14 percent to $42.5 billion, according to EMarketer Inc.

"There's a lot more work that we can do here," Wojcicki said in an interview prior to a presentation at the Internet Advertising Bureau meeting today in Phoenix. "We are investing a lot more in our brand advertising business. That's definitely a focus for us."

The new service builds on past efforts, including a feature called Brand Activate, which signals when an ad has been viewed.

The new tool borrows from a marketing research service called "Google Consumer Surveys," which gives people access to premium online content after they complete questionnaires. The new service will be initially available for customers buying video ads on YouTube, Google's video-sharing site.

The ad feature rollout is part of the company's broader push to provide marketers with more metrics on how advertising is performing online, Wojcicki said.

"We're basically in a really dynamic and important time," she said. "Because users are moving digitally so fast, advertisers have to move as fast as users."

(BN) Lexus Named Top Car Brand in Consumer Reports Rankings

(Bloomberg ) Japanese car brands, led by Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)'s Lexus, took the top seven spots in Consumer Reports magazine's annual quality rankings, as the top U.S. brand placed 14th out of 26 in the ratings.

Lexus received the most points based on the scores of its eight models, all of which the magazine recommends buying. Parent-company Toyota's namesake line tied for fourth place with Honda Motor Co.'s Acura brand. Subaru, a unit of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. (7270) that placed first among automakers last year, was second and Mazda Motor Corp. (7261)'s Mazda was third.

Consumer Reports changed its ranking system this year, breaking out brands instead of ranking automakers according to collective scores for all their lines.

"We feel this is more in line with how people shop," Rik Paul, the magazine's automotive editor, said in an interview before the rankings were released today at the National Press Club in Washington.

Consumer Reports, published by Consumers Union, tests and evaluates cars for how well they drive, interior-finish quality, fuel economy and reliability. The rankings influence car buyers and are published in the magazine's annual auto issue.

Japanese brands combined to account for 36.9 percent of vehicles sold last year in the U.S., according to Autodata Corp., a researcher based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Reliability Issues

General Motors Co. (GM)'s Cadillac, boosted by the CTS, was the top U.S. brand, ranking 14th. The CTS was rated above-average for reliability and called "as capable as its German rivals."

The bottom six brands in the rankings were U.S.-based -- Chrysler Group LLC's Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep; Ford Motor Co. (F)'s Ford and Lincoln; and GM's Buick.

"The American automakers are getting better," Paul said. "As much as companies are improving, companies like Toyota and Honda are still raising the bar."

Chrysler accepted the criticism and said it's working to improve its vehicles.

"Although we are moving in the right direction, we'll be the first to acknowledge that we need to improve faster," Doug Betts, senior vice president for quality, said in an e-mail. "We're aggressively upgrading our product lineup. For example, we're already making significant investments to vehicles already recommended by Consumer Reports -- Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango."

MyFord Touch

Ford said it's working on improvements to infotainment and transmissions.

"In North America at the moment, J.D. Power and other third-party results validate our own internal metrics showing isolated areas for improvement -- primarily with MyFord Touch and PowerShift automatic transmissions," Wes Sherwood, a Ford spokesman, said in an e-mail. "The good news is customers already are benefiting from the updates we made to both technologies."

"Ford has had problems with reliability," Paul said, because the company's infotainment system is difficult to use and repair-prone. That fault "hits them twice" in rankings on the road test and reliability, he said.

Cadillac's in-vehicle infotainment system is "following down the path of Ford and Lincoln," Jake Fisher, director of auto testing, told reporters today. "It takes a long time to do simple things."

'Good Track'

GM is making progress, Mike Hardie, the automaker's director of global quality strategy, said in an interview.

"There's certainly a lot of work to do, but I do believe we're on a good track and we really want to score better," Hardie said.

About 70 percent of GM's product portfolio is turning over in the next 12 months, Hardie said.

"We anticipate grand and glorious things in the future," he said.

Lexus earned praise for vehicles that are "generally quiet, plush and very reliable, though they're rarely sporty," the Yonkers, New York-based magazine said.

