But eBay still hopes to avoid writing a check.

"We are disappointed with the court's order and we plan to appeal it," the San Jose-based company said in a statement Wednesday.

EBay believes Friedman could have rejected the judgment, based on recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the laws governing patent enforcement.

The case already has been tied up in years of appeals, including an issue that landed in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The dispute revolves around eBay's "Buy It Now" option, which sells merchandise at a fixed price instead of fluctuating bids. MercExchange contends the system tramples on its patented technology.

A federal jury sided with MercExchange in 2003, concluding that eBay should pay $35 million in damages. The award was later reduced to about $25 million. With interest accumulating since then, the value of the judgment has climbed back up to about $30 million, according to both MercExchange and eBay.

MercExchange had hoped to use the jury's findings to win a court order that would have prevented eBay from continuing to use the "Buy It Now" feature.

The legal wrangling over MercExchange's bid for an injunction against eBay culminated in a pivotal ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The high court decided that judges aren't automatically required to block a technology from being used even after a jury finds a patent violation like eBay's.

In addition to the judgment, MercExchange wants millions in licensing fees for use of its patented technology since the 2003 verdict. EBay has vehemently declined to pay.

Since the legal tug-of-war began, MercExchange's payroll has shrank from more than 40 employees to three. Thomas Woolston, MercExchange's president, is trying to revive the company's growth by licensing patents to other e-commerce sites.

Meanwhile, eBay has already accounted for the MercExchange judgment on its books. And it ended September with $3.9 billion in cash.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videos of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books — and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue. Kennedy gave the government until Friday to respond.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."

In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."

For just that reason, officials inside and outside of the CIA advised against destroying the interrogation tapes, according to a former senior intelligence official involved in the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation.

Exactly who signed off on the decision is unclear, but CIA director Michael Hayden told the agency in an e-mail this week that internal reviewers found the tapes were not relevant to any court case.

Remes said that decision raises questions about whether other evidence was destroyed. Abu Zubaydah's interrogation helped lead investigators to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Remes said Abu Zubaydah may also have been questioned about other detainees. Such evidence might have been relevant in their court cases.

"It's logical to infer that the documents were destroyed in order to obstruct any inquiry into the means by which statements were obtained," Remes said.

He stopped short, however, of accusing the government of obstruction. That's just one of the legal issues that could come up in court. A judge could also raise questions about contempt of court or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."

The American Civil Liberties Union filed court documents Wednesday, claiming the destruction of the tapes violated a judge's order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The group cited a 2004 order by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who told the CIA to produce or identify all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in custody.

The tapes were also destroyed at a time when attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui were seeking interrogation videos that might help show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks.

A car ferry officer has walked free from court after being cleared of any involvement in the deaths of three sailors who died in the English Channel when their yacht sank without a trace.

Michael Hubble, 62, said he would now get on with his life and go back to sea.

He was formally cleared of endangering the lives of James Meaby, 36, Jason Downer, 35, and Rupert Saunders, 36, at Winchester Crown Court when the jury told the judge they could not reach verdicts.

The men died when their yacht the Ouzo sank off the Isle of Wight in August last year.

On Wednesday Hubble, of Wine House Lane, Capel-le-Ferne, Folkestone, Kent, was found not guilty of the sailors' manslaughter by the jury.

The seven women and five men told the judge, Mr Justice Owen, they could not agree on verdicts on three lesser charges, under the Merchant Shipping Act, of engaging in conduct as a seaman that was likely to cause death or serious injury to the men.

The judge then discharged the jury after 33 hours of deliberating. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed they would not seek a re-trial as it was not in the public interest.

Speaking outside court Hubble said: "The families of the men have my deepest sympathy but the demise of those men was nothing to do with me, or any action of mine or the Pride of Bilbao. I have never done anything negligent in my life."

Mr Hubble's solicitor, Kerry King, added: "We are extremely pleased with the outcome. Mr Hubble has always maintained that the decision he made as the officer on watch was the correct one."

Hubble was in charge on board the 37,500-tonne P&O ferry Pride of Bilbao when the prosecution alleged he turned "a blind eye" to the close quarters incident with the 25ft Ouzo in the early hours of August 21. Hubble denied both the manslaughter and the Merchant Shipping Act charges.

New Jersey's Democratic-controlled General Assembly voted 44 to 36 to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without parole. The action followed a similar vote by the Senate on Monday. Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat and a death penalty opponent, has said he would sign the legislation.

The repeal bill follows the recommendation of a state commission that reported in January that the death penalty "is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency." But equally persuasive to lawmakers was not saving lives but money -- it costs more to keep a prisoner indefinitely on death row than incarcerated for life.

In some states, governors have blocked executions or state supreme courts have declared effective moratoriums. Several states legislatures -- including in Maryland, Montana, New Mexico and Nebraska -- have debated bills this year to abolish capital punishment, but none so far has succeeded. Only in 2000, in New Hampshire, did the state legislature vote to repeal capital punishment, but the bill was vetoed by then-Gov.Jeanne Shaheen (D).

