Apple is asking for a preliminary injunction to block US sales of the Galaxy Nexus , according to the Wall Street Journal. The current suit, filed in San Jose's federal district court on Wednesday of this past week, accuses Samsung's phone of infringing on four Apple patents. The patents in question include "unified search," slide-to-unlock, data tapping (data detectors) and word completion technologies.

On Friday, the Mannheim Regional Court of Germany announced that Motorola’s patent lawsuit against Apple had been dismissed. The patent in question was considered essential to the 3G/UMTS wireless telecommunications standard and was used as a “method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access [CDMA] signal.”

Apple, today, has filed a lawsuit against Motorola over their use of Qualcomm technology, as reported by Reuters . Apple explains that Motorola has breached a contract pertaining to their use of a patent license and “asks this Court to enjoin Motorola from prosecuting and 4 enforcing its claims against Apple in Germany.” Specifically, Apple is suing Motorola over their claims that Apple is illegally using Qualcomm’s baseband chip.

In two report back in April and July of last year, we reported that Apple was working on an ultra-thin 15-inch Mac notebook, with the suggestion being that the existing MacBook Pro line would evolve to take design cues and many of the features from the popular MacBook Air. But whether the larger notebooks would be branded as MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs has been unclear.

Apple posted two new iPhone 4S television ads to its YouTube account this evening, "Road Trip" and "Rock God". Both ads showcase the various ways to use the iPhone 4S's Siri functionality to find directions, locate a restaurant, or send text messages.

Google is developing a wireless home entertainment system designed to stream music throughout the home, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal . The system would be marketed under Google's brand and would be based on Google's Android platform. Google has sold a few items under it's own name, but has never designed consumer electronics hardware itself

Following a report from AllThingsD earlier today claiming that Apple will introduce the iPad 3 in the first week of March, The New York Times is now weighing in with its own sources corroborating claims of a faster processor and a "truly amazing" screen in a package nearly identical in appearance to the iPad 2. An Apple employee said that the version of the new iPad that is being tested inside the company is “essentially the same size and shape as the iPad 2,” with an improved and “truly amazing” screen. The tablet will include a faster processor, said the employee, who did not want to be identified because Apple is not fond of leaks.

Back in September, we covered Microsoft's announcement of Windows 8, the next step in the operating system's evolution that seeks to encompass not only traditional PCs but also mobile devices running on ARM processor architecture. Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky showing off prototype Windows 8 hardware at September's BUILD conference Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows division, today issued a massive blog post laying out in more detail how the company plans to tackle Windows on ARM (WOA). Sinofsky notes upfront that WOA will be a new member of the Windows family, based heavily on Windows 8 but customized for the flexibility that users will see in ARM-based systems in both traditional PC and mobile form factors

The flurry of iPad 3 part leaks continues today following yesterday's interior photo of the rear shell and some follow-up photos of the exterior of the shell and the Smart Cover magnets. Among the most prominent additions today are new photos of what may be the iPad 3's display. Japanese blog Macotakara points to a posting by repair firm iLab Factory showing a 9.7-inch LCD panel from Sharp that is said to be a 2048x1536 high-resolution display set for inclusion in the iPad 3

Tech in Asia reports on an article [ Google translation ] from Chinese information technology website DoNews claiming that Apple is preparing to bring support for the Chinese language to Siri on the iPhone 4S next month. According to the report, Apple is also preparing to launch support for Japanese and Russian, but the initial Chinese support will only include Mandarin, with Cantonese and other dialects being left out for the time being. The Chinese tech site DoNews claims to have heard from an Apple engineer who’s working on the Chinese-language version of Siri, the clever voice assistant on the iPhone 4S