It looks like at least one round of the battle between Funai and VIZIO is drawing to a close, and it's a big win for VIZIO. U.S. Customs has ruled that all current VIZIO TVs do not infringe on Funai's Patent 6,115,074 -- which was rejected by the Patent Office a few months ago. With the USPTO and US Customs now on the same page, all the bureaucratic checkmarks are in place and VIZIO TVs can freely enter the US on their immigrant-inspired journey to homes all across this fair land. Next up is VIZIO's countersuit against Funai -- with drama like this unfolding between TV manufacturers, who needs an actual TV for entertainment?

Truthfully, we're having a hard time coming to grips with this. For as long as we wished that these two would stop bickering, it's actually tough to swallow the fact that we'll never again be able to write about "yet another lawsuit" between Qualcomm and Broadcom (in theory, anyway). After nearly three full years of fighting with pencils, papers and soulless words, the courtroom throwdowns are finally ceasing. In a shocking development, the two rivals have entered into a settlement and multi-year patent agreement that will "result in the dismissal with prejudice of all litigation between the companies, including all patent infringement claims in the International Trade Commission and US District Court in Santa Ana, as well as the withdrawal by Broadcom of its complaints to the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission." The exact terms of the deal are posted after the break, though you should know that Qualcomm will have to shell out $891 million in cash (ouch!) over the next four years. The lawyers may be out of work, but you can rest assured that there's no shortage of abhorrence between these frenemies.

In what's being described as a landmark verdict, four men responsible for assisting throngs of dubious internet users to download all sorts of copyrighted material are being ushered off to prison cells for twelve whole months. The Stockholm district court in Sweden found the defendants guilty not of hosting materially illegally, but of "providing a website with sophisticated search functions, simple download and storage capabilities, and a tracker linked to the website [that helped users commit copyright violations]." As expected, the foursome seems unaffected by the ruling, with Peter Sunde (shown) tweeting that "it used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release." After jail, the crew will be forced by pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) to a number of entertainment companies, which is far less than those firms were hoping for. Curiously, we're told that the verdict didn't include an order to shut down The Pirate Bay website, and you can pretty much bank on an appeal being filed in record time.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Years after the HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) suit first debuted, it seems that Cyberdyne's pride and joy is about to get really real. According to a report over at HPlus Magazine, the company is linking up with Daiwa House in order to "begin mass production" of the cybernetic bodysuit. You already know what it does -- inflates the ego, boosts your strength and scores you loads of nerd dates -- but here's the crucial part: $4,200. Of course, there's no hard date on when the first of the 400 annual units produced will be made available, but we'd probably get up with someone about a pre-order if you're serious about going bionic.

[Thanks, Phil]

Just when it looked like the long-running patent dispute was tipping Vizio's way, the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled in favor of Funai, issuing an order to block imports of Vizio HDTVs. According to Bloomberg the ban is still eligible to be reviewed by President Obama while the patent case itself is still being reviewed by an appeals court, but if Vizio wants to keep its shipments flowing it will have to post a bond of $2.50 per television. We've put a call in to Vizio to find out what this means for its immediate future -- and that sweet LED backlit display from CES -- and confirmed that while this order goes into effect immediately, you should still be able to find sets on shelves and they will continue to do business as usual during the presidential review period, but feel free to read its press release in response after the break for more details.

Samsung and Sharp, like any good pair of competitors, have been slapping each other around for years now. Specifically, Sharp tagged Samsung with an LCD patent infringement lawsuit back in the latter half of 2007, and at long last the courts have made a decision. In short, Samsung wins. The Wall Street Journal has an exceptionally brief writeup noting that Sammy has declared victory in the case as a Tokyo court "upheld a Samsung Electronics' countersuit filed last June that claimed that Sharp LCD TV products infringed on Samsung's patents." There's no word on what affect this will have on either firm, but feel free to cheer / cry at the office today in order to truly show your fanboy colors at work.

Oh, brother. Another Intel / NVIDIA paper fight? As fate would so fittingly have it, these two giants are meeting up yet again, this time in the courtroom. After talks "of over a year" failed to amount to anything, Intel has filed suit against NVIDIA that -- according to Intel -- "seeks to have the court declare that NVIDIA is not licensed to produce chipsets that are compatible with any Intel processor that has integrated memory controller functionality, such as Intel's Nehalem [Core i7] microprocessors and that NVIDIA has breached the agreement with Intel by falsely claiming that it is licensed." Of course, NVIDIA's official stance is that Intel is simply trying "stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business." We have all ideas that the whole truth (and nothing but the truth) lies somewhere in between, but we guess that's why we have people called "lawyers" heading to work each day. If you're daring enough to dig deeper, all the links you need are neatly positioned below.

