The patent disputes between Apple and almost every other technology company on the planet continues, this time with Apple being forced to pull a number of iPhone and iPad models from sale in its German online store due to Motorola Mobility enforcing its patent injunction against the company.

A German Court found a number of Apple’s products to be infringing back in December, but Motorola Mobility (the consumer hardware arm of Motorola that is in the process of being taken over by Google) is now enforcing that ruling and Apple has had to pull the products.

The patent in question relates to a “method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system” and is normally licensed to competitors under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) conditions as it is crucial to GPRS data transmission – but Apple failed to license this patent in the past, and whilst has agreed to pay going forward, Motorola wants Apple to pay a penalty for the past transgressions – and they have the courts on their side.

UPDATE 17:00 03/92/12 // Apple have gained a temporary suspension (days or weeks) of the injunction from the German Appeals Court after offering a new deal to license Motorola’s patents.

Iran has said that they may ban the import of some Samsung products to the country and end political ties with South Korea entirely over an ad produced by an Israeli television company used to promote an offer for Samsung tablets to their subscribers. The ad, made for TV company, Hot, depicts bumbling characters from popular TV show Asfur arriving in Iran dressed as women and accidentally blowing up an Iranian nuclear power station using a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 owned by a bored Mossad agent.

Samsung has already moved into damage control mode in the Middle East after the ad caused, with their Dubai office condemning the ad, after the Iranian parliament said in an official statement that they thought it was “insulting” and described Iran as a “primitive society” and the emergence of Facebook and Twitter comments complaining about its depiction of the country.

Whilst Samsung has apologised to Iran, there is little more the company can do at this point as it is stuck in the middle of escalating tensions between Iran and Israel after the recent unexplained deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists – with the HOT ad making fun of Iran’s nuclear security.

[via Al Arabiya]

It is no surprise to anyone that users do not appreciate having to pay for the same service twice – and that is what mobile phone networks are getting people to do by charging for mobile phone tethering. If you pay for 2GB data in your mobile plan, then surely you should be able to use those 2GB through your mobile phone’s connection, you should not have to pay for an additional subscription to make use of your own data plan.

A couple of days ago, an app called QuasiDisk got past the App Store moderators with a function that allowed users to tether their iPhones – allowing users to use the modem in their iPhone to connect to the internet with their laptop or other device without incurring extra fees. Once news of this hidden feature spread – the app suddenly became very popular but it wasn’t long before Apple pulled the plug. This is not the first time such an app has slipped through the net and appeared on Apple’s App Store with the hidden feature, and you can be pretty sure it won’t be the last.

Some phone networks have been listening to users, however, and started to include tethering support for free with their monthly tariffs. O2 in the UK announced nearly a year ago that they were starting to include tethering as part of their monthly plans – but it is about time the others started following suit!

As the cameras in smartphones get better and better (with the iPhone 4S and Nokia Lumia 800 currently leading the pack), the market for digital point-and-shoot cameras is declining – but at £25, this little snapper is almost disposable and perfect for taking to parties or festivals.

The Kodak M200 comes packing a 10-megapixel sensor, a 3x optical zoom, and a 2.5-inch LCD display, as well as coming bundled with Kodak’s Easyshare software that makes uploading your photos to Facebook or Flickr a breeze. It may not be a competitor for your digital SLR, but at an almost disposable price this is the sort of camera that is perfect for taking to some rather boozy or muddy occasions.

[BUY] Kodak Easyshare M200 for £25 from Asda Direct

It may have been one of my tech predictions for 2012 that BlackBerry would be dead or at best a shadow of its former self, but I wasn’t expecting them to hasten their own demise with a rather poorly thought out marketing campaign with cartoon superheroes. Seriously.

