The models are marketed under the product names "Free," "Free Zen & Now," "Free Trainer," and "Free Trail," Reebok said.

Nike Inc., the world's largest sports apparel company, issued a statement saying the company was "evaluating the claims related to this very recently issued U.S. patent and any potential limited application to the successful Nike Free product."

According to The Liberty Times, HP on Tuesday levelled a law suit before a Texas court, accusing Acer of using five of its patented technologies for the production of PCs. In its law suit, HP demands a cessation of sales of Acer’s computers, laptops, media centres and similar products in the United States.

This more of a rival tactics, said Kirk Yang, an analyst of the Citigroup Investment Research company.

Daniel Chang of the Macquarie Research Equities agrees with such an assessment. We believe that this is only the first step of the HP to fight off a strong rival, by hindering Acer’s growth, he said.

The law suit could prove fatal for Acer, to which the USA is the second biggest market. Its American distributors may not want to take on the risk of selling Acer products in fear of law suits or a court ban whose rescinding could take time.

The USA is credited for around 20 percent of Acer’s incomes. In 2006 the company produced 1.1 million PCs and 311,111 desktop computers and hopes that sales in the US will increase by 25 percent in 2007.

Analysts also warned of the serious competition by Dell Inc. the company’s CEO, Michael Dell, visited Taipei on March 19, where he met with Taiwanese distributors, which caused speculations that Dell planned to order more complete laptop products from local companies.

Such a move would be negative for Acer that completely counts on distributors in the sale of computers, while Dell uses direct sales models.

Perhaps sensing an oncoming attack from the world's new #4 PC manufacturer, Acer, HP reached deep into its patent portfolio yesterday, uncovering five technology methods - including three acquired from Compaq - and filed a lawsuit accusing Acer of utilizing HP technologies covered by those patents without authorization. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages, but more importantly, it requests that a judge block the sale of Acer computers utilizing those technologies, imported from Taiwan.

That could quite possibly include all of Acer's notebook line, since the technology addressed by two of the listed patents (one granted to Compaq pre-merger, one to HP post-merger) concerns processor speed reduction - the capability for a computer to instruct its processor to power down in periods of reduced stress or workload.

Processor "speed stepping," as some call it, is a fairly common feature today in portable computers. But in 2002, Compaq was granted one patent for a method in which processor speed can be stepped down, requiring some kind of a system that measures not just workload but the nature of processor activity. If a CPU appears to be doing the same thing repetitively - what's called a "tight loop" - it's probably just operating the mouse pointer and waiting for user input, a good time to power down.

Compaq's patent and the HP one that followed were careful not to refer to where this monitoring system would be located - for instance, in the BIOS or through an operating system driver. However, since neither company produces CPUs, it made sense to describe the system as independent from the CPU itself.

Clearly, however, if HP did invent this method of power consumption, it did not conceive the original method. Both Intel and AMD have adopted means for their CPUs to power themselves down in low-workload conditions. AMD incorporates such methods today under its "Cool 'n' Quiet" and "PowerNow" monikers; and Intel's SpeedStep technology - which borrows operating system drivers to manage workload - dates back to Windows 95, well before the 2002 issuance date on the Compaq patent.

But even excluding methods proffered by CPU manufacturers, Acer certainly isn't the only non-HP brand to employ power stepping. Apple has utilized it since at least the PowerMac G4 generation. And the fact that multiple methods may exist may go to the heart of whether HP was actually damaged by Acer's choice of methods. HP itself admits to having adopted AMD's Opteron power consumption methods for some servers in 2004.

So at least two of HP's five patents could face a significant challenge once its case comes to court.

While the other three patents in question may pertain to concepts that were original at the time, it may come as a surprise to more manufacturers than Acer that any sort of license from HP may be required to use them. For instance, in 2002, HP was issued a patent for the idea that, when writing data to a DVD+RW disc in multisession mode, subsequent sessions should be able to start writing at a certain fencepost bit where the previous sessions left off. This is in order to avoid frequency gaps caused by multiple sessions written by multiple devices, where a single reading device might not be able to reconcile the shift in one frequency to another in time to "see" the subsequent session.

