Man who accused Elmo puppeteer of teen sex recants

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who accused Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of having sex with him when he was a teenage boy has recanted his story.

In a quick turnabout, the man on Tuesday described his sexual relationship with Clash as adult and consensual.

Clash responded with a statement of his own, saying he is “relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest.” He had no further comment.

The man, who has not identified himself, released his statement through the Harrisburg, Pa., law firm Andreozzi & Associates.

Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street” in New York, soon followed by saying, “We are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode.”

The whirlwind episode began Monday morning, when Sesame Workshop startled the world by announcing that Clash had taken a leave of absence from “Sesame Street” in the wake of allegations that he had had a relationship with a 16-year-old.

Clash, a 52-year-old divorced father of a grown daughter, swiftly denied the charges of his accuser, who is in his early 20s. In that statement Clash acknowledged that he is gay but said the relationship had been between two consenting adults.

Though it remained unclear where the relationship took place, sex with a person under 17 is a felony in New York if the perpetrator is at least 21.

Sesame Workshop, which said it was first contacted by the accuser in June, had launched an investigation that included meeting with the accuser twice and meeting with Clash. Its investigation found the charge of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated.

Clash said on Monday he would take a break from Sesame Workshop “to deal with this false and defamatory allegation.”

Neither Clash nor Sesame Workshop indicated on Tuesday when he might return to the show, on which he has performed as Elmo since 1984.

Elmo had previously been a marginal character, but Clash, supplying the fuzzy red puppet with a high-pitched voice and a carefree, child-like personality, launched the character into major stardom. Elmo soon rivaled Big Bird as the face of “Sesame Street.”

Though usually behind the scenes, Clash meanwhile achieved his own measure of fame. In 2006, he published an autobiography, “My Life as a Furry Red Monster,” and he was the subject of the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey.”

He has won 23 daytime Emmy awards and one prime-time Emmy.

___

Online:

http://www.sesamestreet.org

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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‘Dream Team’ of Behavioral Scientists Advised Obama Campaign

Chris Keane/Reuters

DOOR TO DOOR Ricky Hall, an Obama volunteer, in Charlotte, N.C., last week.

Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session.

“He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

So began an effort by a team of social scientists to help their favored candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Some members of the team had consulted with the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, but the meeting in January signaled a different direction.

“The culture of the campaign had changed,” Dr. Fox said. “Before then I felt like we had to sell ourselves; this time there was a real hunger for our ideas.”

This election season the Obama campaign won a reputation for drawing on the tools of social science. The book “The Victory Lab,” by Sasha Issenberg, and news reports have portrayed an operation that ran its own experiment and, among other efforts, consulted with the Analyst Institute, a Washington voter research group established in 2007 by union officials and their allies to help Democratic candidates.

Less well known is that the Obama campaign also had a panel of unpaid academic advisers. The group — which calls itself the “consortium of behavioral scientists,” or COBS — provided ideas on how to counter false rumors, like one that President Obama is a Muslim. It suggested how to characterize the Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in advertisements. It also delivered research-based advice on how to mobilize voters.

“In the way it used research, this was a campaign like no other,” said Todd Rogers, a psychologist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former director of the Analyst Institute. “It’s a big change for a culture that historically has relied on consultants, experts and gurulike intuition.”

When asked about the outside psychologists, the Obama campaign would neither confirm nor deny a relationship with them. “This campaign was built on the energy, enthusiasm and ingenuity of thousands of grass-roots supporters and our staff in the states and in Chicago,” said Adam Fetcher, a campaign spokesman. “Throughout the campaign we saw an outpouring of individuals across the country who lent a wide variety of ideas and input to our efforts to get the president re-elected.”

For their part, consortium members said they did nothing more than pass on research-based ideas, in e-mails and conference calls. They said they could talk only in general terms about the research, because they had signed nondisclosure agreements with the campaign.

In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.

“A kind of dream team, in my opinion,” Dr. Fox said.

He said that the ideas the team proposed were “little things that can make a difference” in people’s behavior.

