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Thursday 24 may 2012 4 24 /05 /May /2012 09:32

Barclays new app transfers money by mobile phone

Barclays new app transfers money by mobile phone

By MARK HENNESSY.

THE ERA of the cashless society has moved a step closer, following the launch yesterday in Britain of a new mobile telephone payment system by Barclays Bank - the first of its kind in Europe.

Using Barclay's PingIt, a customer will be able to send up to £300 daily to another person knowing only their mobile number, as long as the receiver's bank details are registered with ¡®PingIt'.

For now, only Barclays' 11.9 million current-account holders will be able to send money, using a five-digit PIN, though anyone with a UK current account can receive funds through the system.

From March, current-account holders with all UK banks will be able to send money using the service: "I'm sure we'll soon be wondering what we did before it," said Anthony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays retail and business banking.

No bank details are exchanged during the transfer, which takes 30 seconds and which is free, for now. Both senders and recipients will be notified by SMS about transactions.

Users can download an app for iPhone, Android or Blackberry phones. Those without smart-phones can use PingIt's website to make or receive payments.

For now, the service is limited to personal accounts, though Barclays said the daily sums allowable should make it useful for "sole traders such as window cleaners or plumbers".

Mr Jenkins said, in time, bill payments and international payments could be added to the software.

Besides the minimum payment of £1 and the maximum of £300, Barclays has also set a total daily limit that can be sent of £300 and a £5,000 limit on the maximum that can be received by any one account.

Saying it will revolutionise the way people use money, Mr Jenkins cited examples such as friends splitting the cost of dinner, repaying a borrowed £10, or sending money to a son or daughter at university.

Sean Gilchrist, Barclays' head of digital banking, said the app employs "industry-standard encryption" and can be automatically wiped if a mobile is lost. But it should be locked when not in use.

However, Rachel Springall of the Moneyfacts comparison website warned that customers would need to be careful to use the correct mobile number and to send the right amount.

Users must be registered to receive payments - pending payments will be held for 24 hours and the instruction will be cancelled if the recipient has not registered during that time.

The Barclays move puts it into competition against the eBay-owned PayPal, which already has a similar app, although the bank - with its high-street presence - believes it has a branding advantage over eBay.

Barclays pushes out Pingit phone-based payment app

By Ben Woods.

Barclays Bank has launched Pingit, a service that lets people send and receive money using a smartphone, without sharing banking details. Barclay's Pingit app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry lets people send and receive cash using just a phone number.

The Pingit app can be used to make payments to anyone who has a current account with any British bank or building society, Barclays said in its announcement on Thursday. Participants sign up online to link their banking details with their mobile phone number, so that the phone number is all that is needed for the transfer, the company added.

At launch on Thursday, only Barclays current account customers will be able to send money via the app. However, any UK current account holder can register to receive payments. An update to the Pingit app expected in early March will open the payment part of the service up to everyone.

"For friends splitting the cost of dinner, repaying a borrowed £10 or people sending money to a son or daughter at university, it's free, quick, convenient, secure and easy to use," Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays retail and business banking, said in a statement. "You can send and receive money in seconds, without having to enter account details."

Google Wallet hits the town: In pictures

The Pingit app is available on the Apple iOS, Android and BlackBerry platforms, and can be downloaded from the related app stores. It requires iOS 4.2 or above, Android 2.2 or above and BlackBerry OS 4.6 or newer.

Payment limits for the service are in place, with the minimum transfer set at £1 and the maximum in one transaction at £300. The daily limit for receiving payments is £5,000.

Pingit could pose a challenge to PayPal's mobile payment service, which, unlike Barclays, imposes transaction fees for consumers. Small businesses using Pingit will have to pay "normal transaction charges", Barclays said.

In May, Barclays teamed up with Orange to introduce the first mobile wallet scheme in the UK. The contactless payment scheme made it possible for people with certain handsets, such as the Samsung Tocco Quick Tap, to buy products under £15 via an app.

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Wednesday 22 february 2012 3 22 /02 /Feb /2012 02:27

Google as Benevolent Dictator Yanks Apps With Kill Switch: Tech

Google as Benevolent Dictator Yanks Apps With Kill Switch: Tech

By Jordan Robertson, VIA:businessweek.com.

