A German court on Friday found Apple Inc.’s patent infringement claim on Samsung Electronics Co. invalid, giving an upper hand to the South Korean company that suffered a crushing defeat in an earlier U.S. jury verdict.The district court in Mannheim ruled Samsung didn’t infringe the iPhone maker’s patent on multi-touch flags. The patent is one of the six intellectual properties Apple addressed in its June 2011 claim against the South Korean tech titan.Samsung welcomed the German court ruling, pl

TechnologySept. 21, 2012

A German court on Friday found Apple Inc.'s patent infringement claim on Samsung Electronics Co. invalid, giving an upper hand to the South Korean company that suffered a crushing defeat in an earlier U.S. jury verdict.The district court in Mannheim, one of the three German courts the two rivals have been facing off in, ruled Samsung didn't infringe the iPhone maker's patent on multi-touch flags.

IndustrySept. 21, 2012

For anyone who's ever been tired of listening to someone drone on and on and on, two Japanese researchers have the answer.The SpeechJammer, a device that disrupts a person's speech by repeating his or her own voice at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds, was named Thursday as a 2012 winner of the Ig Nobel prize _ an award sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for weird and humo

TechnologySept. 21, 2012

LONDON(AFP) - A fertility technique that uses DNA from three parents to create an embryo could become legal in Britain after a public consultation on its ethical implications was launched on Monday.The results of the consultation will help inform a decision by the government on whether to legalise the technique as early as next year -- potentially making Britain the first country in the world to hold human trials into the treatment, the Daily Telegraph reported.The IVF-based technique is designe

TechnologySept. 21, 2012

South Korea's air carriers have again agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of national efforts to fight climate change, the government said Friday.The voluntary agreement is the third of its kind signed by the country's seven airlines, including flag carriers Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs."Under the first agreem

IndustrySept. 21, 2012

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2012 growth estimate for South Korea to 3 percent on Thursday, citing the heightened eurozone crisis as a major risk factor.In June it forecast Asia's fourth-largest economy would grow 3.25 percent. But the IMF said South Korea's economy is likely to hit the bottom soon and called for preparations for raising interest rates. "The Korean economy is slow

Sept. 21, 2012

Samsung Electronics plans to add Apple Inc.’s latest smartphone iPhone 5 to the list of devices targeted in its patent lawsuits with the U.S. tech giant.Samsung officials in Seoul said on Thursday that the company had submitted a document to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which states its plan to include iPhone 5 in the ongoing suit against Apple.In the motion, Samsung said that based on currently available information, it believes the new smartphone will infrin

TechnologySept. 20, 2012

DALLAS ― More and more Americans are becoming obese, but not all fat is equal, say researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.Their study, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that certain obese patients were more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, but that a person’s overall weight was not the deciding factor.The greatest risk to developing diabetes was having fat stored inside the abdomen, nestling around the internal organs.“Visce

TechnologySept. 20, 2012

South Korean builder Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co. said Thursday it has won an order from Iraq. Under a deal with the Kurdistan regional government, Ssangyong E&C will build a water treatment plant and transmission and storage facilities in the cities of Halabja and Sulaymaniah in Iraq’s self-ruled northern Kurdish region under a project financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the company said. The company is scheduled to receive 45 billion won ($40 million) as an adva

IndustrySept. 20, 2012

Four out of 10 South Korean exporting companies expect their faltering exports stemming from a slowdown in China and Europe to bounce back as early as the second half of next year, a poll showed Thursday. According to the survey of 500 exporters by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 40 percent of the respondents said their sluggish overseas shipments will begin to recover in the second half of 2013. Another 17.2 percent expected their exports to rebound from the second half of 2014. “Ex

Sept. 20, 2012

South Korea’s international air passenger traffic surged to a new monthly high last month on a spike in visitors to and from Japan and China, the Transportation Ministry said Thursday.The number of international passengers to and from South Korea jumped 11.6 percent from a year earlier to 4.72 million in August, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs.The August tally marks a new monthly record. The previous record of 4.34 million passengers was set only the previous mo

Sept. 20, 2012

South Korean stocks closed 0.87 percent lower on Thursday as concerns over China’s weak manufacturing data weighed on investor sentiment here, analysts said. The local currency dropped against the U.S. dollar. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell 17.55 points to 1,990.33. Trading volume was heavy at 612.4 million shares worth 5.28 trillion won ($4.7 billion), with decliners outnumbering gainers 461 to 366.“The market expects the Chinese economy to make a turnaround. However, this

Sept. 20, 2012