[Via HotHardware]

Read - Intel's take
Read - NVIDIA's official response
Read - Further Intel comments

Aw, snap! Just months after Funai took the reins from Philips in North America, along comes a lawsuit for its lawyers to deal with. VIZIO, still feeling proud after its all-business Super Bowl ad, has thrown a potent antitrust and unfair competition lawsuit in Funai's direction. The outfit alleges that Funai, "acting alone and in concert with others, unlawfully restrained trade and monopolized the market for the licensing of technology used to interpret and retrieve information from a digital television broadcast signal, as well as the market for digital television sets and receivers." Specifically, VIZIO seems perturbed that Funai inappropriately acquired the rights to one single US patent, and ever since it has "unfairly discriminated against VIZIO in the licensing and enforcement" of said patent to the "detriment of trade and commerce." There's no mention of how many bills VIZIO thinks will fix the problem, but Funai better not try filling stacks of hundies with Washingtons in between.

[Image courtesy of TooMuchNick / WireImage]

Apparently, the Photosynth glitching and iPhone-like GPS blip on CNN weren't the only high tech actions in play at President Obama's inauguration yesterday. According to one of our favorite daily reads, Officer.com, the Prez was wearing "bullet-resistant clothing," which experts (and sci-fi fanatics) are taking to mean a bullet-proof suit. The folks over at Slate speculate that he might have been adorned in an outfit manufactured by MIguel Caballero, a Colombian company that specializes in bullet-resistant gear like leather jackets, windbreakers, and yes... ruffled tuxedo shirts. We'd like to imagine that stuffed into the pocket of that handsome outfit he was sporting was a Kevlar handkerchief -- but listen up Obama: Sasha and Malia are not going to be down with that bulletproof backpack.

Update: VBS.tv went down to Colombia and actually tested out Caballero's wares -- check out a video after the break.

[Via Wired]

Man, we can bet there's some serious celebrating going on at the Buffalo offices today. After being barred from selling its networking gear here in America last June, Buffalo has finally been freed from its CSIRO-given chains. Who's to thank? A federal judge who has stayed the permanent injunction in the ongoing US patent litigation, which opens the doors for the company to sell "IEEE 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n compliant products in the United States." Finally, we USers can look forward to buying helicopter inspired routers on our home turf.

[Thanks, Mark]

We're hard pressed to think of a display-related story that has lingered on longer than SED (well over four years at last count), and believe it or not, this still isn't apt to be the last you hear of it. If you'll recall, Canon recently declared victory after winning a lawsuit against Applied Nanotech that was previously holding it back from making progress, and now Applied Nanotech has waved the final white flag by giving up its right to appeal. Comically enough, it may actually be too late for Canon to even salvage the win, with president Tsuneji Uchida noting that "at times like this, new display products are not introduced much because people would laugh at them." Shh... nobody tell him the world's been laughing at SED for years.

[Via OLED-Display]

At last, it's over. InterDigital, which is best known for its episodes in the courtroom with Samsung and Nokia, has finally reached an agreement with the former firm. The two have been at each other's throats since April of last year regarding patents allegedly used in some of Sammy's more sophisticated phones. The decision was reached just a day before the US International Trade Commission was set to rule on whether to recommend barring affected Samsung imports altogether, which we can assure you was not at all coincidental. There's been no public disclosure of settlement value, though one analyst at Hilliard Lyons estimates that Samsung will be coughing up $400 to $500 million over the next five years to make this problem go away. Talk about a recurring nightmare.

We told you it wasn't over, and now, that once "manageable" $73 million payment could possibly balloon to upwards of $1.2 billion. As predicted, the prior suit -- which was held in a California state court -- has led to a far reaching class-action lawsuit that could "potentially cost the company as much as $1.2 billion." The suit alleges that the $150 to $200 fees violated the Federal Communications Act and laws in every state of the country, and when summed from 1999 to 2008, they total a magical $1.2 billion. Things aren't looking great for Sprint on this one either, as lawyer Scott Bursor is running the show. Who's he? Just a guy who was involved in getting Verizon to fork over $21 million for the same thing earlier this year.

[Via textually]

Pioneer may be licking its wounds, but at least there's one bright spot on an otherwise dark end-of-year. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall (read: patent troll heaven) recently found that "Samsung willfully infringed two Pioneer patents covering plasma display technology," leading to a settlement which involves Samsung handing Pioneer a check for $59,351,480. Samsung has yet to comment on the ruling, but it's pretty easy to imagine what it's probably thinking, wouldn't you say?

[Via SmartHouse, thanks Anthony]