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The former CEO of networking software company Comverse Technology has agreed to forfeit US$46 million to help cover shareholder lawsuits against the company he founded. Jacob "Kobi" Alexander has been on the run since 2006, when the U.S. brought criminal charges against him, in connection with a stock option backdating scandal at Comverse. He is now living in Namibia and the U.S. government is trying to extradite him to face charges, the U.S. Departmen ...

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, the former chairman and CEO of voicemail software maker Comverse Technology Inc. who fled to Namibia in 2006 to avoid prosecution over stock option backdating, has agreed to pay nearly $54 million to settle a civil action by the U.S. Attorney's office. The settlement was filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court Eastern District of New York. Alexander has agreed to forfeit more than $47.6 million from two investment accounts — alleg ...

A jury has awarded Oracle US$1.3 billion in damages in its corporate theft lawsuit against SAP, a blow to the German applications vendor, which had argued it should pay just $40 million for the software stolen by its TomorrowNow subsidiary. Members of Oracle's legal team embraced each other as the verdict was read in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, according to a person in the courtroom. Closing arguments had been presented Monday afternoon, ...

OAKLAND, California (AFP) – A US jury has ordered German business software giant SAP to pay US rival Oracle 1.3 billion dollars in damages in a record-setting copyright infringement award. "We're ecstatic," said Geoffrey Howard, a partner with the Bingham McCutchen law firm, a member of the Oracle trial team. "The jury recognized the value of the intellectual property stolen by SAP." Oracle attorneys called the copy ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Oracle Corp.'s courtroom clash with archenemy SAP AG has paid off handsomely. A jury on Tuesday ordered SAP to pay $1.3 billion — more than half of its total profit last year — for a subsidiary's skullduggery in stealing a stockpile of software and customer-support documents from password-protected Oracle websites. The German software company was caught off guard by the size of the verdict. It had only set aside $ ...

SEATTLE – Apple Inc. released new software Monday that lets owners of the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to print wirelessly over Wi-Fi networks. Apple first described some of the new features in iOS 4.2, the operating software for the Apple gadgets, at a media event in September. The iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad don't have ports for hooking up with printers, which makes the AirPrint feature one of the biggest advances for all of Apple's gadgets ...

BOSTON (Reuters) – Novell Inc will sell itself in a complex $2.2 billion deal that includes the sale of key patents to a consortium led by Microsoft Corp and ends a months-long auction that frustrated investors. Most of Novell, a pioneer in computer technologies, will go to Attachmate Corp, a data center software maker owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. Attachment will pay $ ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A key measure of U.S. business activity continued to improve in October, a lender group told Reuters on Monday, as companies increased their investment in equipment and software and did a better job of staying current on their existing debts. The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association said that U.S. businesses originated $4.9 billion in loans, leases and lines of credit last month to invest in capital equipment, which can include ...

Novell said Monday that it has agreed to accept a $2.2 billion acquisition offer from Attachmate. If Novell's shareholders approve the deal, the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011, after which Novell and its SUSE Linux operating system will become separate Attachmate business units. Attachment expects to benefit from the deal because the two companies have complementary product portfolios and share many customers. This explain ...

A plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets users share and edit docs collaboratively in the cloud. That new option is currently being tested -- by Google. In March 2009 Google acquired DocVerse, and the new plug-in, called Google Cloud Connect, incorporates the technology it purchased. When installed, the free plug-in sets up a toolbar in Word, Excel or PowerPoint for Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. Productivity's Future 'In the Clou ...