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A bill to extend unlimited insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for some business bank accounts passed its first hurdle in the Senate Tuesday. The Senate voted 76 to 20 in favor of limiting debate on the bill, which avoids a filibuster that would have killed the legislation in the Senate. The bill would extend the Transactional Account Guarantee, or TAG, program for two years. TAG was originally created during the financial crisis to reassure businesses that, in the event of a bank failure, they wouldn’t lose the funds in the noninterest checking accounts they use to do things [...]

A U.S. appeals court overturned a preliminary injunction on the sale of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone on Thursday, dealing a setback to Apple Inc in its battle against Google Inc’s increasingly popular mobile software. Apple is waging war on several fronts against Google, whose Android software powers many of Samsung’s devices. In one of the more visible developments of that battle, Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $ 1.05 billion in damages. In [...]

/SAN FRANCISCO A U.S. appeals court overturned a pretrial sales ban against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone, dealing a setback to Apple Inc in its battle against Google Inc’s increasingly popular mobile software. Apple is waging war on several fronts against Google, whose Android software powers many of Samsung’s devices. The ruling on Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is not expected to have an outsized impact on the smartphone market, as the Nexus is an aging product in Samsung’s lineup. Apple’s stock closed down nearly 2 percent at $ 628.10. However, the [...]

A U.S. appeals court overturned a preliminary injunction on the sale of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone on Thursday, dealing a blow to Apple Inc in a battle against Google Inc’s increasingly popular mobile software. Apple is waging war on several fronts against Google, whose Android software powers many of the Korean giant’s devices. In one of the more visible signs of that battle, a high-wattage trial to determine whether Samsung’s products infringed on Apple patents ended in August with a sweeping victory for the iPhone maker. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that [...]

BERLIN Germany cleared the last legal hurdle to ratifying the euro zone’s new bailout fund on Wednesday with a cabinet declaration that addresses concerns raised by the country’s Constitutional Court. Germany is the last country in the 17-member euro zone to complete ratification of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an important tool to stem the three-year debt crisis that has forced bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and now threatens big countries like Spain and Italy. German ratification was held up for months by legal complaints against the ESM. The Constitutional Court finally gave the bailout fund the green light [...]

SAN FRANCISCO The Federal Trade Commission said late Wednesday it closed its investigation into Facebook’s proposed purchase of Instagram Inc. without taking any action, in effect allowing the deal to proceed. Facebook announced in April that it will buy Instagram, a maker of a popular photo-sharing mobile application, for about $ 1 billion in cash and [...]