* Samsung providing 5 yr guarantees on revenue-sourceBy Stephen Aldred and Ju-min ParkHONG KONG/SEOUL, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Global private equity
fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co LP and Asian buyout
fund MBK Partners are among bidders for a majority stake in
Samsung Group’s procurement arm iMarketKorea Inc
, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.Samsung Group said in August that it planned to sell a
combined 58.7 percent stake in the non-core business, held by
nine of its affiliates, in a rare divestment by the South Korean
conglomerate. The bids went in on Friday.Goldman Sachs Group Inc has been hired to advise on
the sale of the stake, which is valued at 372 billion won ($326
million) based on Tuesday’s closing share price of 17,650 won.An official for South Korean shopping mall operator
Interpark Corp also confirmed it is heading a
consortium which placed a bid.The Interpark group contains private equity fund H&Q, the
sources said.An external spokeswoman for KKR could not offer an immediate
comment, while MBK could not immediately be reached for comment.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.The sources declined to be identified as the discussions
were private.The size of the stake could be smaller, as Samsung earlier
said it might maintain an interest in Imarketkorea if buyers
request it. That interest could be up to 10 percent, one of the
sources said.Samsung set up Imarketkorea in 2000 to provide goods and
maintenance services for business clients.The conglomerate is providing five-year guarantees to
prospective buyers, to ensure two trillion won of revenue
annually through Imarketkorea, one of the sources said.
@1 year ago with 45 notes
#UPDATE #1KKR #MBK #bid #for #Samsung #Group #asset #sources
* Samsung tablets infringe Apple patents-judge* Apple has a problem establishing patent validity-judge* Apple must show both patent infringement and validityBy Dan LevineSAN JOSE, Calif., Oct 13 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge said that
Samsung Electronic’s Galaxy tablets infringe Apple
Inc’s iPad patents, but added that Apple has a problem
establishing the validity of its patents in the latest courtroom
face-off between the technology giants.U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh made the comments in a court
hearing on Thursday, but has yet to rule on Apple’s request to
bar some Galaxy products from being sold in the United States.Apple and Samsung are engaged in a bruising legal battle
that includes more than 20 cases in 10 countries as the two
jostle for the top spot in the smartphone and tablet markets.Earlier on Thursday, an Australian court slapped a temporary
ban on the sale of Samsung’s latest computer tablet in that
country.Apple sued Samsung in the United States in April, saying the
South Korean company’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets
“slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad.Apple then filed a request in July to bar some Samsung
products from U.S. sale, including the Galaxy S 4G smartphone
and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.Mobile providers Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA have opposed Apple’s request, arguing that a ban on
Galaxy products would cut into holiday sales.Apple must show both that Samsung infringed its patents and
that its patents are valid under the law.Samsung attorney Kathleen Sullivan argued that in order to
defeat an injunction bid, Samsung need only show that it has
raised strong enough questions about the validity of Apple’s
patents.”We think we’ve clearly raised substantial questions,”
Sullivan said at the hearing on Thursday in a San Jose,
California federal court.Apple attorney Harold McElhinny said Apple’s product design
is far superior to previous tablets, so Apple’s patents should
not be invalidated by designs that came before.”It was the design that made the difference,” McElhinny
said.Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each
company’s tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one
black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked
Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.”Not at this distance your honor,” said Sullivan, who stood
at a podium roughly ten feet away.”Can any of Samsung’s lawyers tell me which one is Samsung
and which one is Apple?” Koh asked. A moment later, one of the
lawyers supplied the right answer.Additionally, at the hearing Koh said she would deny Apple’s
request for an injunction based on one of Apple’s so-called
“utility” patents.She did not say whether she would grant the injunction based
on three other Apple “design” patents.Koh characterized her thoughts on the utility patent as
“tentative” but said she would issue a formal order “fairly
promptly.”“It took a long time to make that distinction,” Koh said.After the hearing, Samsung spokesman Kim Titus said Apple’s
injunction request is “groundless.”Apple spokeswoman Kristen Huguet said, “It’s no coincidence
that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and
iPad … This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to
protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our
ideas.”The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of
California is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al,
11-1846.
