On Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice formally approved Apple’s recent bid on a multitude of patents once belonging to Nortel.

Just last year Apple was joined by Microsoft, Research in Motion, and a number of prominent names in technology in a battle for a share of Nortel’s most eagerly sought-after intellectual properties.

In the end, the fight boiled down to a battle of the billions between Google and Apple for a hefty share of the 6,000 patents then held by the bankrupt Canadian telecommunications equipment maker.

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Lawmakers in California want smartphone makers to become smarter in their deployment of energy efficient technologies.

On Thursday, state legislators in California voted in a somewhat controversial move to obligate handset makers to ship energy-efficient battery chargers.

But here’s the kicker. Unlike so many legislative acts that often take three to five years to go into effect, the new requirement takes effect next year.

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Apple’s lawyers have been set free and they are on the attack.

On Wednesday, word surfaced that Apple has begun sending legal take-down notices to the servers hosting services that assist users in unlawfully obtaining software from the App Store.

The news is a welcome revelation to app developers who claim to lose no shortage of revenue right along with Apple when their digital creations are stolen.

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The Wall Street Journal confirmed Thursday that the U.S. Justice Department is, indeed, investigating the pricing of eBooks,

The genesis of the probe dates backs to lingering suspicions about the appropriateness of Apple and its partners in publishing to limit discounting.

“We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general,” said Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting antitrust chief.

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Some of the biggest names in mobile have been named in a new class-action lawsuit stemming from the Carrier IQ revelation that rocked the mobile privacy world last month.

The Carrier IQ software is what’s known as a rootkit that is installed at a carrier’s request on mobile phones. The software raises user privacy concerns in light of the fact that it runs in the background and monitors and logs user activity.

Carrier IQ is believed to be installed on well over 100 million devices today.

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On Friday we told you about a new initiative by CTIA to audit all SMS short codes for regulation compliance.  While it sounds like an initiative aimed at the betterment of the industry in general, a closer look reveals just how unfair and unrealistic the audit really is.

To understand exactly what CTIA is trying to do and what it means for the SMS marketing industry, Shane Neman, CEO of SMS provider EZ Texting, wrote an excellent post entitled “CTIA’s Illegal Short Code Auditing – A Playbook to Kill America’s Wireless Innovators.”  In it, he details how EZ Texting was contacted in regards to CTIA’s new short code auditing process and why such audits are unfair, unreasonable and inherently “broken.”

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CTIA is now enforcing new compliance audits on SMS short codes, and SMS and mobile content providers are fighting back with a new petition.  The full text of the petition follows.

“The CTIA has begun an unfair and unbalanced audit of SMS providers who use short codes, requiring them to police anyone listing them on the web to list disclaimers about their proper usage,” the petition states.  ”Because this extends to all partners, clients and client affiliates of the SMS provider, it represents an unrealistic and unattainable burden since by design, short codes are easily referenced on the web without any way for the provider to police them.”

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