SiliconBeat

Opti, a former maker of semiconductors that now makes its living licensing its intellectual property, said in a press release Friday that the jury from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled in its favor in the patent infringement trial between it and Apple related to its patent entitled Read the rest of this entry »

Apple, which impressed Wall Street Wednesday by turning in its best non-holiday quarter results ever, revealed Friday in a regulatory filing that it cut the equivalent of 1,600 employees from its retail operations during the quarter. The maker of iPods, iPhones and Mac computers reported having the equivalent of 14,000 full-time employees as of March 31, down from the 15,600 it reported at the end of the holiday season on Dec. 31. During the comparable quarter the year before, Read the rest of this entry »

Opti, a former maker of semiconductors that now makes its living licensing its intellectual property, said today it prevailed over Apple, which it has sued alleging patent infringement, in a special proceeding required under U.S. patent law where both sides present their arguments to the court as to how they believe certain terms at issue in the lawsuit should be interpreted.

The court ruled that OPTi had prevailed on all “claims construction” against Apple and rejected Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s see. An  historic presidential election is coming to a climax with a surge of voters causing long lines at polling places. The nation, even the world, shivers with anticipation over the results. Good time to release significant pieces of personnel news?

That’s what Apple did this morning by posting a press release announcing the hiring of an ex-IBM vice president, Mark Papermaster, to head up its devices hardware engineering division. The news had actually been reported last week by CNet, via a court filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in which IBM claimed that Papermaster would be working closely with Apple CEO Steve Jobs in what IBM believes is Read the rest of this entry »

Someone at Bloomberg News probably wishes they could have a do-over of their Wednesday when they mistakenly caused a pre-written and critically incomplete obituary of Steve Jobs to be published on its wire. The story, which was quickly retracted, lacked one important fact — Jobs yet lives. A tipster sent a copy of the story to the tech gossip blog Gawker.

According to a story published by CNET, Bloomberg retracted the story, making only “the vaguest reference to the content of the gaffe.”

“An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today,” the retraction read. “The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.”

Nancy Heinen (pictured), the former general counsel at Apple has agreed to pay $2.2 million in disgorgement, interest and penalties and be barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company for five years to settle complaints arising from the alleged backdating of Apple options, according to a release put out today by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In doing so, Heinen neither admitted or denied the Commission’s allegations.

According to the complaint, “Heinen caused Apple to fraudulently Read the rest of this entry »

General counsels of several Silicon Valley corporations are in the vanguard of critics railing against changes being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board “”that would force public companies to disclose more about the risks of litigation,” judging by the sources in this story by Zusha Elinson of the San Francisco Recorder.

“Under the revised rules for FASB Statement No. 5,” Elinson writes, “the threshold for reporting the potential loss from a lawsuit would be lowered from ‘probable’ to Read the rest of this entry »

The Dream House that The Mouse is planning to build at Disneyland that will give its guests a chance to get touchy-feely with the very latest “cutting-edge technology” apparently won’t include any gizmos from the company run by Mickey’s biggest shareholder, Steve Jobs.

Walt Disney’s Disneyland Resorts announced plans for the “design and development of the new Innoventions Dream Home attraction, a 5,000+ sq. ft. home belonging to the fictional Elias family, scheduled to open in May in Tomorrowland at the Disneyland Resort.” The project is part of a five-year “alliance” with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Life/ware and home builder Taylor Morrision.

“The Dream House will introduce Disneyland guests to newly available technology from the participating companies that will enhance their lives today, while providing them a glimpse of the emerging digital advances they may find in their homes in the future. The attraction will provide guests with a “high-tech, high-touch” opportunity to experience technology in an entertaining, low-risk environment showing them how the power of technology can connect them to the people and things they care most about.”

Uh, no iPods, no iPhones, no AppleTV, no MacBook Airs? Say it ain’t so, Steve.

OK, this is a cheap item, we admit. But we were amused by the discussion of the compensation committee of Apple’s board regarding its chief executive’s pay in the company’s proxy released today.

Steve Jobs has received a $1 salary every year since he rejoined the company in 1997. In 1999, the company “awarded” Jobs an aircraft as an executive bonus in recognition of his outstanding performance” during the previous two years.

They paid Jobs $776,000 last year to remiburse him for expenses of operating his jet when it was being used for Apple’s business purposes.

Jobs was also awarded two large stock option grants, both of which became subjects of speculation about backdating, but both were cancelled in March 2003, when the board gave him 5 million shares of restricted shares instead.

Those shares, which became 10 million when the stock split in 2005, vested three years later, with the stock price having risen eight-fold during that time. Jobs gave up nearly half of them to pay taxes on the grant and he continues to hold the remaining 5.4 million shares.

In August he also exercised his option to buy 120,000 shares that were set to expire and continues to hold them.

The value of Jobs’ Apple shares, which were worth as much as $1.13 billion at one point on Dec. 27 when its shares touched an all-time high, ended Wednesday at $771.4 million, after Apple shares fell $16.57, or 10.7 percent, to $139.07.

In its discussion of his pay, the committee writes: “Because Mr. Jobs’s continued leadership is critical to the Company, the Compensation Committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him.”

We’ve been pretty distracted lately at Docu-drama headquarters. We’re been out back, plucking the feathers off our turkey. We’ve been Googling like mad to finally figure out what giblets are. We’ve been searching for the perfect cranberry sauce. And this being harvest season, we’ve been out gathering the crops.

Which is all to say, we didn’t have a chance to comb through the 10-K filed by Apple (ticker:AAPL) last week. Rest assured, it’s high on our bathroom reading list. But for now, we’ll defer to Michelle Leder at footnoted.org, who gives you the highlights here. And she’s found a few tasty nuggets to chew on, including ones on such notables as Al Gore, Eric Schmidt, and everyone’s favorite, Steve.