Microsoft asks for ban of Motorola's smartphones

Microsoft is presenting a case before the International Trade Commission (ITC) in which they claim Motorola Mobility is using technology in their Android-based smartphones that was derived from Microsoft products. The world’s largest software maker is asking the ITC to halt imports of certain Motorola phones.
Bloomberg reports that the trial began on Monday in Washington and that Microsoft claims Motorola infringed on seven patents. Microsoft singled out the Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq XT, Devour, Backflip and Charm handsets among those guilty of infringement. The ITC does have the ability to halt imports if they feel a product violates US patent rights.
“We have a responsibility to our employees, customers, partners and shareholders to safeguard our intellectual property,” David Howard, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation, said in an e-mail. “Motorola is infringing our patents and we are confident that the ITC will rule in our favor.”
Motorola is defending themselves against the patent suit and a company spokeswoman said they have also brought legal actions of their own against Microsoft in the US and Europe for the same reasons.
This is the first of what is likely to be many more lawsuits brought upon Motorola Mobility since Google agreed to buy the company for $12.5 billion last week. The main reason Google made the purchase was to acquire a wealth of patents from Motorola Mobility to protect themselves as well as the Android platform. Interestingly enough, Google isn’t named in the complaint.
The judge in the case is scheduled to make a decision on November 4 and the ITC has until March 5, 2012 to complete their investigation.

Firefox 7 beta now available, final build due next month

A beta version of Mozilla’s Firefox 7 is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Despite releasing version 6 of the popular browser earlier this week, it’s the next iteration that many expect to solve persistent memory leak issues that have plagued the software for years.
Firefox 7 will introduce MemShrink, an initiative that began in June to eradicate the browser's memory inconsistencies. Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote claims that Firefox 7 uses less memory than the past three versions, between 20 and 50 percent less in some instances.
In addition to MemShrink, the new build also features better Javascript garbage collection. It's said to work more frequently now and should free up more memory when multiple tabs are open. The upcoming browser also implements Azure Direct2D for Canvas which increases canvas-based animations in HTML5.
There are also tools built into Firefox 7 that will help developers measure load times. Synchronization of bookmarks and passwords is said to be faster, too.
Version 7 is part of Mozilla’s recent rapid deployment of browsers. The developer released Firefox 5 in June and earlier this week it quietly launched Firefox 6 a day ahead of the planned release date.
Mozilla’s browser has been criticized for needing large amounts of RAM and then not freeing that memory once windows or tabs have been closed. Nethercote acknowledges these shortcomings, indicating that some versions were more efficient than others. He praised Firefox versions 3, 3.5 and 3.6 but said things deteriorated with version 4 partly because of all its new features, aggressive JavaScript garbage collection and image decoding.
The final version of Firefox 7 should be available by September 27.