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Finnish developer Janne Kytomaki said he knew something was amiss last year when he noticed dozens of best-selling applications on Google Inc.'s Android Market listing the same incorrect author.

Kytomaki ran tests, identified the mislabeled software as a fast-moving attack and published the findings online.

Google responded swiftly. It yanked the apps from the marketplace and, using a little-known tactic to keep the malware from spreading, flipped a kill switch that reached into more than 250,000 infected Android smartphones and removed all vestiges of the software.

"I was positively surprised by how fast Google got the apps removed from the market and how fast they were able to roll out a tool for removing the malware," Kytomaki said.

Google, Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have with little fanfare embraced technology that lets technicians instantly and remotely purge unauthorized content from users' machines. So- called kill switches are standard on Android handsets and iPhones, the smartphone leaders. The capability will soon become more widespread with the release of Microsoft's Windows 8 software for tablets and computers.

While their stated use is for the removal of harmful content, there's no standard definition of what that means, and companies aren't required to disclose when and how the tools are employed. The technology could be harnessed by a hacker to unleash a virus, a company to pry into a user's private information or a government body to repress free speech, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University's law school.

'Dictator-Philosopher-King'

"We have the benevolent dictator, philosopher-king type of model," Goldman said. "You have someone who has absolute control over my hard drive in ways I may have never anticipated or consented to. If they use that power wisely, they actually make my life better. We don't know if they use the power wisely. In fact, we may never know when they use their power at all."

Kill switches are technologically unsophisticated administrative programs that run silently in the background. They have long existed in controlled networks, like at work, where technical staff has power over every machine. They haven't been widely used on personal computers, whose users are online sporadically and inconsistently update security patches -- a failure that has fostered the spread of malware such as the Conficker worm, which has infected millions of Windows machines.

Smartphone users, on the other hand, are online all the time and must download applications from tightly controlled stores. By design, mobile software gives computer companies a second chance on security, said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco security firm for smartphones.

'Overcorrection'

"The remote-removal tools are very much a response to the mistakes of the PC era," Mahaffey said. "Whether or not it's an overcorrection, I think history will tell us. It can be done right, but we as an industry need to tread carefully. It's easy to imagine several dystopian futures that can arise from this."

One concern is that Google, Microsoft and others could face external pressure to engage kill switches.

Governments are getting increasingly aggressive in demanding help from technology companies in censoring e-mail and the Internet, as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. learned in 2010 when India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pressured it to open customer communications to inspection.

"If you build a control into a device that the manufacturer and carrier can control, it will be used by governments," said Chris Wysopal, co-founder of Veracode Inc., a security firm in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Benefits, Drawbacks

Hackers are also getting more sophisticated at infiltrating protected networks, and privacy breaches are more common as personal data becomes the coin of the Internet realm. A kill switch feature carries clear benefits, and potentially dangerous drawbacks, Wysopal said.

"It can really be used to add security, but it can also be used to deny people their rights to communicate," he said. "This is a place where there's no clear doctrine. We haven't heard anything clearly come out from an Apple or a Google saying, 'Here's when we'll use our kill switch and when we won't.'"

Representatives of Mountain View, California-based Google and Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, said they have used kill switches a handful of times, though they declined to provide specifics.

Tricking 'Twilight' Fans

The kill switch is reserved for "really egregious, really obvious cases" of harmful content, said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's vice president of Android engineering.

"We've always viewed remote removal as the final option," he said. "It's not something we want to use."

One instance came after Jon Oberheide, a 28-year-old security researcher from Ann Arbor, Michigan, duped fans of the "Twilight" teen vampire movies. Oberheide uploaded a fake app on the Android Market and billed it as a preview of the latest film in the series. The software was empty, except for a single screen shot.

Still, the app, which had been downloaded 200 times, provided an entr¨¦e that might have let Oberheide introduce malware onto devices. It also helped Oberheide goad Google into using its kill-switch option.

"It finally happened," Oberheide said.

Google, taking a lesson from PC industry bouts with malware, has built in more aggressive protections since the first versions of Android, which began appearing in phones in 2008. Google's partners have sold more than 250 million Android devices, while Apple has sold more than 180 million iPhones.

Hacking Risk

Security experts said users would be at risk if hackers were able to hijack the mechanism Google uses to push software to the devices. Lockheimer said Google takes security of the mechanism seriously and has built-in protections.

