Samsung Calls Google to its Defense in $2 Bln Apple Trial By Joel Rosenblatt - Apr 12, 2014

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) called the first of as many as seven Google Inc. (GOOG) witnesses to begin making its case in a $2 billion patent trial that Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s true target in the lawsuit is the Android operating system.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s vice president of Android engineering, testified yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California, about the development of the Android operating system used in Samsung phones. Apple contends, and Samsung denies, that several Android features in Galaxy devices infringe the iPhone maker’s patents.

As the world’s top two smartphone makers spar at their second U.S. jury trial, Samsung is trying to show that Apple’s claims are a cloaked attack on Google in an attempt to blunt smartphone competition from Android.

Apple’s iOS smartphone operating system gained ground in the U.S. in the final quarter of 2013 as the share of the market served by the platforms of Google, Microsoft Corp. and BlackBerry Ltd. shrank. Android’s share slipped 0.3 percentage points to 51.5 percent as Apple gained 1.2 percentage points to end the year with almost 42 percent of the market, ComScore Inc. said in February.

Worldwide, Samsung had 31.3 percent of a smartphone market that was valued at $338.2 billion last year, compared with 15.2 percent for Apple, whose share has shrunk as the touch-screen interface has become commonplace and Samsung, LG Electronics Inc. (066570) and Lenovo Group Ltd. have introduced lower-cost alternatives.

Operating System

Lockheimer’s opening testimony was aimed at buttressing Samsung’s argument that Google, which isn’t a defendant in the case, was more than capable of creating an operating system without copying Apple’s patents.

The executive said he joined Google in 2006 and that the company was already at work on Android, which was an independent company Google acquired in 2005. In that period, as phones were becoming smartphones, Google’s aim was to provide an open-source operating system for free.

“Rather than phones being mostly a hardware product, there was a lot of software involved,” Lockheimer said of the evolving smartphones. “We provided that software.”

Asked by Samsung lawyer John Quinn if Lockheimer’s team ever copied anything from the iPhone, the witness replied, “Not that I’m aware.”

‘Own Identity’

“We like to have our own identity,” he said. “It was important that it was our ideas.”

Samsung has presented e-mails in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs spoke of his Cupertino, California-based company facing an “innovator’s dilemma” and announced a “Holy War with Google,” saying the goal was to “Catch up to Google” in its Android and cloud service capabilities.

Jobs, the former Apple chief executive officer who died in 2011, is quoted in a biography by Walter Isaacson as saying his mission was “to destroy Android,” which Jobs said “ripped off the iPhone, wholesale.”

Harold McElhinny, a lawyer for Apple, told the jury in his opening argument last week that portraying the case as an attack on Mountain View, California-based Google is misleading because Samsung made the choice to use and profit from the infringing Android features in its phones.

First Trial

Unlike the first trial in 2012, when Apple was awarded $1.05 billion in damages after convincing jurors that Samsung copied the iPhone’s look and design, the current case is exclusively about software functions.

Apple claims that 10 Samsung products, including the Galaxy S3, infringe five patents covering a range of user-interface designs for the iOS software that powers iPhones and iPads, including features like the slide-to-unlock function, automatic spelling corrections, and the ability for a user to make a call by clicking on a phone number within a web page or e-mail instead of having to dial it separately.

Others functions Apple says are covered by its patents include searching for words in files stored in different applications and updating applications while using other features of the phone. Apple seeks about $2.2 billion in damages.

Samsung alleges that eight Apple products, including the iPhone 5 and versions of the iPad and iPod, infringe two patents. Samsung, based in Suwon,South Korea, seeks about $7 million in damages, according to a court filing.

Apple finished presenting its evidence at the trial yesterday.

Samsung plans to call another Google engineer, Dianne Hackborn, to testify about the design of Android features that Apple claim infringe the patent covering single-click phone calls, according to Samsung lawyers and a court filing.

The case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., 12-cv-00630, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

To contact the reporter on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in federal court in San Jose, California, at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Peter Blumberg, Mary Romano

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India’s Nifty Futures Fall as Technology Shares May be Active By Rajhkumar K Shaaw - Apr 10, 2014

Indian stock-index futures dropped after the benchmark index climbed to a record yesterday.
SGX CNX Nifty Index futures for April delivery fell 0.4 percent to 6,788.5 at 10:05 a.m. in Singapore. The underlying CNX Nifty Index on the National Stock Exchange of India was little changed at a record 6,796.40 yesterday. The S&P BSE Sensex (SENSEX) gained less than 0.1 percent to 22,715.33, an all-time high. The Bank of New York Mellon India ADR Index of U.S.-traded shares fell 2.2 percent to 1,220.20.
Infosys Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. may be active after U.S. technology stocks tumbled yesterday amid speculation that valuations are too high. Indian elections began this week, with opinion polls indicating the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party will secure the most seats. Overseas investors have pumped $11 billion into local stocks and bonds this year amid speculation the elections will produce a BJP administration with the mandate to tackle corruption and lift economic growth from a decade low.
“The rally has been too fast, too soon,” Arun Kejriwal, a director at Kejriwal Research & Investment Pvt., said by phone from Mumbai yesterday. “We can see some consolidation at current levels. But the bias remains upward as the foreign inflows have been very strong.”
India is scheduled to report industrial production figures today. The Sensex has climbed 7.3 percent this year and trades at 14.3 times projected 12-month profits, compared with the average multiple of 14.5 over the past five years. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has risen 1.3 percent in 2014 and is valued at 10.3 times.
India is prepared for potential financial fallout if the Federal Reserve increases interest rates before April 2015, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said yesterday in Washington.
“Nobody is prepared for every eventuality, but for most eventualities, we are prepared,” Rajan said in an interview with Bloomberg News after an event in Washington. “For us, the specific timing matters less than that it should happen when U.S. growth is strong.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Rajhkumar K Shaaw in Mumbai at rshaaw@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Patterson at mpatterson10@bloomberg.net Chan Tien Hin

