Congress tightens belt, trims spy budget for 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress has drastically trimmed the budget for U.S. spies and satellites for 2013, though not quite as deeply as the White House wanted.
In one of the last votes of the year, House lawmakers voted Monday 373-29 in favor of a Senate-passed bill to slightly boost the president's $72 billion budget request for intelligence agencies including the CIA, adding extra cash for the counterterrorism fight against al-Qaida, and the counterintelligence fight against foreign governments trying to spy on the U.S.
That's down sharply from roughly $80 billion in 2012, which marked the peak of intelligence spending since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The bill holds personnel levels, one of the biggest cost drivers, generally at last year's levels," said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. "Even so, the bill adds a limited number of new personnel positions for select, high-priority positions, such as FBI surveillance officers to keep watch on terrorists."
The House Intelligence Committee's ranking member, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said the bill "invests in personnel and programs that are working and cuts things that aren't."
The bill was stripped of several measures meant to block the leaking of classified information, including a provision that would have limited which government officials could brief journalists on intelligence. The measures had been drafted after lawmakers objected to a series of news stories that anonymously quoted senior administration sources describing sensitive intelligence programs, such as the process by which targets are chosen for lethal drone strikes overseas.
The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says the measures were taken out to get the bill passed but that the issue remains a problem.
"Unfortunately, I am certain that damaging leaks of classified information will continue, and so the committee will need to continue to look for acceptable ways to address this problem," Feinstein said Friday after the Senate version of the bill passed.
The legislation, if signed into law by President Barack Obama, will require the White House to inform Congress when it decides to share classified information with reporters, giving lawmakers a heads-up before they read about it in the media.

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Shell drill ship runs aground on island off Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC's foray into Arctic offshore drilling has suffered a serious setback after one of its two Alaska drilling rigs ran aground in shallow water off a small island.
Officials at a unified command center run by the Coast Guard, Shell, state responders and others said the Kulluk grounded Monday night on rocks off the southeast side of Sitkalidak Island, an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Alaska.
The Kulluk was being towed by a 360-foot anchor handler, the Aiviq, and a tugboat, the Alert. The vessels were moving north along Kodiak Island, trying to escape the worst of a North Pacific storm that included winds near 70 mph and swells to 35 feet. Sitkalidak is on the southeast side of Kodiak Island.
About 4:15 p.m., the drill ship separated from the Aiviq about 10 to 15 miles off shore and grounding was inevitable, Coast Guard Cmdr. Shane Montoya, the acting federal on-scene coordinator, told reporters.
"Once the Aiviq lost its tow, we knew the Alert could not manage the Kulluk on its own as far as towing, and that's when we started planning for the grounding," he said.
The command center instructed the nine tug crew members to guide the drill ship to a place where it would cause the least environmental damage. The tug cut the unmanned ship loose at 8:15 p.m. and it grounded at 9 p.m. near the north tip of Ocean Bay on Sitkalidak.
"The Alert was not able to do anything as far as towing the Kulluk but tried to maintain some kind of control," Montoya said.
The drill ship drafts 35 to 40 feet of water. The Coast Guard planned to fly out early Tuesday to plan a salvage operation and possible spill response. It is carrying 150,000 gallons of diesel and about 12,000 gallons of lube oil and hydraulic fluid, Montoya said.
Susan Childs, Shell's on-scene coordinator, said it was too early to know how the vessel would react to the pounding of the storm when it was aground and stationary.
She was optimistic about its salvage prospects and chances for staying intact.
"The unique design of the Kulluk means the diesel fuel tanks are isolated in the center of the vessel and encased in very heavy steel," she said. "When the weather subsides and it is safe to do so, we will dispatch crews to the location and begin a complete assessment."
The Kulluk is designed for extended drilling in Arctic waters and underwent $292 million in technical upgrades since 2006 to prepare for Alaska offshore exploration. The drill ship worked during the short 2012 open water season in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast. Its ice-reinforced, funnel-shape hull can deflect moving ice downward and break it into pieces.
Attached to a drilling prospect, the Kulluk is designed to handle waves 18 feet high. When disconnected from a well, it's designed to handle seas to 40 feet. Garth Pulkkinen of Noble Corp., the operator of the drill ship, said it was never in danger of capsizing.
The vessel first separated from a towing vessel Thursday night south of Kodiak Island. It was carrying a skeleton crew of 17 as it was towed by the Aiviq from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands to Seattle for maintenance. The tow line broke at a shackle attached to one of the vessels.
"It was new. It was inspected before it left Dutch, but it broke," said Shell Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith.
Before a line could be reattached, the Aiviq's engines failed, possibly from contaminated fuel. The Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley attempted to secure the drifting drill ship but that line failed and wrapped itself around one of the cutter's propellers, requiring the cutter to return to Kodiak on one propeller.
With bad weather predicted, the Kulluk's crew was evacuated Saturday. They hooked up emergency tow lines and left them trailing behind the vessel in case they were needed.
The Aiviq, with its engines restored, and a tug re-established lines to the drill ship, but lines broke Sunday. During a lull in the storm early Monday, the crew of Alert grabbed the original 400-foot line trailing the drill ship and later the Aiviq grappled aboard one of the emergency lines.