Also under contention is a 1999 Compaq patent for the ability to segment signals traveling along a single digital bus into groups to facilitate different bus speeds; and a 1995 Compaq patent that was clearly written in the era before multicore processors were even considered. This oldest patent in the bunch is for a method for a BIOS to switch on multiple processors in sequence rather than simultaneously. At the time, the processors were assumed to be separate units; but nowadays, some of the language could very well apply to multicore CPUs, which now comprise a huge majority of sales in all markets.

That fact could play a role in Acer's defense, potentially arguing that, having inevitably foreseen the ubiquity of multicore processors, HP would have to have publicly stated its intention to defend this patent years ago in order for it to do so today. Network chip maker Qualcomm lost a similar argument against rival Broadcom just last week.

HP's suit was filed in federal court in Marshall, Texas, and seeks a jury trial. Marshall, a city of about 25,000, has become known in some quarters as the lawsuit capital of the US, reportedly handling 60% of all antitrust cases filed in the entire Eastern District.

Acer Inc. said Wednesday it is conducting a full investigation into patent infringement allegations made by Hewlett-Packard Co.

Palo Alto-based HP (NYSE:HPQ) on Tuesday filed suit against Taipei-based Acer and its San Jose-based U.S. subsidiary, claiming infringement of five of HP's patents in the United States.

The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas, claims Acer violated patents related to optical drive editing, clock frequency switching, utilization-based power management of a clocked device, attaching devices to a digital serial bus, and multiple-chip processing. The HP patents were issued between 1997 and 2003.

HP is asking for unspecified damages, an injunction, and legal costs.

In response, Acer said it "respects the intellectual properties of third parties and is currently conducting a full investigation of these allegations made by Hewlett-Packard. As part of our continuing service, Acer is dedicated to supporting our customers through the lawsuit."

The German Federal Patent Court today upheld a patent held by Rochester’s Document Security Systems Inc. on a technique used on billions of euro banknotes to thwart counterfeiting.

The ruling in Munich dealt a blow to the European Central Bank, which a day ago had won a similar case in London.

“This is a major victory for our shareholders as it substantiates the power of our intellectual property portfolio,” Patrick White, Document Security Systems CEO, said in the statement.

The Munich ruling was part of a series of lawsuits across Europe, including France, Spain and the Netherlands, that the central bank has filed in a bid to overturn the patent.

DSS has a patent infringement case pending against the central bank at the European Court of First Instance.

The company’s shares were up $2.61 to $11.21 in afternoon trading in New York.

Although no formal lawsuit has been filed, Quantum Research said that the iPhone will definitely be plucked apart when it's released. Quantum Research owns patents related to charge transfer techonology, which it licensed to Motorola as well as STMicroelectronics.

According to Duncan Bryan, Quantum Research's licensing director, the capabilities of the iPhone belong to his company. “The description of the iPhone suggests it uses a rear-surface touch screen, and has proximity sensing which can tell if it is held to the ear. That’s a QR capability,” said Bryan. Interestingly, Quantum Research also sells chips to Apple that includes many of the features advertised on the iPhone. The two companies are still in talks about the clickwheel used in products like the iPod Nano.

Apple is currently facing legal action from Cisco Systems, which owns the trademark name "iPhone" and has even used the name on its Linksys products. Cisco extended negotiations with Apple until today, claiming that it would like to come to a mutually beneficial conclusion with Apple. Analysts say it is still uncertain of whether or not Apple will come out of the courtroom with the rights to use the "iPhone" name.

Apple's iPhone is also waiting for approval from the FCC before it can hit the market. Apple's website indicates "This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained."

Cisco filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. on Wednesday in federal court, requesting injunctive relief from Apple's use of the name "iPhone," to which Cisco has held the trademark since 2000. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iPhone at a San Francisco tradeshow on Tuesday, despite not having agreed to the terms proposed by Cisco for use of the name "iPhone." The two companies had been negotiating terms of the deal for several years, and were close to agreeing on terms as late as Tuesday, hours before Jobs made the announcement. A spokesperson for Apple noted that Cisco's iPhone does not use a cellular network, as planned for Apple's iPhone, but rather uses the Skype internet phone service, thus making the Apple iPhone materially different and not subject to Cisco's trademark. Jobs also announced Tuesday that Apple Computer has changed their name to Apple, Inc.

Last May, then-named Apple Computer succeeded in a UK lawsuit brought by Apple Corps, the record label owned by the Beatles and their families, which ruled that Apple Computer did not breach a 1991 trademark agreement with Apple Corps when the computer company began promoting music products.