Hasta La Gadget!

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A German court ruled against Apple Inc in two patent cases against Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility, owned by Google.

The Mannheim court ruled that Samsung and Motorola didn’t infringe a technology related to touch-screen functions.

The ruling came as customers queued at Apple stores across the world to buy the new version of the company’s iPhone.

The touch-screen technology is used in a number of applications running on Google’s mobile platform Android. Industry analysts had feared a ruling in favor of Apple could have a wider impact on the smartphone industry.

Samsung said in a statement it welcomed the ruling, while Apple declined to comment.

Motorola could not immediately reached for comment.

Last month Apple scored a landmark legal victory over Samsung when a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.

Technology companies have invested billions of dollars in buying up patent portfolios that they can use against rivals and have also ploughed money into litigation in the United States and Europe.

Germany has become a major battleground in the global patent war between makers of mobile phones, tablet computer devices and their operating software, as court actions there have proved to be relatively cheap and speedier than in other jurisdictions.

Last week a court in Munich ruled that Motorola had infringed Apple’s “overscroll bounce” technology patent, which enables users to move documents over the screen of their device and let them bounce back to the center after releasing their fingers.

(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt; Additional reporting by Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Editing by David Holmes)

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Have you ever played Magic: The Gathering before? Assuming you answered in the affirmative, surely you are familiar with the concept of walls which come in handy for defense purposes, but walls were a whole lot more prevalent during the days of Revised and 4th Edition decks. I lost touch with Magic since Homelands, and am not quite sure whether walls even have a place in the deck these days. Well, what you see in the video above is known as the Wall of Wind, where it is more than able to simulating Category 5 hurricane winds.

The Wall of Wind hails from the Florida International University, and it is the first university research facility which is able to churn out Category 5 hurricane winds, at least within a simulation. A dozen fans make up the Wall of Wind, with each fan coughing out up to 700 horsepower, generating winds of up to 157 miles per hour. The test section stands tall at 15-feet high by 20-feet wide, paving the way for researchers, businesses, government agencies and industries to test and analyze how structures and products actually perform under different hurricane conditions. It might not require a single mana to “cast”, but cost approximately $8 million. [Press Release]

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