For example, Dr. Fiske’s research has shown that when deciding on a candidate, people generally focus on two elements: competence and warmth. “A candidate wants to make sure to score high on both dimensions,” Dr. Fiske said in an interview. “You can’t just run on the idea that everyone wants to have a beer with you; some people care a whole lot about competence.”

Mr. Romney was recognized as a competent businessman, polling found. But he was often portrayed in opposition ads as distant, unable to relate to the problems of ordinary people.

When it comes to countering rumors, psychologists have found that the best strategy is not to deny the charge (“I am not a flip-flopper”) but to affirm a competing notion. “The denial works in the short term; but in the long term people remember only the association, like ‘Obama and Muslim,’ ” said Dr. Fox, of the persistent false rumor.

The president’s team affirmed that he is a Christian.

At least some of the consortium’s proposals seemed to have found their way into daily operations. Campaign volunteers who knocked on doors last week in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada did not merely remind people to vote and arrange for rides to the polls. Rather, they worked from a script, using subtle motivational techniques that research has shown can prompt people to take action.

“We used the scripts more as a guide,” said Sarah Weinstein, 18, a Columbia freshman who traveled with a group to Cleveland the weekend before the election. “The actual language we used was invested in the individual person.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 14, 2012

An article on Tuesday about the role of social scientists in President Obama’s re-election campaign omitted a word from the title of the book by Sasha Issenberg that examines data-driven campaign strategies. The book is “The Victory Lab,”  not “Victory Lab.”

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At Microsoft, Sinofsky Seen as Smart but Abrasive

On a warm night in late October, Steven Sinofsky stood on a platform in New York’s Times Square, smiling as a huge crowd roared at the unveiling of a Microsoft retail store, where Windows 8 and the company’s new Surface tablet were about to go on sale.

Less than three weeks later, Mr. Sinofsky — who, as the head of Windows, was arguably the second-most important leader at Microsoft — suddenly left the company. His abrasive style was a source of discord within Microsoft, and he and Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, agreed that it was time for him to leave, according to a person briefed on the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Mr. Sinofsky was widely admired for his effectiveness in running one of the biggest and most important software development organizations on the planet. But his departure, which Microsoft announced late on Monday, parallels in many respects that of Scott Forstall, the headstrong former head of Apple’s mobile software development, who was fired by Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, in late October.

Both cases underscore a quandary that chief executives sometimes face: when do the costs of keeping brilliant leaders who cannot seem to get along with others outweigh the benefits?

The tipping point that led to Mr. Sinofsky’s departure came after an accumulation of run-ins with Mr. Ballmer and other company leaders, rather than a single incident, according to interviews with several current and former Microsoft executives who declined to be named discussing internal matters.

One example of the kind of behavior that hurt Mr. Sinofsky’s standing at the company occurred this year at a two-day retreat for Microsoft’s senior executives at the Semiahmoo resort on the coast just below the Canadian border in Washington State. At the meeting, Microsoft’s various division heads were expected to make presentations on their businesses, answer questions and remain to hear their peers repeat the exercise.

When Mr. Sinofsky stood on the first day to speak about the Windows division, he told the group he had not prepared a presentation, and if they wanted to catch up on the progress of Windows 8, they could read his company blog, where he publicly chronicled the software’s development. He answered questions from the audience and then left the resort, while his colleagues remained until the next day, according to multiple people who were present.

Mr. Sinofsky’s early exit and halfhearted presentation were widely noted by his colleagues, irking even his admirers in the company. “He lost a lot of support,” one attendee said.

It wasn’t until this Monday, though, that Mr. Sinofsky and Mr. Ballmer both decided it would be best if Mr. Sinofsky left. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, supported the move, a person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Sinofsky served as a technical assistant to Mr. Gates in the 1990s.

In an e-mail to Microsoft employees, Mr. Sinofsky said the decision to leave “was a personal and private choice.” Many surprised Microsoft insiders noted that Mr. Sinofsky’s departure was immediate, an unusual arrangement for someone with a 23-year track record at the company. A Microsoft spokesman, Frank Shaw, said Mr. Sinofsky was not available to comment.