Microsoft, which enabled the feature in Windows smartphones several years ago, said its takedowns have not involved malware. The violations concerned "technical issues and content issues," said Todd Biggs, a director of product management at Microsoft.

"Revocation is a last resort, and it's uncommon," Biggs said. "We take that as a signpost that we're on target toward our goal, which is safe, reliable apps for consumers."

Microsoft disclosed last year that it was adding a kill switch to desktop and laptop software. It did so by posting the terms of use for an application store, a new feature for Windows 8.

Amazon's '1984' Moment

RIM's licensing documents for vendors say that RIM reserves the right to remove applications from users' devices "for any reason whatsoever." Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman for Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, declined to comment.

Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, also declined to comment. Steve Jobs, Apple's deceased co-founder, confirmed the existence of a kill switch in a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal. Jobs said it would be "irresponsible" for Apple not to have a way to protect users from malicious applications. The comment appeared at the bottom of a story about iPhone app sales, in response to research that uncovered clues that such a feature existed on Apple devices.

The incident that encapsulates the danger of using a kill switch is Amazon.com Inc.'s use of the feature to delete some copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" novels from Kindle devices in 2009 after discovering a publisher had sold them without the necessary rights.

'Stupid, Thoughtless, Out of Line'

Customers were infuriated, and CEO Jeff Bezos called it "stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles." The company vowed it would never delete books from Kindles again.

Amazon representatives didn't respond to requests for comment.

While the emergence of kill switches shows the growing control that technology companies have assumed over users' devices, it also exposes the shortcomings of other methods of keeping users' computers clean.

Stephanie Stambaugh, a 47-year-old freelance writer from Denver, has been battling a so-called botnet infection on her home PCs since December. Her Internet provider, Comcast Corp., alerted her to the infection, a type of program where a machine is controlled without the user's consent that is becoming more common. She said that while she has run a dozen different antivirus and other cleanup programs, she is still getting alerts that her machine is infected.

Giving Up Privacy

Stambaugh said she can't afford the $130 virus cleanup service that Comcast offers, and is considering reinstalling her operating software, the nuclear option of virus cleanups.

Cable-network operators such as Comcast have insight into which computers are compromised, since they can see when machines are silently reaching out to malicious sites. Yet they don't have the same capabilities as companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple. Aside from alerting customers, they are limited to quarantining poisoned computers, or restricting the amount of bandwidth they consume.

Cathy Avgiris, a senior vice president for Philadelphia- based Comcast, said fully cleaning an infection is tedious, imprecise work, since the most harmful programs are good at hiding themselves. She said Comcast would be leery of adopting a kill-switch function for that reason.

Even some security experts who see the value of a kill switch say its advantages don't outweigh the potential risks.

"For most users, the ability to remotely remove apps is a good thing," said Charlie Miller, a hacker of Apple products and a researcher at the security firm Accuvant Inc. However, "I don't really like Google or anybody else with the ability to tell me what apps I can run or can't run and to remotely manage my devices. For me, the added payoff of security doesn't make up for the control and privacy you give up."

--Editor: Tom Giles, John Brecher, Nick Turner

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Wednesday 22 february 2012 3 22 /02 /Feb /2012 02:24

First look: Norton's 2012 desktop, smartphone security push

First look: Norton's 2012 desktop, smartphone security push

By Ellen Messmer, Network World

Norton today released an updated version of its Norton 360 desktop and mobile security software, while also rolling out a new licensing arrangement for combined PC, Mac and Android use.

In addition, Norton announced a novel plan for a new kind of customer support called "Norton One" that involves individualized unlimited assistance for customers who are mystified by computers, security and software -- if they're willing to pay the annual membership fee.

ANALYSIS: Antivirus software sales expected to show strong growth in 2012

Symantec's Norton 360 Version 6, available for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, is desktop security combining network intrusion prevention, Norton's "Sonar" behavior-based protection, its "Insight" reputation analysis for malware, an antivirus engine and Web-based anti-phishing protection, among other features. The latest version of Norton 360 adds bells and whistles, such as the introduction of a Web portal so customers can access passwords they commonly use anywhere. Its "Download insight" capability, which had been in beta, will give users feedback on how safe it is to download a file.

