Thursday morning, GPS specialist Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) said it lost a patent dispute with Japanese firm Pioneer Corp. The District Court of Dusseldorf in Germany found that two patents owned by Pioneer were infringed by a certain functionality in Garmin's software.

However, Garmin says it has already worked out "minor software revisions that eliminate the narrow functionality at issue in the litigation." As a result, the company doesn't expect any significant impact on its ability to import and sell its navigational products.

AMR (AMR) operating unit American Air pulled the ability to buy its tickets from travel site Orbitz.

"Effective December 21, 2010, schedules and fares for flights on American Airlines and American Eagle are no longer available on Orbitz.com or websites powered by Orbitz.com", the company said. Tickets will still be sold through travel agencies and at the firm's own website -- AA.com.

The Financial Times reported on a U.S. investigation that claims that BP (BP) and Halliburton (HAL) knew that the cement used to seal the failed well was unstable.

The lawyers suing BP and Halliburton call this evidence a "game changer" and says it opens up the companies to penalties and court awards running into the billions of dollars.

The case rests on a finding by a U.S. federal panel that the cement used may have caused the fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.

The Securities and Exchange Commission pretty much fell asleep for the past two years. Now, there's talk that the agency plans to get tough on violators whose greed and recklessness took this country to its knees. The Federal Reserve had to pledge or spend $12.8 trillion to bail them out.

The $12.8 trillion is gone and we have a country with 17 million unemployed and underemployed. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke could have done much better just taking that $12.8 trillion and help those in need. All he had to do was use one good bank for Americans to switch their money into, and let the greedy ones take a hit. With $12.8 trillion Bernanke could have put this country back on its feet again.

Over a year ago, two Bloomberg reporters filed under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information from the Federal Reserve on their bailout activities during the market crash of 2008-09. The Federal Reserve has blocked their attempts maintaining that disclosure would harm the financial institutions involved. The latest attempt at blockage was at the U.S. Court Appeals Court.

Mark Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), could receive as much as $40 million in severance benefits.

A loophole in Hurd's contract could bring him this big payout. It seems that his contract did not include specific language that would permit the company to fire him "for cause." Most contracts for chief executive contain specific language that detail the conditions under which he could be fired, including breaches of the company's ethical code.

Rambus (RMBS - option chain) shares are rising today after the company announced it has signed a patent licensing agreement with NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), under which RMBS grants NVDA a patent license for certain memory controllers at a 1% royalty rate for SDR memory controllers and a 2% royalty rate for other memory controllers. However, neither company has signed a release of liability or dismissed any litigation between them. RMBS had earlier charged that NVDA has infringed on some of its chip patents. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on RMBS.

As Apple (AAPL) continues to rack up huge profits, so are its attorneys. Hey, with a slowing economy, a smart idea is to sue growing companies, right?

Well, one of the many suits involves Apple's exclusive relationship with AT&T (T) to provide the phone and broadband services for the iPhone. Basically, the contention is that the alliance was meant to keep higher prices with minimum two-year subscription agreements as well as restrictions on technology development for a five-year period. Oh, there are also claims that Apple has a monopoly on the app store and has made it incredibly difficult to move to another mobile phone provider.

Thursday, BusinessWeek reported that authorities have arrested 485 people since March in what is called Operation Stolen Dreams.

The U.S. Justice Department is running Operation Stolen Dreams, which focuses on putting the squeeze on mortgage fraud. According to the report, the enforcement effort has net 1,215 criminal defendants responsible for $2.3 billion in losses face some sort of legal action. Operation Stolen Dreams also includes 191 civil cases that has recovered more than $147 million.

It's been a few weeks now that Google (GOOG) and its Street View mapping service has been in the spotlight after it was discovered that the search giant collected and stored personal data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Now, Google's intentions are in question.

"This was a failure of communication between and within teams," the BBC quotes a Google spokesperson. It is the first line of defense in what has already become an international scandal striking directly at the heart of Google and allegations of serious misconduct by that company. The BBC report indicates that Google's actions of collecting and recording the personal data is in violation of the data interception laws of as many as 30 countries.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected the NFL's request for "broad antitrust law protection," deciding that each team must be considered separate when selling NFL branded items. This means that each team must be considered its own entity when it sells branded items like jerseys and caps.

The court's decision was unanimous, and it reversed a lower court's ruling that threw out an antitrust suit filed against the NFL by American Needle, which lost its contract for making official NFL hats to Reebok International.