Whilst at the same time as promoting its “Be Bold” tagline where people “need tools, not toys” from their phones, with celebs like musicians the Martinez Brothers, and food buyer extraordinaire Jon Hansburg fronting the videos, RIM was actively shooting itself in the face with a social media campaigns of superheroes launched on Twitter. This may be just “a bit of fun”, but for a company trying to push the idea that phones are functional devices and not play things – a position that obviously works well to promote BlackBerry – the long held device of professionals around the globe, this is the exact opposite. They’ve called the characters Gogo Girl (The Achiever), Max Stone (The Adventurer), Justin Steele (The Advocate), and Trudy For Real (The Authentic) – I’ve embedded the graphic below.

Even more of a problem than their marketing mis-haps, however, is that the first BlackBerry device running the new BlackBerry 10 OS, known as BlackBerry London, will not be available until late 2012. The good people over at CrackBerry have got hold of a legitimate looking copy of RIM’s 2012 roadmap, and a render of the BlackBerry London to give this story some credence – and that tardiness is not good news.

I actually quite like the look of the next-gen BlackBerry London, but running just a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and a large-ish screen it will be blown out of the water by the like of the Samsung Galaxy SIII which will be coming out before it. After a 2011 that saw their business and security prowess dismantled by outages and their phones slipping behind competitors in terms of specs and abilities – BlackBerry needed something special and this looks like it will be too little too late.

In its current deal with Sky, the BBC pays the satellite broadcaster tens of millions of pounds each year for the privilege of being included in the Sky electronic programme guide (EPG) and broadcasting their signal through the Sky satellite bandwidth into an increasing number of UK homes. But with each Sky user paying Sky £30+ per month to receieve the channels, why is it the BBC also has to pay to be seen?

This looks like a classic case of double dipping, and whilst I am impressed by Sky’s obvious prowess in its negotiating, with the BBC being funded by the license fee and therefore effectively public owned, we as consumers should not have to pay twice for the same content. Yes the BBC’s remit is to be accessible on various channels to inform and entertain the British public, but how is it that Sky is managing to charge such high fees to broadcast ad-free content that is paid for by the British public?

In the US, Murdoch-owned Fox Networks charges cable companies to be able to rebroadcast its content in deals that are the polar opposite of the UK situation – so why is it that in the UK the BBC is paying Sky, not Sky paying the BBC? Part of it is to do with Sky being broadcast by satellite which means that it is available to even the furthest flung areas of the UK – places where BBC content should be available, but may not have been through traditional television masts, analogue or digital. Therefore, when Sky was launching Sky Digital and could offer this service, the BBC was almost obliged to be on the service giving Sky the better hand in negotiations. This situation has, however, changed.

Whilst Sky was the first digital satellite television service in the UK, and should be respected for pioneering that market and the pay-TV market in general – there is now a competitor in FreeSat. FreeSat is a digital satellite service from the BBC and ITV and runs on the same satellite service as the Sky service – meaning that everywhere that Sky reached that terrestrial television and Freeview could not, can now be reached by this service – and it is already part-owned by the BBC. The BBC, then, no longer needs to be available on Sky to reach the whole British population – something which should change the balance of power in the upcoming renegotiations on the deal.

The BBC still produces the most watched television content in the UK, and as such should be holding most the cards in renegotiating with Sky. Whilst commercial broadcasters like ITV may need to worry about any temporary loss in viewership (and therefore advertising viewers) by holding the Sky rebroadcasting deal to ransom – the BBC is paid by the license fee and as leaving the Sky EPG for a few days to show their strength of hand is an option. The volume of complaints Sky would receive if it no longer was able to show BBC content on its service would have the company changing tack and offering to stream the BBC content for free or even pay for doing so quite quickly. The BBC just needs to show its teeth.

The deal is being renegotiated by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the coming days, and he has shown his appreciation for Sky and distaste for the BBC in the past. So if you would like to see BBC license fee money being invested in new content and not going into the coffers of Rupert Murdoch and the other Sky shareholders (who have shown themselves uninterested in producing new content over the years and instead preferring to just buy it cheaply from the US after a terrestrial channel has introduced it in the UK and built the audience), then write to Mr Hunt such as via this form on Avaaz.