The ranking for Lexus "speaks to our renewed focus on quality, and listening to customers and giving them what they want," said Michael Kroll, a spokesman for the Toyota brand.

Toyota sold 2.08 million cars and light trucks in the U.S. last year, trailing only GM and Ford, as it expanded its Prius hybrid lineup and its Camry midsize sedan remained the nation's best-selling car model.

Audi, Volkswagen

Because redesigns of Chrysler's Dodge Ram and GM's Chevrolet Silverado haven't been tested, the magazine elected not to make a "best pick" among all types of pickups this year. In its place, Consumer Reports brought back the "budget car" category, choosing Hyundai Motor Co. (005380)'s Elantra as the best car for less than $20,000.

Honda's Accord won the best pick for the midsized sedan category, the top-selling vehicle class in the U.S. Volkswagen AG (VOW)'s Audi A6 was the best pick for luxury cars and Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) AG's 328i was the best pick for sports sedans, bringing German automakers back into the best picks list for the first time in a decade.

"Audi has come a long way," Fisher said. "Five years ago, I never thought I would be talking about Audi and reliability in the same sentence or even the same paragraph."

Volkswagen, Europe's largest carmaker, placed 16th in brand rankings. The manufacturer has a target of overtaking Toyota and GM to become the world's biggest carmaker by 2018. Its U.S. sales have been undeterred by poor reviews by Consumer Reports of its Jetta SE sedan, which placed last in its category of compact sedans.

Deliveries of Volkswagen brand cars and SUVs surged 35 percent in the U.S. last year to 438,133, the best since 1973. The division has more than doubled its market share since 2007, to 3 percent from 1.4 percent.

(BN) Failing to Beat Apple, Nokia Aims for BlackBerry

(Bloomberg ) As erstwhile smartphone leader Nokia Oyj fails to gain much headway on Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., the Finnish company is setting its sights on a weaker rival: BlackBerry.

Nokia is betting its partnership with corporate-computing giant Microsoft Corp. will help it win business users, targeting BlackBerry's stronghold. Nokia's newest Lumia smartphones, including two introduced this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, run on Microsoft's operating system and come with Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

Gaining a foothold in the business market is crucial for Nokia as it and BlackBerry fight for third place in smartphones, behind Samsung -- the leader in devices using Google Inc.'s Android -- and Apple. Shares of both Nokia and BlackBerry have lost 90 percent in the past five years as first consumers and then companies have turned to Android and Apple's iOS.

"The importance of winning the business audience on a scale of 1 to 10 is easily an 11," said Ramon Llamas, an analyst at research firm IDC in Boston. He expects Windows Phone handsets to surpass BlackBerry this year, with Nokia responsible for most of the gains.

BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd., pioneered the corporate mobile-device market in North America and still has a strong following in Washington and on Wall Street. Nokia, the biggest seller of Windows handsets, may appeal to information-technology chiefs seeking easy synchronization between smartphones and company computers, which most often use Microsoft's operating system.

'Perfect Moment'

Nokia Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop, who joined from Microsoft in 2010, started betting on his former employer's operating system after Nokia's homegrown Symbian software fell out of favor among consumers.

Lumia unit sales rose to 4.4 million in the fourth quarter, making up almost 75 percent of all Windows Phone sales. BlackBerry sold 7.4 million smartphones, for 3.2 percent of the global market. IPhones and Android devices together account for about 90 percent of smartphone sales.

Elop says he often gets asked whether he'd be interested in buying BlackBerry, even though the company hasn't said it's for sale. "When I get asked that question, my answer is 'I'm interested in their customers,'" he said in an interview in Barcelona this week. "It's a really perfect moment to go after that marketplace."

Cambodian Coke

Businesses are important to handset manufacturers because they carry a lot of clout when carriers decide which handsets to offer. A single corporate account can include thousands of individual users who tend to favor more expensive devices and have higher phone bills. Nokia says one European carrier it is negotiating with receives about a third of its revenue from companies.

