ITC to investigate patent claim against Apple

In today's podcast: ITC to investigate patent claim against Apple; police seize computers from Gizmodo editor in stolen iPhone investigation; and online retailers stop shipping Apple products in Japan.

Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes!

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday said it will investigate a patent infringement complaint filed by Elan Microelectronics in Taiwan regarding Apple's multitouch devices including the iPhone and iPad. Elan on March 29 filed a complaint with the ITC asserting that Apple had violated a patent relating to the ability to detect the simultaneous presence of multiple fingers on touch devices. The technology involved is used in the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, MacBook and Magic Mouse products. Elan asked the ITC to issue an order barring importation of those products into the U.S. Elan also asked the ITC to bar Apple from selling any of these products it had already imported into the U.S.

Acting on a warrant issued Friday, California police seized personal computers belonging to the Gizmodo editor who broke the iPhone prototype story last week, a district attorney for San Mateo County confirmed Monday. According to documents posted on Gizmodo, authorities from San Mateo County seized six computers belonging to Jason Chen, an editor of Gizmodo . Chen wrote the original story, published a week ago, that revealed details of a prototype of the next-generation iPhone, which the site admitted purchasing for $5,000.

Some of Japan's biggest online electronics retailers have stopped shipping Apple products, apparently at the request of the Cupertino, California-based company. Yodobashi.com and Biccamera.com, the online outlets for two of Japan's largest electronics chains, still list Apple products at their sites but advise customers they must come into the store to pick them up. Amazon Japan, which doesn't have brick-and-mortar retail outlets, continues to sell Apple products online. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Lawson Software announced a number of services and products Monday for running its software in a private cloud environment, following up on its recent move to support its ERP software on Amazon's public Elastic Compute Cloud. The ERP vendor has developed grid-computing technology for distributing application workloads over clusters of servers; the first two in a series of virtual software appliances; and a drag-and-drop Cloud Console tool for managing the appliances. While Lawson built the grid technology, the appliances are VMware images that use a Linux OS and IBM's WebSphere application server. The first two appliance products are for Lawson's Smart Office and Enterprise Search applications.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.