Although Mr. Ballmer grew increasingly impatient with Mr. Sinofsky throughout the year, he held back from taking any action earlier to avoid disrupting the release of Windows 8, the most important product Microsoft has unveiled in years, a person with knowledge of his thinking said.

The final decision could not have come lightly. Although many people at Microsoft viewed him as a ruthless corporate schemer, Mr. Sinofsky ran the highly complex organization responsible for Windows as a disciplined army that met deadlines, and he was respected by people on his team.

He achieved hero status within Microsoft several years ago by taking over the leadership of Windows after the debacle that was Windows Vista, a much-delayed operating system whose sluggish performance and technical problems worsened Microsoft’s reputation for mediocre software. Mr. Sinfosky led the development of a new version of the operating system, Windows 7, which was positively reviewed and sold well.

“He did great things with Windows,” said Michael Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s still the core of the company.”

But while Mr. Sinofsky was effective, Mr. Cusumano said, he could be secretive and difficult to get along with, as he learned while dealing with Mr. Sinofsky while Mr. Cusumano was writing a book on Microsoft in the early 1990s. “I could imagine that he burned a lot of bridges and created a bunch of enemies,” he said.

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Prescription deaths: Lawmaker wants cases reported to Medical Board

« Previous Post | L.A. NOW Home

The chairman of a state Senate committee that oversees the Medical Board said Monday he would introduce a bill requiring coroners to report all prescription drug deaths to the agency — a move aimed at helping authorities identify doctors whose prescribing practices may be harming patients.

Sen. Curren D. Price Jr., responding to a Times' report that authorities have failed to recognize how often people overdose on medications prescribed by their doctors, said the medical board needed coroners reports to improve oversight of potentially dangerous practices.

“There appears to be a disconnect between coroners and the Medical Board,” Price (D-Los Angeles), said in an interview. “Hopefully legislation will tighten that up and provide the kind of accountability we all expect.”

FULL COVERAGE: Legal drugs, deadly outcomes

The Times investigation published Sunday found that in nearly half of the accidental deaths from prescription drugs in four Southern California counties, the deceased had a doctor's prescription for at least one drug that caused or contributed to the death.

The investigation identified 3,733 deaths that involved prescription drugs in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties from 2006 through 2011. In 1,762 of those cases — 47% — drugs for which the deceased had a prescription were the sole cause or a contributing cause of death.

The Times found that prescription drug deaths often involved multiple drugs, sometimes prescribed by more than one doctor. In some cases, the deceased also mixed prescribed drugs with illegal drugs, alcohol or both.

The paper identified 71 Southern California physicians who prescribed drugs to three or more patients who later fatally overdosed. The doctors were primarily pain specialists, general practitioners and psychiatrists.

Price said that although there may be legitimate reasons for a doctor's prescriptions being linked to a death, “it’s cause for some further review.”

“I think a red flag goes up any time you have one [doctor] involved in several deaths,” he said. “And I think an investigation is not only warranted but called upon by the public.”

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Fake William Gibson Twitter Feed Tells Surprisingly Good Short Stories

William Gibson fanfic just took a very interesting turn.

Using the Twitter handle @AuthenticWmGibs, some bright Gibson-ite has been spieling out some lines that sound uncannily like those of the cyberpunk author. Riffing on Gibson’s attention to detail, political leanings and complex sci-fi plots, the tweeter has been composing fascinatingly good 140-character mini-narratives since early November.

Much like other spoof accounts — everything from Pimp Bill Clinton to Fake Sarah Palin — the Twitter feed gets its LoLs out of smart takes on the Neuromancer writer’s pop culture persona. “Synopses for William Gibson novels that are definitely 100% real,” the Twitter account‘s bio reads. “But only in a timeline with greater authenticity than this one.”

Check out some of the best one (or two) liners from “Authentic Wm. Gibson” so far in the Storify below.

[via i09, New York Daily News]

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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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‘Dream Team’ of Behavioral Scientists Advised Obama Campaign

Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session.