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Analysis: Economy would dodge bullet for now under fiscal deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A deal worked out by Senate leaders to avoid the "fiscal cliff" was far from any "grand bargain" of deficit reduction measures.
But if approved by the House of Representatives, it could help the country steer clear of recession, although enough austerity would remain in place to likely keep the economy growing at a lackluster pace.
The Senate approved a last-minute deal early Tuesday morning to scale back $600 billion in scheduled tax hikes and government spending cuts that economists widely agree would tip the economy into recession.
The deal would hike taxes permanently for household incomes over $450,000 a year, but keep existing lower rates in force for everyone else.
It would make permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.
Scheduled cuts in defense and non-defense spending were simply postponed for two months.
Economists said that if the emerging package were to become law, it would represent at least a temporary reprieve for the economy. "This keeps us out of recession for now," said Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The contours of the deal suggest that roughly one-third of the scheduled fiscal tightening could still take place, said Brett Ryan, an economist at Deutsche Bank in New York.
That is in line with what many financial firms on Wall Street and around the world have been expecting, suggesting forecasts for economic growth of around 1.9 percent for 2013 would likely hold.
At midnight Monday, low tax rates enacted under then-President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 expired. If the House agrees with the Senate - and there remained considerable doubt on that score - the new rates would be extended retroactively.
Otherwise, together with other planned tax hikes, the average household would pay an estimated $3,500 more in taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Budget experts expect the economy would take a hit as families cut back on spending.
Provisions in the Senate bill would avoid scheduled cuts to jobless benefits and to payments to doctors under a federal health insurance program.
AUSTERITY'S BITE
Like the consensus of economists from Wall Street and beyond, Deutsche Bank has been forecasting enough fiscal drag to hold back growth to roughly 1.9 percent in 2013. Ryan said the details of the deal appeared to support that forecast.
That would be much better than the 0.5 percent contraction predicted by the Congressional Budget Office if the entirety of the fiscal cliff took hold, but it would fall short of what is needed to quickly heal the labor market, which is still smarting from the 2007-09 recession.
"We continue to anticipate a significant economic slowdown at the start of the year in response to fiscal drag and a contentious fiscal debate," economists at Nomura said in a research note.
In particular, analysts say financial markets are likely to remain on tenterhooks until Congress raises the nation's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the U.S. Treasury confirmed had been reached on Monday.
While the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent for many Americans under the budget deal, a two-year-long payroll tax holiday enacted to give the economy an extra boost would expire. The Tax Policy Center estimates this could push the average household tax bill up by about $700 next year.
The suspension of spending cuts sets up a smaller fiscal cliff later in the year which still could be enough to send the economy into recession, said Chinn.
He warned that ongoing worries about the possibility of recession could keep businesses from investing, which would hinder economic growth.
"You retain the uncertainty," Chinn said.

