A court in Tokyo has ruled that Samsung Electronics did not infringe on patents held by Apple, a victory for the South Korean company.
The patent was related to transferring media content between devices. It comes after Samsung lost a key patent case in the US last week and was ordered to pay more than $1bn (£664m) in damages. This is one of many cases brought to courts around the world by the two smartphone market leaders. "We welcome the court's decision, which confirmed our long-held position that our products do not infringe Apple's intellectual property," said Samsung in a statement to the BBC. Tokyo District Judge Tamotsu Shoji dismissed the case filed by Apple in August, finding that Samsung was not in violation of Apple patents related to synchronising music and video data between devices and servers. Sales ban On 24 August, a US court ruled Samsung had infringed Apple patents for mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad. The company has vowed to continue to fight against Apple saying it will appeal against the US ruling. Apple is now seeking a ban on sales of eight Samsung phones in the US market. On 6 December, US District Judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the initial trial, will hear Apple's plea for an injunction against the Samsung phones, although it does not include the most recent Samsung phone to hit the market, the Galaxy S3.

Humans are being asked to help robots recognise the multitude of objects found in the average home.
Swedish researchers are asking people to use their Xbox's Kinect sensor as a scanner to grab detailed 3D images of the stuff in their homes. The Kinect@home project requires mass participation to accumulate many examples of common household objects. The scans will build into a library of objects robots can consult as they navigate around homes. Slow scan Co-ordinator Alper Aydemir said: "Factory floors can be custom built and the tools the robots will use can be known precisely in minute detail. This is not the case with everyday living spaces and objects." While humans have no trouble recognising objects such as a tea mug even if it is a different colour, shape and size to those they have seen before, robots struggle to complete such a mundane task. "One of the best ways for robots to accomplish all these tasks is to make them learn how to recognise a sofa, a chair, or a refrigerator by feeding them lots of data," Mr Aydemir told the BBC.

A South Korean court has ruled that Apple and Samsung both infringed each other's patents on mobile devices.
The court imposed a limited ban on national sales of products by both companies covered by the ruling. It ruled that US-based Apple had infringed two patents held by Samsung, while the Korean firm had violated one of Apple's patents. The decision comes as a jury in California is deliberating on a patent trial between the two firms in the US. The sales ban will apply to Apple's iPhone3GS, iPhone4 and its tablets the iPad and ipad2. Samsung products affected by the ban include its smartphone models Galaxy SI and SII and its Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet PCs. The court ordered Apple to pay 40m won ($35,000; £22,000) in damages to the South Korean rival, while Samsung was told to pay Apple 25m won. The awards are dwarfed by the damages being sought by Apple in its case in California. It is seeking more than $2.5bn (£1.6bn) from Samsung, for allegedly violating its patented designs and features in the iPad and iPhone. 'Differentiated its products' A Samsung spokesperson told the BBC that the court had found the South Korean firm guilty of violating Apple's patent relating to the "bounce back" function. The function lets users know that they have reached the end of a screen that they may be scrolling through on the their devices.

London may be host to the Olympics and paralympics but Bristol is the place to be if you are a sporty robot. 
26 teams from around the world are currently competing in the FIRA RoboWorld Cup They are taking part in a range of games, including football, basketball and weightlifting. It is the first time that the event has been hosted in the UK and organisers say that they have had a record number of entries. The robots have also smashed a few world records along the way. Marathon hopes The Usain Bolt of the robot world comes from Singapore. "The sprint world record was 42 seconds but Singapore has smashed that with 31 seconds," organiser Dr Guido Herrmann told the BBC. Unlike their human counterparts, the robots do not run 100 metres. "It is three metres [9ft 10in] forward and three metres back," explained Dr Herrmann. Homegrown pre-tournament favourites from Plymouth University will compete against Singapore in the sprint final on Saturday and "still have a very good chance", he said. It could be shaping up to be the robot equivalent of super Saturday. Another local team, from Bristol University's robotics laboratory, is competing in the final of the marathon. The event - a gruelling 42 metres - is going to be a challenge for Team Panther, as the entry is dubbed. "To be honest we'd just be happy to finish the race. At the moment our robot isn't walking very well," confessed team member David Pollard. The competition is made more difficult by the fact the teams have not been told in advance where the race will take place. "A table-top is easier than a floor or carpet but the surface is yet to be decided," he added.

Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.
 Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission. Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to expand by 200% before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow further. Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products. Revoked key The changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API). An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another. In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Twitpic. Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience". Mr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens." In this context, "tokens" are individual users.

An unexplained charge on a phone bill has led a mobile user to uncover a loophole in the sign-up system for some premium rate services.
Consultant Mark Hole found he could sign up anyone for some premium rate services from content maker Buongiorno. All he needed to know was a potential victim's mobile number and whether they used the Orange network. Buongiorno said it quickly closed the loophole once it was discovered and had no evidence it had been exploited. Browser spoof Mr Hole's suspicions were aroused when charges for a premium rate fortune-telling service turned up on the bill for the mobile phones linked to his computer consultancy business. "I went online, got the bill up and there were weekly charges coming up on it," he said. He complained to operator Orange about the charge but it said he must have signed up for it despite his insistence that he was "scrupulous" about keeping the numbers private and that they were only used for business calls. Mr Hole also contacted mobile content firm Buongiorno which ran the iFortune service he was being billed for. It asked him to send details of the disputed charge. At the same time Mr Hole looked for ways that the phantom charge could have applied.

The man behind an unofficial Olympic ticket alerts feed says he is "shocked" by an effort to block the service. 
Adam Naisbitt wrote a computer program that checked the official Olympics ticket site to spot when tickets for events were released. He shared ticket information via Twitter and helped hundreds buy tickets to watch the games. A London 2012 spokesman said its ticket agent blocked all computerised polling of the site to foil touts. Ticket list Mr Naisbitt wrote the computer program after being frustrated by the official Olympics website which suggested tickets were available when they had all been sold. His computer program regularly looked at the ticket site to spot the most recent changes to it and reveal which events genuinely had seats available. Information gathered by the programme had been fed to the @2012ticketalert account on Twitter and, said Mr Naisbitt, the information feed had soon gathered followers. He estimated that the ticket information had reached about 250,000 people and hundreds sent messages saying they had managed to secure tickets with its help. But the feed of data was cut off on Thursday night as the Olympic website was changed to block any visits to the site done by anything other than web browser software.

Electronic Arts has revealed that the number of people paying to play its online video game Star Wars: The Old Republic has dropped below one million.
 The title is the US firm's biggest investment to date. Launched in December, it initially attracted more than 1.7m subscribers. The firm said the news was "disappointing" adding that it was switching to a new pricing plan which would allow users to access much of the content for free. The news coincided with the firm's first quarter results which showed net income of $201m (£128m), a 5% drop on the same period the previous year. Payment turn-off The President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau said the Star Wars game would still break even so long as it maintained 500,000 subscribers, but admitted that its current performance was "not good enough". "The message from players exiting the game is clear, 40% say they were turned off by the monthly subscription and many indicate they would come back if we offered a free-to-play model," he told analysts, according to a transcript of the conference call provided by the Seeking Alpha financial news site. "Our plan now is to pivot and provide a two-tiered pricing plan, which will make the game more accessible and grow the audience." The new scheme will allow users to explore the online title's first 50 levels at no cost, although they will not have access to all its features.