The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively declared a moratorium on executions since it decided to take up in this term the question of whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In recent decisions, the high court has narrowed the use of capital punishment, ruling that it is unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded or those who committed crimes as juveniles.

The repeal movement in New Jersey gained ground this year despite solid public support in the state for capital punishment, and over the objections of death penalty supporters who accused lawmakers of rushing the issue through a lame duck session before a new legislature is installed next year.

"It's a rush to judgment" said Robert Blecker, a New York Law School professor and prominent death penalty advocate.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, hailed the New Jersey vote as "a first. But it is coming at a time when there is a reexamination of the death penalty going on." Dieter added, "It does give other legislatures the chance to say, is this working in our state?"

The repeal comes despite the pleas of some high profile victims, such as Richard and Maureen Kanka, whose 7-year-old daughter, Megan, was killed by a repeat sex offender, Jesse K. Timmendequas, who is currently on New Jersey's death row. Megan Kanka's brutal 1994 killing gave rise to "Megan's law," requiring public notification when a convicted sex offender moves into a neighborhood.

Public opinion across the United States still remains solidly in favor of capital punishment, with 62 percent supporting the death penalty for murderers and 32 percent opposed, according to January polling figures by the Pew Research Center in Washington. And in New Jersey, the most recent poll this week released by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed that New Jersey residents opposed abolishing the death penalty 53 percent to 39 percent.

Where there is a discernable shift underway -- and what has partly driven the repeal in New Jersey -- is when residents are offered an alternative: the death penalty, or life in prison without parole. Given the choice, New Jersey residents backed life without parole over the death penalty by a nearly identical 52 percent to 39 percent margin.

"We have polls going back 10 years showing New Jerseyans favor the death penalty by about a 10percent margin," said Clay F. Richards, the Quinnipiac institute's assistant director. "The presence of life without parole changes the picture entirely."

"People want justice, not revenge," Richards said. He said when the concept of a life penalty without parole was first introduced some years ago, "people didn't trust it, because they saw so many murderers being paroled."

Besides the new possibility of prisons keeping murderers behind bars for life, repeal advocates also note that advances in DNA evidence has gotten scores of convicted murderers released from death row. And there were botched executions in Florida and Ohio. There has been debate lively in a slew of academic studies about the death penalty's effectiveness as a deterrent to crime. And politicians in some Northeastern states, such as New York and New Jersey, have found that there was no longer much of a political price to pay at the ballot box by being staunchly anti-death penalty.

In New Jersey, an added rationale for death penalty opponents was the simplest: It wasn't being used.

The state's last execution was in 1963. New Jersey reinstated the death penalty in 1982, following the Supreme Court's landmark 1976 ruling that allowed states to carry it out. But since then, the only inmate ever killed on New Jersey's death row was Robert "Mudman" Simon, a white supremacist and murderer who was stomped to death by another death row prisoner, Ambrose Harris, who is facing a death sentence for the 1992 rape and murder of a New Jersey artist.

The eight prisoners now languishing on New Jersey's death row are straight from the headlines of some of the state's most sensational crimes of the 1990s. Besides Harris, there is John Martini, who kidnapped local businessman Irving Flax from his home and shot him three times in the back of the head after receiving $25,000 in ransom money. There is Brian Wakefeld who forced his way into the Atlantic City home of retiree Richard Hazard and his wife Shirley, beat and stabbed them both and set their bodies on fire before going on a spending spree for compact discs, liquor and jewelry with the couple's stolen credit cards.

Flax's widow Marilyn, and the Hazard's daughter, Sharon Hazard-Johnson, testified against the repeal before the study commission, urging that the death penalty actually be implemented.

"What I would like this commission to do is not change the law, but enforce the law," Marilyn Flax told the commission.

In the end, the most compelling case for New Jersey lawmakers was the economic one. Keeping inmates on death row costs the state $72,602 per year for each prisoner. Inmates kept in the general population cost just $40,121 per year each to house.

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In a major environmental victory for California and 16 other states, a federal court in Fresno on Wednesday upheld a bid to slash auto emissions to combat global warming, a move fiercely opposed by automakers and the Bush administration.

The fight now shifts to Washington.

A Senate vote might come as soon as today on an energy bill that says cars and trucks must meet a fleet fuel-economy average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. That's compared with 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for trucks today. The House approved the fuel-mileage increase last week.

Wednesday's ruling that California has the authority to impose greenhouse-gas-emission-related mileage standards on cars and trucks - a plan that would cut emissions from vehicles 30 percent by 2016 - increases pressure on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to give the state a waiver to do that.

The state requested a waiver in late 2005, and California Attorney General Jerry Brown sued the EPA in November over its two-year refusal to say yes or no. The agency has said it will issue a decision on California's waiver by year's end.

Wednesday's 57-page opinion by U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii follows three other court losses this year by the auto industry and the administration.

Ishii's ruling and a similar decision by a federal judge in Vermont three months ago stem from a major Supreme Court ruling in April that the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions under the Clean Air Act - and can grant waivers to California to enforce its own regulations.