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Bill to avert fiscal cliff heads to House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to negate a fiscal cliff of across-the-board tax increases and sweeping spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies is headed to the GOP-dominated House after bipartisan, middle-of-the-night approval in the Senate capped a New Year's Eve drama unlike any other in the annals of Congress.
The measure cleared the Senate on an 89-8 vote early Tuesday, hours after Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sealed a deal.
It would prevent middle-class taxes from going up but would raise rates on higher incomes. It would also block spending cuts for two months, extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, prevent a 27 percent cut in fees for doctors who treat Medicare patients and prevent a spike in milk prices.
The measure ensures that lawmakers will have to revisit difficult budget questions in just a few weeks, as relief from painful spending cuts expires and the government requires an increase in its borrowing cap.
House Speaker John Boehner pointedly refrained from endorsing the agreement, though he's promised a vote on it or a GOP alternative right away. But he was expected to encounter opposition from House conservatives.
"It's three strikes in my book and I'll be voting no on this bill," Rep. Tim Huelskamp told CNN Tuesday morning. Huelskamp says the legislation would impose a hardship on small businesses around the country and falls short of addressing the need for cuts in spending.
The measure is the first significant bipartisan tax increase since 1990, when former President George H.W. Bush violated his "read my lips" promise on taxes. It would raise an additional $620 billion over the coming decade when compared with revenues after tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, during the Bush administration. But because those policies expired at midnight Monday, the measure is officially scored as a whopping $3.9 trillion tax cut over the next decade.
President Barack Obama praised the agreement after the Senate's vote.
"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," Obama said in a statement. "This agreement will also grow the economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way — by investing in our middle class, and by asking the wealthy to pay a little more."
The sweeping Senate vote exceeded expectations — tea party conservatives like Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., backed the measure — and would appear to grease enactment of the measure despite lingering questions in the House, where conservative forces sank a recent bid by Boehner to permit tax rates on incomes exceeding $1 million to go back to Clinton-era levels.
"Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members — and the American people — have been able to review the legislation," said a statement by Boehner and other top GOP leaders.
Lawmakers hope to resolve any uncertainty over the fiscal cliff before financial markets reopen Wednesday. It could take lots of Democratic votes to pass the measure and overcome opposition from tea party lawmakers.
Under the Senate deal, taxes would remain steady for the middle class but rise at incomes over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples — levels higher than President Barack Obama had campaigned for in his successful drive for a second term in office. Some liberal Democrats were disappointed that the White House did not stick to a harder line, while other Democrats sided with Republicans to force the White House to partially retreat on increases in taxes on multi-million-dollar estates.
The measure also allocates $24 billion in spending cuts and new revenues to defer, for two months, some $109 billion worth of automatic spending cuts that were set to slap the Pentagon and domestic programs starting this week. That would allow the White House and lawmakers time to regroup before plunging very quickly into a new round of budget brinkmanship, certain to revolve around Republican calls to rein in the cost of Medicare and other government benefit programs.
Officials also decided at the last minute to use the measure to prevent a $900 pay raise for lawmakers due to take effect this spring.
Even by the dysfunctional standards of government-by-gridlock, the activity at both ends of historic Pennsylvania Avenue was remarkable as the administration and lawmakers spent the final hours of 2012 haggling over long-festering differences.
Republicans said McConnell and Biden had struck an agreement Sunday night but that Democrats pulled back Monday morning. Democrats like Tom Harkin of Iowa said the agreement was too generous to upper-bracket earners. Obama's longstanding position was to push the top tax rate on family income exceeding $250,000 from 35 percent to 39 percent.
"No deal is better than a bad deal. And this look like a very bad deal," said Harkin.
The measure would raise the top tax rate on large estates to 40 percent, with a $5 million exemption on estates inherited from individuals and a $10 million exemption on family estates. At the insistence of Republicans and some Democrats, the exemption levels would be indexed for inflation.
Taxes on capital gains and dividends over $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples would be taxed at 20 percent, up from 15 percent.
The bill would also extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed for an additional year at a cost of $30 billion, and would spend $31 billion to prevent a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
Another $64 billion would go to renew tax breaks for businesses and for renewable energy purposes, like tax credits for energy-efficient appliances.
Despite bitter battling over taxes in the campaign, even die-hard conservatives endorsed the measure, arguing that the alternative was to raise taxes on virtually every earner.
"I reluctantly supported it because it sets in stone lower tax rates for roughly 99 percent of American taxpayers," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "With millions of Americans watching Washington with anger, frustration and anxiety that their taxes will skyrocket, this is the best course of action we can take to protect as many people as possible from massive tax hikes."