“He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

So began an effort by a team of social scientists to help their favored candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Some members of the team had consulted with the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, but the meeting in January signaled a different direction.

“The culture of the campaign had changed,” Dr. Fox said. “Before then I felt like we had to sell ourselves; this time there was a real hunger for our ideas.”

This election season the Obama campaign won a reputation for drawing on the tools of social science. The book “Victory Lab,” by Sasha Issenberg, and news reports have portrayed an operation that ran its own experiment and, among other efforts, consulted with the Analyst Institute, a Washington voter research group established in 2007 by union officials and their allies to help Democratic candidates.

Less well known is that the Obama campaign also had a panel of unpaid academic advisers. The group — which calls itself the “consortium of behavioral scientists,” or COBS — provided ideas on how to counter false rumors, like one that President Obama is a Muslim. It suggested how to characterize the Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in advertisements. It also delivered research-based advice on how to mobilize voters.

“In the way it used research, this was a campaign like no other,” said Todd Rogers, a psychologist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former director of the Analyst Institute. “It’s a big change for a culture that historically has relied on consultants, experts and gurulike intuition.”

When asked about the outside psychologists, the Obama campaign would neither confirm nor deny a relationship with them. “This campaign was built on the energy, enthusiasm and ingenuity of thousands of grass-roots supporters and our staff in the states and in Chicago,” said Adam Fetcher, a campaign spokesman. “Throughout the campaign we saw an outpouring of individuals across the country who lent a wide variety of ideas and input to our efforts to get the president re-elected.”

For their part, consortium members said they did nothing more than pass on research-based ideas, in e-mails and conference calls. They said they could talk only in general terms about the research, because they had signed nondisclosure agreements with the campaign.

In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.

“A kind of dream team, in my opinion,” Dr. Fox said.

He said that the ideas the team proposed were “little things that can make a difference” in people’s behavior.

For example, Dr. Fiske’s research has shown that when deciding on a candidate, people generally focus on two elements: competence and warmth. “A candidate wants to make sure to score high on both dimensions,” Dr. Fiske said in an interview. “You can’t just run on the idea that everyone wants to have a beer with you; some people care a whole lot about competence.”

Mr. Romney was recognized as a competent businessman, polling found. But he was often portrayed in opposition ads as distant, unable to relate to the problems of ordinary people.

When it comes to countering rumors, psychologists have found that the best strategy is not to deny the charge (“I am not a flip-flopper”) but to affirm a competing notion. “The denial works in the short term; but in the long term people remember only the association, like ‘Obama and Muslim,’ ” said Dr. Fox, of the persistent false rumor.

The president’s team affirmed that he is a Christian.

At least some of the consortium’s proposals seemed to have found their way into daily operations. Campaign volunteers who knocked on doors last week in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada did not merely remind people to vote and arrange for rides to the polls. Rather, they worked from a script, using subtle motivational techniques that research has shown can prompt people to take action.

“We used the scripts more as a guide,” said Sarah Weinstein, 18, a Columbia freshman who traveled with a group to Cleveland the weekend before the election. “The actual language we used was invested in the individual person.”

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Bruce Bent Sr. and Son Cleared of Fraud Charges

Regulators failed on Monday to win a clear victory over the father-and-son team whose mutual fund collapsed in one of the central blowups of the 2008 financial crisis. It was the latest setback in efforts by regulators to go after individuals responsible for risk-taking that nearly brought down the American economy.

Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

Bruce Bent, right, and his son, Bruce Bent II, in October. The two were accused of defrauding investors when their flagship money market fund collapsed in September 2008.

Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Bruce Bent is credited with inventing a popular type of mutual fund.

A federal jury in Manhattan rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s claim that Bruce Bent, the man credited with inventing a popular investment vehicle known as a money market fund, defrauded investors when his flagship fund failed in September 2008, sowing panic among ordinary investors.

The collapse was a significant turning point because the fund, the Reserve Primary Fund, was pitched to investors as a nearly risk-free alternative to a bank account. The S.E.C.’s lawyers accused Mr. Bent and his son, Bruce Bent II, of falsely assuring investors that the fund could be rescued as it foundered under the weight of hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds issued by Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt on Sept. 15, 2008. The Reserve Primary Fund ceased operation two days later.

