Since 2002, Linear Technology has blamed Novellus and a codefendant for selling chip-making equipment that landed Linear in a patent infringement suit with Texas Instruments. After a five week trial in California state court, a jury unanimously disagreed.

If hot dogs and chips were on your menu this weekend, you might want a quick update on two controversies surrounding these picnic staples. Last week Sara Lee picked a fight with Kraft Foods over the superiority of their competing franks. Sara Lee, which makes Ball Park franks, claims in a suit filed in Chicago federal court that Kraft has willfully run false ads touting its Oscar Mayer dogs. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a British court has decided that Proctor & Gamble's Pringles are in fact potato chips, and as such, subject to the country's 17.5 percent VAT.