Myriad Genetics (MYGN) stock is trading lower today after a Federal District Court ruled that the company's claims covering isolated DNA sequences in seven of the 23 patents covering BRACAnalysis are invalid. The company said it will appeal the decision. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on MYGN.

This morning, MYGN opened at $23.86. So far today the stock has hit a high of $24.00 and a low of $23.07. As of 11:55, MYGN is trading at $23.63, down $1.27 (-5.1%). The chart for MYGN looks bullish.

All it takes is a little patience. F. Scott Yeager, a former Enron executive, got some good news from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which ruled that it wouldn't revisit his case. So, he no longer has criminal charges related to financial fraud hanging over him. Yeager has been acquitted on all counts. This follows a June ruling by the Supreme Court, which tossed a previous 5th Circuit Court ruling that could have resulted in a new trial.

The ruling said, "Today, ... it is clear under our initial ... analysis the jury made a finding in acquitting Yeager that precludes prosecution on insider trading and money laundering." Samuel Buffone, who was one of Yeager's attorneys, stated that his client shouldn't have been indicted to begin with and didn't do anything wrong. It has taken them seven years to get to this point.

Yeager landed in hot water because he sold stock in Enron for more than $54 million before it began the plunge that would ultimately end with its bankruptcy in 2001. He faced 125 counts, was acquitted of five (four for wire fraud and one for conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud) and wound up with a hung jury for the remaining 120, which included insider trading and money laundering. He was later indicted again on 13 counts of insider trading and money laundering.

Bernie Madoff's long-time go-to guy, Frank DiPascali, isn't trying to beat the system any more. He has decided to plead guilty to criminal charges spanning more than two decades.

DiPascali is the first of Madoff's employees to be charged. Aside from Madoff, the only other person greeted by the criminal justice system has been outside auditor David Friehling, who isn't going as easily as DiPascali (he's pled not guilty).

If all goes as planned, DiPascali will plead guilty in U.S. District Court on Monday at 3 PM. For now, everyone's remaining tight-lipped, and the terms have not yet been revealed.

So, just in time for the Super Bowl, we have an interesting controversy surrounding a couple heavyweights of the snack world. Turns out that buyers from Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) and Frito-Lay at Pepsico, Inc. (NYSE: PEP) are pleading guilty to accepting bribes. Buyers from both companies were accepting "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in bribes that were part of a scheme that helped push food prices higher nationwide.

According to the U.S. Attorney's office, James Wahl Jr. (a former Frito-Lay purchaser from Dallas) has agreed to plead guilty to accepting roughly $160,000 (that's a lot of corn chips). This news comes after Robert Watson (senior purchasing manager at KFT) plead guilty to accepting $158,000 from a California-based tomato processor. According to the charges, the men helped a sales broker at SK Foods (which processes tomatoes in Lemoore, California) charge their respective companies higher prices.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• To ease concerns about their balance sheets, the Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" reported that Fannie Mae, or Federal National Mortgage Association (NYSE: FNM), and Freddie Mac, or Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (NYSE: FRE), would have to issue over $10B of new stock in 2008. The benefits to such a raise would be helping the housing market and staying the course. In the end, the answer may lie in the fact that the government is more interested in supporting the housing market, and not worrying about the shareholders.
• The Financial Times reported that the Bombay High Court has delayed a court challenge by Vodafone Group Plc (NYSE: VOD) against Indian tax authorities until June 23 in order to allow changes to tax laws to come into force. Indian tax authorities are looking for Vodafone to pay around $2B in taxes for its acquisition of Hutchison Essar.
  

OTHER PAPERS:

• Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) may join a Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG)-led alliance called OpenSocial that is working to develop a common set of standards in order for developers to create programs that run on Web sites and social networks, the New York Times reported.
• Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPod, a government official said. The Associated Press reported that the investigation was launched after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging.

IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) stock is falling this morning as investors worry about a looming power struggle between magnates Barry Diller and John C. Malone over a potential restructuring plan. Diller wants to separate IACI's five major entities into five publicly traded parts, which would strip Malone's Liberty Media (NASDAQ: LINTA) of voting rights in the spinoff companies. Also in the news today is a report that the dispute will likely end up in court sometime in March. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on IACI.

