A Florida appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the NCAA must release documents on Florida State's appeal of an academic cheating penalty.

The 1st District Court of Appeal upheld a circuit court decision Thursday. The Associated Press and other media groups had sued, saying the NCAA's desire to keep the process private violated Florida open records laws.

The documents focus on Florida State's appeal of the NCAA's intention to strip coaches and athletes of wins in 10 sports.

That includes football coach Bobby Bowden, who stands to lose 14 victories. It would dim his chances of again becoming major college football's winningest coach. Bowden has 384 victories — two behind Penn State's Joe Paterno.

Red Hat has filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to uphold a lower court's ruling that software isn't patentable. Red Hat is not a direct party but took a position against software patents in the case of Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw versus David Kappos, Undersecretary of Commerce and director of the U.S. Patent Office. The case is now before the Supreme Court. Rob Tiller, an assistant general counsel at Red Hat, filed the brief in what he said was a rare chance to attack the patent issue head-on.

"Our patent system is supposed to foster innovation, but for open source and software in general, it does the opposite," said Tiller today in a statement announcing the amicus brief.

"Software patents form a minefield that slows and discourages software innovation. The Bilski case presents a great opportunity for the Supreme Court to rectify this problem," he said.

Tiller argued that a federal Circuit Court ignored Supreme Court guidance when it decided in 1994 that someone who could show that software was "useful" and produced "a concrete and tangible result" could patent the software. Before that, the Supreme Court and lower courts had held that abstractions couldn't be patented and that a patent needed to cover an abstraction incorporated into a particular machine, or be a process that "transforms a particular article into a different state or thing," Tiller wrote.

The Supreme Court should rule in favor of Bilski and Warsaw and allow only patents that cover tangible machines and processes, the amicus brief says.

Investor Jeffry Picower, described as the biggest beneficiary of Bernard Madoff's fraud, is now being sued for $7.2 billion, $2 billion more than the trustee in the case demanded in May.

Picower, newly listed as one of the 400 wealthiest Americans by Forbes magazine, was complicit in the fraud, trustee Irving Picard said in court documents on Wednesday responding to the investor's motion to dismiss his lawsuit.

"Picower makes the paradoxical argument that he could not have been complicit in the Ponzi scheme because he made too much money from it," Picard wrote in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

"The unusual, if not unlawful activity in his accounts, including one negative net cash balance of approximately $6 billion at the time of Madoff's arrest, was clear evidence that something was seriously amiss."

Picower, 67, of Palm Beach, Florida, was listed 371st and worth $1 billion on the Forbes list published this week.

The Supreme Court will consider throwing out a human rights lawsuit against a former prime minister of Somalia who is accused of overseeing killings and other atrocities.

The court said Wednesday it would review an appeals court ruling allowing Somalis to sue Mohamed Ali Samantar of Fairfax, Va., who was defense minister and prime minister of Somalia in the 1980s and early 1990s under dictator Siad Barre.

The lawsuit alleges that Samantar was responsible for killings, rapes and torture, including waterboarding, of his own people while in power, particularly against disfavored clans. The lawsuit was filed in 2004 at federal court in Alexandria under the Torture Victim Protection Act.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema tossed out the case in 2007, ruling that Samantar was entitled to immunity under a separate U.S. law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

But the appellate court ruled that the law does not extend immunity to individuals, only to foreign states themselves and their agencies.

The high court will consider whether Samantar is immune from the lawsuit. The case will be argued early next year.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has reinstated a ban on exit polls, surveys taken of people as they leave their voting places.

It also has kept in place a ban on distributing leaflets or other materials within 100 feet of polling places. It said Wednesday prohibiting such activities will ensure voters feel no obstructions to casting their ballots.

The ban on approaching voters was created in 1972. It was changed in 2007 by the state attorney general to allow for exit polling by journalists.

The state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union argued it also should be allowed to approach voters so it could give them cards explaining their rights and telling them how to report problems.

But the state said if the ACLU were allowed past the 100-foot border, other groups would be permitted also.

The EU was entitled to cap roaming rates in 2007 as network operators pocketed huge profits but resisted less drastic ways to cut the sky-high costs of using mobile phones in Europe, the EU advocate general said Thursday.

The opinion by Advocate General Miguel Poiares Maduro now goes to the European Court of Justice, which often follows that advice.

The opinion is a setback for mobile phone operators Vodafone, Telefonica O2, T-Mobile and Orange. They had challenged the validity of the EU roaming law in a British court, which referred the case to the European court.

But it is boost for the European Commission, which cites the roaming law as an example of how the European Union works to help consumers from the Azores to Lapland.

Poiares Maduro said the EU was entitled to set maximum roaming rates for a three-year period to ensure uniform prices and conditions across the 27 EU nations.

He noted that if pricing been left to the bloc's 27 national regulators it would have taken a very long time for Europeans to see roaming rates decline. Poiares Maduro said the European Commission failed repeatedly to get network operators to lower their rates, which varied widely and earned them profits of up to 400 percent.

A former top aide to Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas has pleaded not guilty to charges of trying to smuggle contraband into a prison.

Betsey Wright is accused of trying to smuggle tattoo needles, a box cutter, a knife and tweezers into the Varner Supermax Unit while visiting a death row inmate in May.

The 66-year-old Wright entered the plea Wednesday in a court filing in Lincoln County Circuit Court.

The filing by defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig also waives her arraignment, which had been set for next week, and asks for a jury trial.

Rosenzweig declined to comment on Wright's defense other than to say she's not guilty.

Wright was Clinton's chief of staff for seven years and worked on many of his campaigns.