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Senate approves "fiscal cliff" deal, crisis eased

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate moved the U.S. economy back from the edge of a "fiscal cliff" on Tuesday, voting to avoid imminent tax hikes and spending cuts in a bipartisan deal that could still face stiff challenges in the House of Representatives.
In a rare New Year's session at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT), senators voted 89-8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while making permanent low tax rates on the middle class that have been in place for a decade.
But the measure did little to rein in huge annual budget deficits that have helped push the U.S. debt to $16.4 trillion.
The agreement came too late for Congress to meet its own deadline of New Year's Eve for passing laws to halt $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts which strictly speaking came into force on Tuesday.
But with the New Year's Day holiday, there was no real world impact and Congress still had time to draw up legislation, approve it and backdate it to avoid the harsh fiscal measures.
That will need the backing of the House where many of the Republicans who control the chamber complain that President Barack Obama has shown little interest in cutting government spending and is too concerned with raising taxes.
All eyes are now on the House which is to hold a session on Tuesday starting at noon (1700 GMT).
Obama called for the House to act quickly and follow the Senate's lead.
"While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay," he said in a statement.
"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it. But tonight's agreement ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest Americans," Obama said.
Members were thankful that financial markets were closed, giving them a second chance to return to try to head off the fiscal cliff.
But if lawmakers cannot pass legislation in the coming days, markets are likely to turn sour. The U.S. economy, still recovering from the 2008/2009 downturn, could stall again if Congress fails to fix the budget mess.
"If we do nothing, the threat of a recession is very real. Passing this agreement does not mean negotiations halt, far from it. We can all agree there is more work to be done," Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, told the Senate floor.
A new, informal deadline for Congress to legislate is now Wednesday when the current body expires and it is replaced by a new Congress chosen at last November's election.
The Senate bill, worked out after long negotiations on New Year's Eve between Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also postpones for two months a $109 billion "sequester" of sweeping spending cuts on military and domestic programs.
It extends unemployment insurance to 2 million people for a year and makes permanent the alternative minimum tax "patch" that was set to expire, protecting middle-income Americans from being taxed as if they were rich.
'IMPERFECT SOLUTION'
The tax hikes do not sit easy with Republicans but conservative senators held their noses and voted to raise rates for the rich because not to do so would have meant increases for almost all working Americans.
"It took an imperfect solution to prevent our constituents from a very real financial pain, but in my view, it was worth the effort," McConnell said.
House Speaker John Boehner - the top Republican in Congress - said the House would consider the Senate deal. But he left open the possibility of the House amending the Senate bill, which would spark another round of legislating.
"The House will honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement if it is passed. Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members ... have been able to review the legislation," Boehner and other House Republican leaders said in a statement.
Boehner has struggled for two years to get control over a group of several dozen Tea Party fiscal conservatives in his caucus who strongly oppose tax increases and demand that he force Obama to make savings in the Medicare and Social Security healthcare and retirement programs.
A campaign-style event held by Obama in the White House as negotiations with Senate leaders were taking place on Monday may have made it more difficult for Republicans to back the deal. In remarks to a group of supporters that resembled a victory lap, the president noted that his rivals were coming around to his way of seeing things.
"Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Obviously, the agreement that's currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently," he said to applause before the Senate deal was sealed.
Obama's words and tone annoyed Republican lawmakers who seemed to feel that the Democrat was gloating.
"That's not the way presidents should lead," said Republican Senator John McCain, Obama's rival in the 2008 election.
A deal with the House on Tuesday, while uncertain, would not mark the end of congressional budget fights. The "sequester" spending cuts will come up again in February as will the contentious "debt ceiling," which caps how much debt the federal government can hold.
Republicans may see those two issues as their best chance to try to rein in government spending and clip Obama's wings at the start of his second term.

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Pudding Monsters tops iPhone Games of the Week

Now that the holiday season is behind us, we get to sit in that awkward bit of time at the end of the year. That time that is so utterly devoted to reminiscence and top games of the year lists. As such, it’s hard to find out about notable new releases, and most developers avoid this time like the plague. Thankfully, last week was so utterly packed with releases that there’s enough for a second list. I mean, there was a new game from ZeptoLabs, creators of Cut the Rope, and that wasn’t even on last week’s list. So here we go with the last, but certainly not least, new iOS games of 2012.