There are now bandwidth controls to allow the user to monitor and control how mobile broadband, which is often metered by the provider, might be used, among other network services. And in another change, a so-called "self-healing" feature will now be apparent to the user as a green dialog box from Norton, which may appear, when needed, to say it has detected a unique error code in the user's machine and is applying an auto-fix correction to Norton 360 to adjust for it.

"These are probably errors unique to your environment," says Collin Davis, senior director of engineering at Norton. He says "there are a lot of idiosyncrasies that come up" that Norton will tackle with a minor custom build to Norton 360 Version 6 to correct the glitch. Norton has found this is needed because customers use such a wide range of computers and software these days that making use of the new auto-fix will quickly solve issues that distract users, plus minimize call volumes for tech support. This auto-fix is distinct from any general patch updates that might occur.

Microsoft Windows 8 is not yet out -- it's not exactly clear when it will be but a beta is expected soon with year-end general release -- but Norton is working closely with Microsoft to make sure that Norton 360 Version 6 will be able to run on Windows 8. "Microsoft has given us internal preview builds," says Davis, adding at this point Norton is highly confident that if someone bought Norton 360 Version 6 now, it would work on Windows 8 when it's available.

Norton 360 Version 6 costs $89 for up to three devices.

Norton 360 Everywhere

For the first time, Norton is coming out later this spring with what it calls Norton 360 Everywhere, which basically is a licensing plan for use of Norton 360 for up to five Windows or Apple Macintosh computers, plus any Android-based smartphones and tablets based on Android 2.1 and up. Subscribers will link to Android Marketplace to get the app for it. Norton 360 Everywhere includes 25GB of online storage. Pricing is yet not announced. Norton says this is the first time it has set up a single licensing of Norton 360 across platforms like this, and that Norton 360 Everywhere is a testimony to the impact of mobile computing today. (The licensing plan doesn't include Apple iOS devices, however, mainly because Apple's architecture is said not to lend itself to this use.)

The "Norton One" customer-service membership

Also in the works is a plan to offer what's being called the "Norton One" membership to customers who find coping with security and management issues to be a trying ordeal, and they're willing to pay $149 per year for unlimited online and phone support help from Norton for a range of its products, including Norton Internet Security for the Mac, Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security 2012.

"It's a set of support and advisory services," says Jody Gibney, group product manager at Norton, about the new membership concept that Norton is now piloting and expects to launch in earnest toward the end of March in English-speaking countries, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The idea is that a "team of experts" is going to be available on call around the clock and through online remote support to help you with any difficulties, whether it be backup of photos in Norton's cloud storage or setting up the Identity Safe feature for family members. Norton One is conceived to be wide-ranging in its scope, and foresees Norton going into a new type of intense hand-holding customer interaction that isn't done yet today in the industry.

Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security.

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Wednesday 22 february 2012 3 22 /02 /Feb /2012 02:22

Google's Motorola Mobility Deal Gets Green Light from U.S. and Europe

Google's Motorola Mobility Deal Gets Green Light from U.S. and Europe

By Trefis Team, forbes.com.

Google received approvals for its proposed Motorola Mobility acquisition from both the European Commission as well as the U.S. Justice Department on Monday.

However, regulatory approvals in China and Israel are still pending. The acquisition plans were made public in August last year when the two companies announced that they have come to an agreement under which Google would buy out Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. Google has maintained that the acquisition was made with Motorolaâ€™s strong patent portfolio in mind as it would help it better defend its Android mobile platform from lawsuits filed by Apple and Microsoft.

However, we believe that Google has bigger plans in mind. While the addition of more than 17,000 Motorola patents will no doubt strengthen Googleâ€™s patent portfolio, we believe that the 63% premium that Google has paid for Motorolaâ€™s rather under-performing mobile business needs a bigger justification in the form of a grander mobile hardware play.

Google eyes growing mobile search market

Google already is a dominant player in the online search business for desktops and notebooks. However, as PC growth slows and more users adopt smartphones to stay connected on the move, an increasing number of Internet searches will be performed on mobile phones and online ad dollars will shift to mobile advertising.

Coming up with an open mobile platform, the Android OS, was Googleâ€™s way of entering the smartphone market. Now, armed with Motorolaâ€™s hardware business, Google may plan to come out with a good enough smartphone at cheaper price points to increase the demand for Android smartphones, thereby increasing its presence in the growing mobile search market.