The S.E.C. did convince the jury that the younger Mr. Bent’s statements were negligent, and that the parent company had made fraudulent statements. But the decision clearing the Bents of fraud accusations underscored the difficulty prosecutors and regulators have had in holding financiers accountable for precipitating the financial crisis.

“There is no other way to read this than as a significant loss for the S.E.C.,” said Thomas O. Gorman, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney and formerly the senior counsel for the S.E.C.’s Division of Enforcement.

Regulators are continuing efforts to shore up the money market fund industry against the problems revealed by the collapse of the Reserve Primary Fund. A council of top regulators was set to meet on Tuesday to determine how to impose new rules on the industry after a few S.E.C. commissioners scuttled a previous push to improve the safety and transparency of the funds.

While the S.E.C. imposed some new rules on the industry soon after the crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, have said that money market funds are still vulnerable to the type of runs that nearly brought the industry down in 2008.

The elder Mr. Bent is widely hailed as the creator of the world’s first money market mutual funds, which since the 1970s have been marketed to small investors as a low-risk investment with an unchanging share value of $1 and the potential to earn a more attractive yield than a bank savings account.

“He did for money market funds what mutual funds did for small investors, bringing Wall Street to Main Street by allowing individuals to participate in what had been the playground of institutions,” said Peter G. Crane, president of Crane Data, which tracks money market mutual funds.

Before the financial crisis, the flagship fund run by the Reserve Management Company loaded up on $785 million of debt issued by Lehman Brothers. The debt, which made up about 1 percent of the fund’s assets, was suddenly worthless after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and led to the fund’s “breaking the buck,” which is when the value of the assets falls below $1 a share.

During the trial, lawyers for the S.E.C. faulted Mr. Bent for not describing the true extent of the fund’s perilous state during an emergency meeting called on the day that Lehman filed for bankruptcy protection.

In closing arguments, a lawyer for the S.E.C. claimed that the Bents tried to soothe investors’ fears while knowing that they would be unable to avert disaster for the fund.

Hurricane Sandy delayed the jury’s verdict when the courthouse in Manhattan was shuttered for a week.

After the jury announced its verdict, a spokesman for the Bents, Mark Arena, said that the men were “gratified that the jury found” that the men “committed no fraud.” Mr. Arena said that the Bents planned to appeal the jury’s findings that the younger Mr. Bent was liable for negligence.

Julie Creswell contributed reporting.

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GOP might never again hold power in California

California Republicans have suffered a painful thrashing, and the prognosis isn't good. Recovery is far from certain.

Until last week, it was possible to be guardedly optimistic about the ultimate restoration of a healthy two-party system in California. Political power is cyclical. California at its core is centrist, even if tilted left. Surely the GOP someday would bounce back.

But now it's hard to argue with the numbers. The California electorate is changing in composition and creed. The GOP must change with it or become permanently powerless. Yet it is bogged down on the right and becoming weaker.

It's practically impossible to envision Californians electing a Republican governor in the future, certainly not in the next gubernatorial election, in 2014. Talk to GOP pros and none can suggest a realistic, credible challenger to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.

Especially after voters accepted his tax increase, Brown looks like a shoo-in for reelection, assuming he runs. And it's hard to imagine this 74-year-old career pol not running. His life is politics and governing.

Business will back Brown because he'll be the only moderate check on a Legislature dominated by liberal Democrats. Republicans will be virtually useless.

Let's count the election day wounds:

Mitt Romney lost to President Obama by a landslide 21 percentage points in a state that used to consistently side with the Republican nominee.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein drew only token Republican opposition and won by 23 points.

Democrats, at last count, were gaining four congressional seats in California.

The stunner was the state Assembly, where Democrats apparently achieved a historic supermajority to match the party's similar feat in the Senate. This means there's virtually nothing that Democrats can't pass on their own in Sacramento, relegating Republicans to mathematical irrelevancy.