Pudding Monsters ($0.99)

After the massive success that was Cut the Rope, developer ZeptoLabs has gone against all conventions and branched out in a brand new direction with a new IP. Everyone was probably expecting a Cut the Rope 2, but instead, we get a brilliant puzzle that has you sliding pudding blobs together into bigger pudding blobs. It’s not as quite casual as Cut the Rope, with a slightly higher difficulty that should appeal to a slightly more mature gamer, but it is still charming and adorable with puzzles worth every penny. Definitely don’t miss out on this one.

Karateka ($2.99)

Only in the open and accessible world of iOS development have we seen projects like this. An ancient eighties fighting game revitalized and re-released as a gesture and timing-based adventure from the creator of the original (who also created Prince of Persia). There are plenty of old references mixed in with the new look and feel of the game, appealing to both modern and old school gamers. There is an elegant simplicity in the violence at play here, and while I don’t foresee it being crazy popular, there is a modern classic to be found in this one.

Middle Manager of Justice (Free)

DoubleFine Productions, with their buckets and buckets of Kickstarter money, are still doing what they do best. They make smaller titles that offer a lot of creativity and charm. The creators of Brutal Legend have no branched into the iOS realm with this wonderfully funny freemium simulation. Only DoubleFine would think of such a hilarious concept as superhero middle management. Yes, it is a freemium game with freemium elements, but DoubleFine has done their best to lessen the brutality of them, and in the end this is a very familiar game with a sense of humor.

Shadow Warrior (Free)

3D Realms, creators of Duke Nukem, have been having a pretty good time releasing their old games on mobile devices. Their latest release is that of the controversial 1997 shooter, Shadow Warrior, based on the same engine as Duke Nukem 3D. The controls for Duke Nukem 3D’s port weren’t very cooperative, but it seems like they’ve been vastly improved for the bloodbath that awaits you here. It’s retro ultra-violence at its best. The game is only decent overall, but it’s still worth playing if you miss the simpler shooters of old.

Pixel Defenders Puzzle ($0.99)

It is a rare day that I promote a match-three game on this weekly list. I’ve never seen a genre get so popular so quickly before dying off just as quickly as I saw with match-threes. Luckily, the developers of Pixel Defenders Puzzle know just how to scratch my gaming itch. Essentially, this is more like a Triple Town, but it isn’t a blatant clone, and simply builds on those solid mechanics. For another thing, it involves a retro RPG pixilated world, with magic, wizards, undead, and the rest. I’m pretty much guaranteed to pay attention when I see such an aesthetic. As it so happens, the game itself is really well done, and worth playing!

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Number of e-book readers increasing in United States: survey

The popularity of electronic books is increasing in the United States, with nearly one-quarter of American bibliophiles reading e-books, according to a survey released on Thursday.
The number of e-readers aged 16 years and older jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year, while print readers fell from 72 to 67 percent in 2012, in a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
"The move toward e-book reading coincides with an increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices," the organization said. Its report analyzed reading trends among the 75 percent of Americans who read at least one book in the last year.
"In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or e-book reading device ... grew from 18 percent in late 2011 to 33 percent in 2012."
E-book owners increased from 4 percent in May 2010 to 19 percent in November 2012, while people with tablets jumped from 3 percent to 25 percent during the same period, according to the report.
People most likely to read e-books are well-educated, 30- to 49-year-olds who live in households earning $75,000 or more.
More women, 81 percent, read books, compared to 70 percent of men, and the number of readers declines as people age. The trend toward e-books impacted libraries, which stocked and loaned more e-books.
"The share of recent library users who have borrowed an e-book from a library has increased from 3 percent last year to 5 percent this year," according to Pew.
Even awareness that library stock e-books has grown, from 24 percent late last year to 31 percent now.
The findings were based on a telephone survey of 2,252 people, aged 16 years and older, across the United States and a similar poll the year before. It had a 2.7 percent margin of error.