Margins to decline

While such a move may lead Google to take a hit on its margins, it may be worthwhile as it can help drive mobile ad revenues in the long run. This strategy is not very different from Amazonâ€™s plan to sell the Kindle Fire at a very low price point in order to drive its core content distribution business and compete with Apple. Or Verizon, AT&T and other such telecom providersâ€™ approach to drive data consumption by subsidizing smartphones.

However, similar to the margin hit that the carriers have suffered as a result of the smartphone boom, this may deepen the margin loss that Google will be suffering by acquiring Motorolaâ€™s business. We estimate that Motorola Mobility will generate $12.6 billion in revenues and only 69 million in operating profits in 2012. This will significantly dent Googleâ€™s overall operating margins to about 21% from 27% pre-acquisition.

Moreover, Google is simultaneously running the risk of alienating its Android partners if it favors Motorola or alters the open Android platform to its benefit. This may cause partners to seek ways of lessening their dependence on the Android platform, which poses a direct threat to Googleâ€™s mobile search ambitions. It remains to be seen how Google is planning to alleviate such concerns.

On Wednesday, Symantec rolled out three new additions to its soup-to-nuts security sofware offerings: the "Windows 8 beta-enabled" Norton 360 version 6; Norton 360 Everywhere, for Windows PCs, Macs, and Android mobile devices; and Norton One, a brand new suite with "premium" support and a guarantee that customers won't experience telephone hold times of more than two minutes.

Norton 360 version 6, a product available immediately, will later be upgradeable through a software download to support Windows 8 beta edition whenever Microsoft moves Windows 8 out of its current alpha pre-release testing into the beta stage, said Collin Davis, senior director of engineering, in a briefing for NotebookReview.

"We're making it a priority to [do] whatever updates are necessary to maintain compatibility with all Windows 8 beta product builds," according to Davis.

Like its precedessor, Norton 360 version 5, the new N360 v6 includes the same features as Norton Internet Security (NIS), while adding online storage. Version 6 also folds in a number of improvements made in the recently released NIS 2012, such as lower performance impact, automatic error recovery, a new metering capability for bandwidth usage, and cloud synchronization for Identity Safe, Symantec's "secure vault" for user passwords and other sensitive information.

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Wednesday 22 february 2012 3 22 /02 /Feb /2012 02:13

Google-Motorola Purchase May Help Defrag Android

Google-Motorola Purchase May Help Defrag Android

By Jennifer LeClaire, VIA:newsfactor.com.

Why is Google buying Motorola? Could be for the 17,000 patents or a number of other reasons. Gartner VP Michael Disabato thinks the Google-Motorola buy is tied to setting direction for the Android operating system. "I think one of the reasons Google wants Motorola is because they have lost control of Android and they want to get it back."

U.S. and European regulators Monday approved Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, giving the green light to move ahead, although government approvals are still pending in Israel, Taiwan, and most notably China.
Google describes the acquisition as a move to supercharge its Android ecosystem. The company estimates that more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide -- and more than 550,000 devices are activated every day -- through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries.

The announcement set off speculation about Google rocking the smartphone market. Analysts discussed everything from Google making Android exclusive to Moto phones, to Google subsidizing Motorola phones and making them free. There were also questions of whether Google did the deal solely to obtain Motorola's patents and whether or not Google can pull off the merger. Industry analysts are still discussing why Google really wants Motorola to begin with.

A Fragmented Mobile OS

"I think one of the reasons Google wants Motorola is because they have lost control of Android and they want to get it back," said Michael Disabato, vice president of network and telecom at Gartner . "Google wants all Android phones to look alike and operate alike and they know if they don't take back control, they are going to fragment [the Android] operating system into a million little pieces."

One of the promises of the Android operating system was its open-source model, which would allow for various flavors of the mobile OS. Disabato said that's a good model when consumers can create their own experience, but it's not so good when there are multiple vendors and more than a dozen experiences -- and consumers are left without the power to make it their own.

"You look at iOS. Apple comes out with a new version and everybody runs and crashes the servers and eventually upgrades," Disabato said. "Google comes out with a new version of Android and what happens? The vendors first have to decide if the phone can support it. Then, they put it in a phone. Then, they have to go beg the carriers to let it out. So they've eliminated the end user, which is not what Google ever wanted."