But it doesn't stop there.

The Republican slice of registered voters in California slipped below 30%. Only eight years ago it was nearly 35%. Democrats are 44%.

And about that loud anti-tax mantra, the Republicans' favorite rallying cry: Most voters aren't listening.

Two tax-increase measures were approved by Californians. Brown's Prop. 30 won by a surprising 8 points. Prop. 39, ending a tax break mainly for out-of-state corporations, was approved by 20 points.

The shame for Republicans is that they could have helped Democrats pass similar tax measures in the Legislature and, in turn, won major concessions. Most important for their allies in business, they probably could have gained relief from a thicket of stifling environmental regulations. They also could have owned public pension reform and, perhaps, passed a meaningful state spending cap.

Republicans claim Brown wouldn't buck labor opposition to reforms. The governor counters that skittish Republicans never would pinpoint a concession they'd accept in trade for their tax votes.

Whatever, it's opportunity lost. Those days of GOP bargaining leverage are history.

And when business interests and conservatives complain about liberal domination of the Legislature and labor buying votes, they should blame Republicans. They're supposed to provide the opposition. But they've allowed themselves to become so weak they're helpless.

But are they hopeless? Can they recover?

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Confidential Agreement Ends Apple and HTC's Patent Feud

Apple and HTC ended their 32-month intellectual property battle Saturday, dismissing all lawsuits and announcing a confidential, 10-year license agreement that extends to current and future patents held by the tech giants.

“The most significant aspect of this deal is that it’s the first patent license Apple extended to an Android device maker,” intellectual property expert Florian Mueller told Wired by e-mail. “This is good news for consumers because it will allow HTC to focus on competing with Samsung and other Android device makers while compensating Apple for its contributions to innovation.”

Apple is engaged in legal battles in courtrooms around the globe in order to wage “thermonuclear war” against Android — a “stolen product,” according to former CEO Steve Jobs. Namely, Apple has been involved in lawsuits with Android hardware manufacturers Samsung, Motorola and HTC over patent-infringement claims ranging from hardware design to user interface elements to core operating system functionalities. At stake is the way smartphones and tablets look and operate, as well as how much they cost and where they’re available for sale as licensing fees and sales injunctions go into effect.

One of the first shots fired in this intellectual-property war came when Apple sued HTC in March 2010 over 10 patents related to user interface design. HTC was found to be in violation of one, a 1996 data-detecting function used to automatically convert URLs and phone numbers in e-mail and messages into live links that directly open into other apps, like a browser or phone dialer. This delayed the launch dates of products like the HTC One X earlier this year due to a brief import ban.

Mueller wrote in a blog post that the sudden settlement is both surprising and unsurprising: The timing was unexpected because neither party had significant leverage over the other, but it makes sense that Apple would come to a suitable agreement with HTC, and that HTC would eventually accept whatever terms Apple set forth, prior to any other Apple-Android suits being settled.

The conditions of the licensing agreement between the two parties are confidential, but likely hefty. With HTC being a much smaller threat, market share-wise, than other competitors like Samsung and Motorola, perhaps Apple softened its terms in order to cut its losses and dedicate money to worthier endeavors.

Indeed, both companies indicated they have bigger priorities to tend to. Apple’s and HTC’s CEOs issued statements in the settlement announcement saying the companies want to focus on innovation rather than costly intellectual-property legal battles.

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” HTC CEO Peter Chou said.

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” Apple CEO Tim Cook echoed. “We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

Will this renewed focus on innovation extend to Apple’s many other IP suits, like the ongoing Apple v. Samsung case in the United States, or the iPhone maker’s issues with Motorola Mobility (one such suit was thrown out by a federal judge last week)?

“After today’s announcement, there’s a chance that Apple will be able to strike some deals without having to litigate,” Mueller said. “But Samsung and Google are probably more difficult to do a deal with than HTC. These deals will happen but it’s impossible to predict how quickly the arrangements will fall into place.”

Although Apple and HTC reached a truce, the patent arms race will likely continue for quite some time.

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