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Marvell has options as it faces $1 billion patent verdict

 As Marvell Technology Group Ltd embarks on a legal process to void a $1.17 billion damages verdict in a patent dispute with Carnegie Mellon University, it has some reasons to be optimistic.
The verdict was delivered on Wednesday by a jury in Pittsburgh, which found that Marvell had infringed two patents owned by Carnegie Mellon related to how accurately hard-drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks.
On Thursday, Marvell said that it would seek to overturn the verdict through post-trial motions at the district court.
Marvell also said that, if necessary, it would appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. That court, which oversees appeals in patent infringement cases, has proven willing to throw out large verdicts in the recent past.
Brian Love, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who specializes in patent law, said damages awards are reversed about 20 percent of the time on appeal. Further, he said, "the larger a damages award is, the more susceptible it is to attack." The award is one of the largest by a U.S. jury in a patent infringement case.
Other large verdicts have not held up on appeal. In February 2011, Abbott Laboratories, for example, succeeded in overturning a $1.67 billion verdict against it in a patent infringement verdict won by a Johnson & Johnson unit.
That verdict, the largest ever by a jury in U.S. patent infringement litigation, was delivered in 2009 by a jury in Texas which found that Abbott's arthritis drug Humira had infringed the Johnson & Johnson unit's patent. But the Federal Circuit ruled that the patents at issue were invalid and thus could not be infringed.
Microsoft Corp has also successfully cut down big patent infringement verdicts delivered against it. In 2007, it was hit with a $1.52 billion verdict in a case brought by Alcatel-Lucent SA over patents related to digital music technology.
But, after post-trial motions, the judge who oversaw the case set aside the verdict, finding that Microsoft's Windows Media Player did not infringe the patents held by Alcatel-Lucent. The Federal Circuit affirmed his decision.
It's unclear which issues Marvell will raise in its post-trial motions and appeals. In a statement on Thursday the company said it did not infringe Carnegie Mellon's patents and that those patents could not have practically been used in its products.
Legal experts said Marvell's lawyers could attack the jury's damages calculation. Love of Santa Clara Law noted that the award exceeds Marvell's annual profits and is more than one quarter of the company's market capitalization.
"The law of patent damages is fuzzy, and leaves parties leeway to argue for damages amounts that differ drastically, often by 100-fold and sometimes much more," he said.
Because it received precisely what it requested, an amount calculated by an outside expert based on assumptions that could later be questioned, this award may be in "greater jeopardy than usual," Love said.
Marvell may contest the jury's finding that it willfully infringed the patents, which allows Judge Nora Barry Fischer to treble the damages owed to Carnegie Mellon.
In a decision issued in June, the Federal Circuit gave judges discretion in determining whether infringement was willful. Before that decision, willfulness was often left entirely up to juries.
"Typically that is a focal point of post-trial motions," said Donald Dunner, a patent attorney who is not involved in the case.

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Working conditions begin to improve at Apple partner’s factories

It has been nearly a year since Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook addressed the unsafe working conditions in the company’s supply chain factories. Following an investigation from the Fair Labor Association that found a number of Chinese labor law violations, Apple and Foxconn (2038) agreed to improve conditions. The companies planned a series of reforms, including reduced hours and significantly higher wages. Foxconn said that the majority of changes would go into effect by July 2013, however according to a report from The New York Times, some workers have already noticed some smaller changes taking place such as cushioned chairs replacing old wooden stools.
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
Apple has continued to work with advocacy groups over the past year as it carries on with its efforts to improve conditions and factory worker morale. The company has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, in addition to re-evaluating how it works with its supply chain partners, and has even reached out to competitors such as HP (HPQ) and Intel (INTC) to help curb excessive overtime in China.
[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]
Despite the improvements, many laborers continue to work illegal overtime and employee safety remains at risk. These are problems Apple must address in 2013, advocacy groups say.

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Lumia smartphones see deep discounts from Verizon, T-Mobile and Amazon

Lumia line of smartphones is now seeing post-holiday discounts at a variety of retailers shortly after launching in the United States. The phones, which run Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 operating system, are the company’s latest gamble after a string of launches that were not well received. Verizon’s (VZ) Lumia 822 can now be had for free with a new two-year agreement, as can T-Mobile’s Lumia 810, while Amazon (AMZN) is offering the flagship Lumia 920 for $39 on AT&T (T).
[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]
It is unclear if the carriers are footing the entire financial burden, or if Nokia has provided some support. A Nokia spokesperson said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that “pricing is always a carrier decision, but holiday season promotions are fairly standard at this time of year,” adding that even some Samsung (005930) phones are being offered for free.

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