@1 year ago with 85 notes
#UPDATE #5Apple #must #show #patents #valid #in #Samsung #caseUS #judge
Three decades after Dan Shechtman looked with an electron microscope at a metal alloy and saw a pattern familiar in Islamic art but then unknown at a molecular level, those non-stick, rust-free, heat-resistant quasicrystals are finding their way into tools from LEDs to engines and frying pans.Shechtman, 70, from Israel’s Technion institute in Haifa, was working in the United States in 1982 when he observed atoms in a crystal he had made form a five-sided pattern that did not repeat itself, defying received wisdom that they must create repetitious patterns, like triangles, squares or hexagons.”People just laughed at me,” Shechtman recalled in an interview this year with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, noting how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening “crusade” against him, saying: “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.”After telling Shechtman to go back and read the textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for “bringing disgrace” on the team. “I felt rejected,” Shechtman remembered.”His discovery was extremely controversial,” said the Nobel Committee at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which granted him the 10-million crown ($1.5-million) award.”Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science … His battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.”In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves.”A PRIZE FOR THOUSANDSOn Wednesday, Shechtman said he was “excited” but at pains to praise fellow scientists, many of whom once doubted him.Nancy Jackson, the president of the American Chemical Society (ACS), called it “a great work of discovery.”Scientists had previously thought solid matter had only two states — crystalline, like diamonds, where atoms are arranged in rigid rows, and amorphous, like metals, with no particular order. Quasicrystalline matter offers a third possibility and opens the door to new kinds of materials for use in industry.Sometimes referred to as Shechtmanite in the discoverer’s honor, hundreds of quasicrystals have been synthesized in laboratories. Two years ago, scientists reported the first naturally occurring find of quasicrystals in eastern Russia.David Phillips, president of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, called them “quite beautiful.” Interlocking arrays of stars, circles and floral shapes are typical.”You can normally explain in simple terms where in a crystal each atom sits - they are very symmetrical,” Phillips said. “With quasicrystals, that symmetry is broken: there are regular patterns in the structure, but never repeating.”An intriguing feature of such patterns, also found in Arab mosaics, is that the mathematical constant known as the Greek letter tau, or the “golden ratio,” occurs over and over again. Underlying it is a sequence worked out by Fibonacci in the 13th century, where each number is the sum of the preceding two.Living things, including flowers, fruit and shellfish, also demonstrate similar arrangements, which scientists associate with the efficient packing of materials into growing organisms.Quasicrystals are very hard and are poor conductors of heat and electricity, offering uses as thermoelectric materials, which convert heat into electricity. They also have non-stick surfaces, handy for frying pans, and appear in energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and heat insulation in engines.Astrid Graslund, secretary for the Nobel Committee for chemistry, said: “The practical applications are as of now, not so many. But the material has unexpected properties. It is very strong, it has hardly any friction on the surface. It doesn’t want to react with anything — they cannot … become rusty.”But it is more a conceptual insight - that these materials exist and we need to re-write all textbooks about crystals - it’s a shift of the paradigm, which I think is most important.”BATTLE OF BELIEFSince Galileo was mocked by established scientists and persecuted by the church in the 16th century for observing that the Earth moved round the Sun rather than the reverse, overturning accepted wisdom has never been easy, as several of this year’s Nobel prizewinners in science have shown.Research that was largely ignored for years secured the medicine prize for the late Ralph Steinman and the astounding finding that the universe’s expansion was speeding up not slowing down meant the physics prize for its joint discoverers.But in a year when science is in a froth over whether particles may have been fired from Geneva to Italy faster than the speed of light — apparently defying Einstein — few in the modern age have had to battle disbelief as hard as Shechtman.”He dealt with the skepticism in a very scientific and gentlemanly manner and answered his critics as every scientist should — through science,” Ron Lifshitz, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University, told Reuters. “There were also personal slurs but those did not warrant a response … He believed in his own work and carried on with determination.”Interviewed about his Nobel by television in Israel, where the award was big national news for a small country with a long roster of laureates, Shechtman spoke of a photograph in his office that showed a small cat sipping water, surrounded by angry dogs; a biblical inscription read: “Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil.”“That’s the way I felt for many years,” Shechtman chuckled. “It accurately describes the situation, during that period.”He “trusted in his science,” however, and came to see the criticism by the late Pauling, which Shechtman has described as “almost theological,” as a positive source of strength:”When you’re a young scientist, and you’re faced with perhaps the top international scientist, Professor Linus Pauling … and he argues with you as an equal, and you know that he is wrong - that’s not really such a bad feeling.”
@1 year ago with 47 notes
#Ridiculed #crystal #work #wins #Nobel #for #Israeli
