Microsoft took legal action against Motorola on Friday, alleging Motorola's smartphones running Google's Android platform violate Microsoft patents. The suit represents the latest patent battle involving Android.

Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and Microsoft's deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing, said the patents relate to core functionalities of Motorola's Android phones, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power. Microsoft is seeking unspecified monetary damages and a permanent injunction on allegedly infringing Motorola products.

Motorola said it will "vigorously defend itself" against the charges.

"We are disappointed that Microsoft prefers to compete over old patents rather than new products," a Google spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. "While we are not a party to this lawsuit, we stand behind the Android platform and the partners who have helped us to develop it."

The suit is notable as Microsoft is preparing to introduce phones running its new Windows Phone 7 platform--which will compete against Android phones. Motorola, once a strong supporter of Microsoft's previous Windows Mobile platform, has thrown its support fully into the Android camp. According to research firm Gartner, Android had 17.2 percent of the smartphone market in the second quarter, and Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS had 14.2 percent. Windows Mobile captured 5 percent of the market, down from 9.3 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

The Connecticut judge presiding at the trial of a man charged in a deadly home invasion remains hospitalized, but a hospital spokesman says his condition has been upgraded to good from fair.

Yale-New Haven Hospital spokesman Mark D'Antonio told The Associated Press that Judge Jon Blue remained at the hospital Monday morning. D'Antonio would not disclose Blue's ailment and says it's not clear when the judge will be discharged.

The trial of Steven Hayes began last week and was supposed to resume Monday morning in New Haven Superior Court. It has been postponed until Wednesday.

Hayes and another man are charged in the killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her 11- and 17-year-old daughters at their Cheshire home in 2007. They face the possibility of the death penalty if convicted.

All bets are off at Betcha.com, a Seattle-based online bookmaker that couldn't skirt the state's gambling laws by making it optional for losing bettors to pay off wagers.

In a unanimous ruling Thursday, the Washington state Supreme Court said Betcha.com qualified as an illegal bookie because it arranged bets and took a percentage of the action as a fee.

Since that definition of professional gambling fits the company's activities, justices said they didn't have to decide whether optional payments by bettors would allow Betcha.com to technically escape the state's gambling restrictions.

"Under the statutory definition of bookmaking, it is immaterial whether or not Betcha users were engaged in gambling activity," Justice Tom Chambers wrote for the court.

In a blog post, Betcha.com founder Nicholas Jenkins said the court's reasoning "didn't pass the giggle test."

"Never in a million years did I expect an opinion like this one," Jenkins wrote. "The court's error is so obvious that I wonder if a single justice even cracked our brief, let alone the Revised Code of Washington."

Washington state allows some forms of non-tribal gambling, including cardrooms that offer poker, blackjack and other games with relatively low stakes. Online gambling and bookmaking fees, however, are specifically outlawed in the state. Internet gambling also is illegal on the federal level.

Supporters of a voter initiative that could help bring cheaper prescription drugs to North Dakota are hoping a legal technicality won't keep them from getting the issue placed on the ballot.

At issue is a state law that requires most pharmacies to have a pharmacist as their majority owner. Those who want it repealed say the change will allow large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Walgreen Co. to sell cheaper prescription drugs from their own store pharmacies. Opponents fear the measure could drive rural pharmacies out of business.

North Dakota is the only state in the nation with such a law, according to industry officials.

It's not certain whether the voter initiative will land on the ballot. Petitions in support of the measure were circulated without a list of the proposal's sponsors, an apparent violation of the requirements in the state constitution.

An attorney representing the supporters asked the state's Supreme Court on Wednesday to overlook what he called an honest mistake.

Developers of a proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm were cleared to move forward Tuesday when Massachusetts' high court rejected a claim that the project sidestepped local opposition to win a key permit.

Cape Wind project, a 130-turbine proposal that would be the nation's first offshore wind farm, was given permission last year by a state board to build power transmission lines through state waters. The Supreme Judicial Court backed that decision in a 4-2 ruling.

Cape Wind had gone to the state after a local board, the Cape Cod Commission, rejected in 2007 its request to build about 18 miles of undersea and underground transmission cables to connect to the regional electric power grid. The local board said Cape Wind hadn't provided sufficient information.

Opponents argued the state exceeded its powers and was trumped by the local ruling, but the court disagreed. It said that that interpretation would mean the state Energy Facilities Siting Board's authority applied everywhere but Cape Cod.

Cape Wind opponents also argued the state board was wrong to consider only the transmission lines' effect on Massachusetts, rather than the entire project's effect. But the court said that doing so would have essentially given the board the power to kill a project under federal jurisdiction.

The Justice Department's Public Integrity Section has a storied 34-year history of pursuing corruption in government and safeguarding the public trust.

That trust was breached, however, when some of the unit's prosecutors failed to turn over evidence favorable to the defense in their high-profile criminal trial of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who died earlier this month in a plane crash.

Now Jack Smith, a 41-year-old prosecutor with a love for courtroom work and an impressive record, has been brought in to restore the elite unit's credibility.

Before Stevens, Public Integrity's renown was built on large successes — like the prosecution of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and convictions of federal and state judges, members of Congress and state legislators, military officers, federal lawmen and bureaucrats and their state counterparts over the years.

But its stumble — not disclosing exculpatory evidence as Supreme Court precedent requires — was equally large. It was so serious that Attorney General Eric Holder, one of Public Integrity's distinguished alums, stepped in and asked a federal judge to throw out Stevens' convictions.

At the time of the Stevens debacle, Smith was overseeing all investigations for the international war crimes office at The Hague in the Netherlands. He'd read about the Stevens case. Offered the chance to take over Public Integrity, he couldn't stay away.

A federal judge says the Nebraska Supreme Court should answer a legal question about whether a Nebraska city's ban on hiring and renting to illegal immigrants is allowed by state law.

U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith Camp ruled late Wednesday on briefs from parties in lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska and the Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund, also known as MALDEF. Those lawsuits challenging Fremont's ban have since been combined.

Smith Camp had asked for the briefs last month, saying she wasn't sure whether the lawsuit should be heard in federal or state court.

Lawyers have until Sept. 1 to craft the language of the question that Smith Camp will present to the Nebraska Supreme Court.