After hitting a one-year high of $40.99 last February, the stock hit a one-year low of $23.30 last month. This morning, IACI opened at $26.08. So far today the stock has hit a low of $25.52 and a high of $26.44. As of 10:50, IACI is trading at $25.75, down $0.52 (-2.0%). The chart for IACI looks bearish but improving slightly, while S&P gives the stock a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy rating.

UST (NYSE: UST) volatility Flat; UST down 6%; Altria Group (NYSE: MO) testing Marlboro Moist Smokeless tobacco. UST, a leading producer and marketer of moist smokeless tobacco products (Skoal, Copenhagen), is recently down $3.06 to $48.91. MO announced the introduction of Marlboro Moist Smokeless tobacco into test market. MO had been frequently mentioned as possibly interested in UST. UST has a market cap of $7.7 billion with quarterly March 2007 total revenue of $447 million. UST September option implied volatility of 26 is near its 26-week average of 23 according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price risk.

Forest Labs (NYSE: FRX) volatility Elevated on patent challenge Appeal. FRX, a U.S. based pharmaceutical company, is recently down .48 to $37.74. FRX's Lexapro, an antidepressant accounting for 66% of FRX total revenue, is facing a patent challenge appeal.Buckingham Research says "LXP patent challenge appeal which we would expect to be resolved from an appellate decision over the next few months (we expect FRX to prevail in this case)." FRX call option volume of 9,195 contracts compares to put volume of 4,571 contracts. FRX September option implied volatility of 70 is above its 26-week average of 33 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price risks.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

When Lake County Indiana Criminal Court Judge Diane Boswell demands order in her court, you better believe she means it. Frustrated by repeated disturbances from cell phones ringing during proceedings, Judge Boswell demanded to know who the guilty parties were. When the offenders seated in a row designated for court visitors did not speak up, Judge Boswell ordered the entire row of visitors to serve detention in chairs usually reserved for jail inmates. The visitors had to sit there until morning court was completed. Then Judge Boswell began to dispense justice.

Judge Boswell fined a woman on disability $100 for failure to silence her phone. She ordered a man to serve 40 hours community service because he was one of the offenders but did not speak up promptly when Her Honor first inquired. Judge Boswell even fined the woman sitting next to this man 40 hours of community service because she didn't rat the guy out. The moral of this AP press release: Don't bring your cell phone to Judge Boswel's court.

This is not the first case of judges throwing the book at cellphone users in court. In July, U.S. District Court Judge Wiliam Shubb swept down off his bench in search of the offending cell phone ring. Finding the phone in the hands of a older woman, Judge Shubb took the phone, opened the court room door and threw the cell phone into the hallway. He then ordered his marshals to confiscate every cell phone in the court room.

There seems to be an immediate need for Motorola, Apple or Cingular to supply non-offensive ringtones. Maybe the theme to Judge Judy's show?

According to this story in the New York Post, GE is on the right side of what seems a pretty minor brewing scandal involving credits a Home Depot store in Maryland collected from vendors for defective merchandise (or not-so-defective as the case may be).

GE is involved because the store allegedly requested lots of so called return-to-vendor credits for defective water heaters and a GE representative complained, demanding to inspect the broken heaters before paying credits going forward. (Before the company had destroyed the heaters, according to the report).

The Post reports that a former Home Depot employee blew the whistle on allegedlly problematic credits only to be fired. He's suing and his lawsuit has become part of an informal SEC look at Home Depot.

Lesson for employers: Don't file your whistleblowers, even if you want to.

Lesson for GE shareholders: Your company is really minding the store.

Patent trolls are way more scary to U.S. businesses than the kind of trolls you find on message boards, or under bridges. So scary, in fact, that eBay is going all the way to the Supreme Court to argue against their ability to gain injunctions to shut down the businesses of the companies from whom they seek to receive damages.

In this case, eBay has been sued by tiny MercExchange over its Buy-It-Now technology (which eBay says has been altered to avoid infringement, anyway). A jury at the lower court found that eBay was infringing on MercExchange's patent, and then an appeals court upheld the finding, and imposed an injunction barring eBay from using the patented technology.

eBay hopes to make it harder for patent-holders to obtain injunctions (they're "virtually automatic" and can seriously harm a company's livelihood), and to have the court weigh a variety of factors before shutting down a business, for instance, whether or not the patent-holder plans to use its IP for anything other than lawsuits.