The saga surrounding the sale of theNortel patents purchaseis finally coming to an end. Judges in the US have given Apple, Microsoft, Sony and RIM along with two other leading tech companies (EMC Corp and Ericsson) approval to acquire the patents from Nortel Networks Corp. A total of approximately 6,000 patents have been acquired for a total of $4.5 billion. Google had previously gained approval from the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to move ahead with its $900 million bid for Nortel patents, joined soon after by Apple and Intel....

In the latest salvo in the legal battle between Apple and HTC, Apple provides an argument to the International Trade Commission that Andy Rubin, now of Google, actually began work on components of Android while at Apple, reportsFlorian Mueller of FOSS Patents. The statement from Apple that is included in the complaint is quite interesting: Mr. Rubin began his career at Apple in the early 1990s and worked as a low-level engineer specifically reporting to the inventors of the ‘263 [realtime API] patent at the exact time their invention was being conceived and developed....

Apple has long argued against having alternative app stores and allowing sideloaded apps on the iPhone. In its latest effort to convince you, the company has releaseda whitepaperdescribing the bad effects of sideloading and how the App Store is the best protection against them. The whitepaper also highlights the importance of the role of the App Store to protect your data and let you safely download apps. The company argues that the App Store is designed to block and detect attacks, but sideloading changes this threat model and allows attackers “more resources to develop sophisticated attacks....

As much as Mac OS users like to believe that their platform is impervious to malware, it’s really not. The number of attacks, asadmittedby Apple, have been increasing. However, Apple customer service representatives have been told not to help remove spyware and malware. Those who create malware that targets Macs employ a method calledsocial engineering, where users are tricked into clicking on and installing Trojan horse programs. The most recent is theMacDefender, which pretends to be a Mac anti-virus program but once installed reportedly launches pornographic websites....

Today, Apple dominated the news. Apple released theiPhone 4S today, as well as iOS 5 and the addition of Sprint in the company’s lineup of US carriers. Readherefor everything you need to know about today’s announcements. Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook filled us in on the iPhone 4S (full details are here). It has the same design as the iPhone 4, but inside it is “all new”. The iPhone 4S will cost $199, $299 and $399 for 16, 32 and 64 gigabyte versions, respectively....