Nokia has been touting its business-customer gains. The company says Coca-Cola salespeople in Cambodia and Vietnam use Lumia smartphones process orders while on the move. And it says London real-estate broker Foxtons Ltd. equipped more than 900 employees with Lumias, allowing them to synchronize calendars and work on spreadsheets and documents on the road.

Multitasking Whiz

BlackBerry delayed its new operating system, BlackBerry 10, several times. In March it plans to start U.S. sales of the $199 touch-screen Z10, which Bloomberg's Rich Jaroslovsky called "handsome, intuitive to use and a whiz at multitasking."

The company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, has more than 250,000 enterprise servers around the world, which help it ensure the security of corporate communications. It says more than 3,500 companies and government agencies in North America are considering its latest devices.

"It's not surprising that competitors are scrambling to get into the enterprise," said David J. Smith, BlackBerry's executive vice president for mobile computing. He said his company still offers the greatest security for corporate data.

With mobile devices evolving rapidly and the market growing, Nokia can win new customers as business users consider changing providers, according to Chris Weber, the company's global sales chief.

"We need to keep pushing," Weber said over coffee at Nokia's headquarters in Espoo, Finland. "It's a good opportunity now with people and companies trying to decide which way to go."

Simply defeating BlackBerry may not be enough for Nokia. Apple and Android manufacturers have almost squeezed other operating systems out of the consumer market, and there's no guarantee they won't do the same in the business world.

Third Ecosystem

Samsung, the world's biggest maker of smartphones, bought security software company Fixmo Inc. last month to improve its corporate credentials. Apple this month gained some Home Depot Inc. managers as customers. And in October, the U.S. Defense Department said it plans to open its network for the first time to Android devices and iPhones.

Nokia sales chief Weber acknowledges that Apple and Android are formidable foes. But he insists there can be what he calls a "third ecosystem" in the smartphone business.

"I am confident that the bet we have on Microsoft gives us the opportunity to be the third," Weber said. "I do think there's room and I think there is appetite."

No Singularity in sight. Ever.

The debate between proponents and opponents of strong Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues. A biologist specializing in the field calls Kurzweil's bluff:

(MTR 2/18/13) “The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,” says Nicolelis, author of several pioneering papers on brain-machine interfaces.

[F]uturist Ray Kurzweil, recently hired on at Google as a director of engineering, has been predicting that not only will machine intelligence exceed our own, but people will be able to download their thoughts and memories into computers.

Nicolelis calls that idea sheer bunk. “Downloads will never happen,” he said during remarks made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Sunday. “There are a lot of people selling the idea that you can mimic the brain with a computer.”

Nicolelis thinks in the future humans with brain implants might be able to sense x-rays, operate distant machines, or navigate in virtual space with their thoughts, since the brain will accommodate foreign objects including computers as part of itself.

Recently, Nicolelis’s Duke lab has been looking to put an exclamation point on these ideas. In one recent experiment, they used a brain implant so that a monkey could control a full-body computer avatar, explore a virtual world, and even physically sense it.

 tags: control, brain, interface, computing, intelligence

Better life through brain stimulation

Synchronizing brain cells appears to do wonders for at least one mental disorder. Although researchers still wander in the dark, they are at least in the right house.

(MTR 02/25/2013)A brain-pacemaker helped put out-of-sync brain circuits back on track in patients with extreme forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), reported researchers in yesterday’s Nature Neuroscience. The work could help improve treatment of severe OCD and even lead to other, less invasive new forms of treatment.

The next step, says Figee [, will be to see if he and his colleagues can use the brain activity measures to determine if a patient’s deep-brain stimulator is working properly. An implant has several electrodes, and it can take a lot of trial and error to learn which should be active and at which pulse settings for each patient. “We still don’t really know what we do; sometimes people respond, sometimes they don’t, sometimes it takes weeks or a year trying all kinds of settings,” he says. Using the brain scanning tools in the clinic may be years away, but it is possible, says Figee. “This may help us focus on the brain synchronization that we should aim for,” he says.

tags: control, brain, science, biology, health