Google's Mobile Privacy Push

Disabato points to Apple, a single manufacturer with a single operating system, as well as Microsoft , which has multiple vendors with a single operating system that cannot be tweaked. Windows Phone 7 runs the same on all hardware platforms.

"Who's standing out in left field trying to figure out what to do next? It's Google," Disabato said. "They've allowed the handset manufacturers and the carriers to take control of the user experience and they want to get that back."

But there's another factor at play in the Motorola acquisition: Google's consolidated privacy policy. Google recently moved to offer a single privacy policy across all its products and services, Disabato said, so the company can share consumer information across the board. At this point, mobile is the only missing component. And now, with the Motorola acquisition, Google can wrangle that in, as well.

(Reuters) - U.S. and European regulators approved Google Inc's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and said they would keep a sharp eye on the web search giant to ensure patents critical to the telecommunications industry would be licensed at fair prices.

It was one of a series of approvals on Monday that underscored the scramble by technology companies to acquire big pools of patents.

The U.S. Justice Department also approved an Apple Inc-led consortium's purchase of a trove of patents from bankrupt Canadian company Nortel Networks Corp and signed off on Apple's purchase of patents formerly owned by Novell Inc.

Google, whose Android software is the top operating system for Internet-enabled smart phones, said in August it would buy phone-maker Motorola for its 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications, as it looks to compete with rivals such as Apple and defend itself and Android phone manufacturers in patent litigation.

The acquisition, the largest in Google's history, will also mark the Internet search company's most significant foray into the hardware business - a market in which it has little experience. Some investors have worried that Google's profit margins may suffer as it becomes a hardware maker, although Google has said it intends to run Motorola as a separate business unit.

Regulators in China, Taiwan and Israel have still not signed off on the Google purchase of Motorola.

Google shares finished Monday's regular trading session up 1 percent at $612.20.

Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic want to prevent companies from gouging rivals when they license patents essential to ensuring different communications devices work together.

"This merger decision should not and will not mean that we are not concerned by the possibility that, once Google is the owner of this portfolio, Google can abuse these patents, linking some patents with its Android devices. This is our worry," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters in Brussels.

The U.S. Justice Department said it was reassured by Apple's and Microsoft's public statements that they would not seek injunctions in filing infringement lawsuits based on the Nortel patents.

"Google's commitments have been less clear," the Justice Department added in a statement. "The division determined that the acquisition of the patents by Google did not substantially lessen competition, but how Google may exercise its patents in the future remains a significant concern."

Almunia said the EU might be obliged to open some cases in the future.

"This is not enough to block the merger, but we will be vigilant," he said.

Regulators in China have until March 20 to decide whether to approve the deal or start a third phase of review, according to a source close to the situation.

The purchase would give Google one of the mobile phone industry's largest patent libraries, as well as hardware manufacturing operations that will allow Google to develop its own line of smart phones.

Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, is already being sued for patent infringement by Oracle Corp, which is seeking up to $6 billion.

The legal battles over patents between technology and smartphone companies has prompted the European Commission to open an investigation into legal tactics used by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd against Apple and whether these breach EU antitrust rules.

Some regulatory experts said the DOJ's comments in approving Google's acquisition of Motorola appeared to be more than mere boilerplate.

"They have to proceed with caution and tread lightly," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor at University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in antitrust law and intellectual property, with regards to Google.

Regulators will be on the lookout for practices that might limit the entry of new smartphones or new technologies.

"If Google makes it more difficult for new technologies to emerge, by locking-in existing licensees of the patents so that it becomes not profitable for them to adopt other technologies, that's the kind of thing that might give rise to antitrust scrutiny down the road," said Ghosh.

Google's move to buy Motorola Mobility came shortly after it tried and failed to buy Nortel's patents. The winner was an Apple-led consortium, which includes Research in Motion Ltd, Microsoft Corp, EMC Corp, Ericsson and Sony Corp, which agreed in July to pay $4.5 billion for 6,000 patents and patent applications.

Google, which runs world's No. 1 Internet search engine, has been under increasing regulatory scrutiny. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are both investigating Google following accusations it uses its clout in the search market to beat rivals as it moves into related businesses.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz and Foo Yun Chee with additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Tim Dobbyn and Andre Grenon)

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