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Indian Rupee Advances Most This Month as Inflows Seen Increasing

By Divya Patil - Apr 9, 2014

India’s rupee strengthened the most this month on optimism Asia’s relatively fast economic growth will attract capital inflows.
Global funds pumped $10.3 billion into local stocks and bonds this year, exchange data show. Developing Asian economies are forecast to grow 6.7 percent this year, outpacing an estimated 2.8 percent expansion for the U.S., the International Monetary Fund said in a report yesterday. The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index (ADXY), which tracks the region’s 10 most-active currencies excluding the yen, touched a seven-week high.
“The IMF report is a positive as growth in emerging markets is likely to be higher, which supports the case of continued foreign inflows into the region,” said Amogh Moghe, a foreign-exchange trader at Mumbai-based brokerage Mecklai & Mecklai Ltd. “The dollar’s weakness against most Asian currencies is also boosting the rupee.”
The rupee rose 0.2 percent from its April 7 close to 60.0050 per dollar as of 9:46 a.m. in Mumbai, according to prices from local banks compiled by Bloomberg. Financial markets in India were shut yesterday for a local holiday.
“There are some bunched-up inflows after yesterday’s holiday, which too are supporting the currency,” said Moghe.
The rupee gained 3.2 percent in the first quarter, the biggest advance since the three months through September 2012, and touched an eight-month high of 59.60 per dollar on April 2 as policies aimed at containing inflation and the current-account deficit buoyed confidence.

Rupee Forecasts

Gains in the rupee will halt as the winner of elections in the world’s largest democracy needs to build consensus for policies to revive the economy, according to the most accurate forecaster for the currency.

India’s Sun Pharma to Buy Ranbaxy in $4 Billion Deal By David Welch and Kanoko Matsuyama - Apr 6, 2014

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (SUNP), India’s largest drugmaker by market value, agreed to buy Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. (RBXY) in a $4 billion stock transaction, the biggest purchase by an Indian company in two years.

Ranbaxy investors will get 0.8 share in Sun for every one of their shares, the two companies said today in a statement. That’s equal to about 457 rupees a share, or about 24.3 percent higher than the 60-day average, according to the statement. Ranbaxy rose 8.2 percent to 459.55 rupees on April 4.

Sun, maker of generic drugs including copies of Eli Lilly & Co.’s Cymbalta and Johnson & Johnson’s Doxil, expects $250 million in revenue and reduced costs by the third year after the completion of the deal, according to the statement. Since Daiichi Sankyo bought control of Ranbaxy in 2008, four of its Indian plants have been banned from exporting to the U.S. for failing to meet standards.

“It is a long-term positive for Sun Pharma because it adds emerging-markets facilities,” said Prakash Agarwal, an analyst at CIMB Securities India Pvt. in Mumbai. “Ranbaxy’s consent decree will be resolved in a few years’ time, so they should be out of the woods in terms of the FDA issues.”

Daiichi Sankyo Co. (4568), which owns 63.5 percent of Gurgaon, India-based Ranbaxy, said it planned to vote in favor of the deal. The transaction will help Daiichi Sankyo’s earnings, Takashi Akahane, a health-care analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Center Co. in Tokyo, said by telephone. “Daiichi Sankyo seems to have backed off from directly getting involved with business in India and left it to a local company.”

Ranbaxy Surge

Daiichi Sankyo surged as much as 5.1 percent, the biggest intraday gain in more than nine months, to 1,844 yen in Tokyo trading today. The stock traded at 1,821 yen, up by 3.8 percent, at 11:27 a.m. local time.

Ranbaxy shares rose 8.2 percent to 459.55 rupees in Mumbai trading on April 4. That took its gain for last week to 26 percent, the largest weekly advance since August.

The transaction has an equity value of about $3.2 billion, according to the statement.

Ranbaxy recently received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey requesting certain documents relating to issues previously raised by the FDA on its Toansa facility in north India, Sun Pharma said in the statement. The FDA in January said Ranbaxy can no longer make or distribute drug ingredients from that plant to the U.S.

FDA Rules

FDA officials have said they plan to tighten rules on how they regulate the generic-drug industry as a way to convince American consumers that safeguards are in place.

In March, the Food and Drug Administration said Ranbaxy was recalling some batches of its generic cholesterol-lowering medicine.

India’s pharmaceutical industry exported $14.6 billion worth of products in the year ended March 2013, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. India is the second-largest supplier of over-the-counter and prescription drugs to the U.S., behind Canada.

Sun Pharma was advised by Citigroup Inc. and Evercore Partners Inc. Ranbaxy hired ICICI Securities as its financial adviser and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. advised Daiichi Sankyo.

Sun Pharma’s legal advisers are Shearman & Sterling LLP, Crawford Bayley & Co and S. H. Bathiya & Associates, while Ranbaxy’s advisors are Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co. Daiichi Sankyo hired Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co, it said.

To contact the reporters on this story: David Welch in New York at dwelch12@bloomberg.net; Kanoko Matsuyama in Tokyo atkmatsuyama2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anjali Cordeiro at acordeiro2@bloomberg.net Anjali Cordeiro, Frank Longid

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