The International Trade Commission (ITC) has issued its ruling on the patent battle between HTC and Apple. In a decision issued Monday, the ITC said that it had found a patent violation in some of HTC's products, issuing an import ban that will begin on April 19, 2012. Android-based HTC phones that have the offending feature won't be able to be sold in the US unless HTC removes the feature before then.

The ITC's administrative law judge (ALJ) ruled earlier this year that HTC was infringing on two of Apple's patents. The final decision was left up to a six-member ITC panel, however, and was delayed several times before Monday's ruling. As it turns out, the ITC believes Android-based HTC phones violate Apple's patents related to how users tap on data in an unstructured document in order to bring up other information—a common feature across most modern smartphones. HTC products that don't have this feature won't be subject to the import ban, but given the ubiquity of such a feature, we can see things being difficult for HTC between now and April.

Apple has been that combine a wrist display or other peripheral that connects wirelessly to a user's iPhone, according to a new New York Times report. One such concept is a curved glass display device that fits on the wrist and is controlled via Siri.

Reportedly, "very small group of Apple employees" have been working on such concepts for some time. That group was likely led by wearable computing expert Richard DeVaul, who was to serve as the company's "senior prototype scientist." However, DeVaul was this past June to work on similar wearable computing ideas in its "X Labs" skunkworks.

Wearable computing concepts are nothing new, but previous efforts in this field often involved shrunken desktop computers that had to be worn on a special belt or backpack. Newer concepts  leverage smartphones as a central "brain," as researchers note smartphone users are rarely more than three feet away from their device at any given time throughout the day.

Apple has reportedly revealed a few more details to TV executives about its Apple TV efforts, discussing things like a voice- and movement-controlled interface, and the ability for new devices to pick up a video stream where the user left off on another device. This comes via source speaking to the , which notes that while Apple has indeed been working on a television prototype, these services could already be implemented as part of the current Apple TV.

According to the WSJ's sources, Apple has approached TV execs with these features but has not gone into detail about what technologies or operating systems would be involved, save for AirPlay (the way Apple currently allows iOS devices to stream audio and video to the Apple TV). The deliberations appear to be mostly around strategy and not specific devices—the article acknowledges former Apple CEO Steve Jobs' , but didn't discuss it further except to note that one source said these services can be done with existing Apple technologies. You can color us skeptical that an Apple-branded television set will hit the shelves anytime soon, but it makes sense that Apple is fleshing out its Apple TV offerings in order to better compete with regular television. (!)

If being a successful jailbreak developer can , apparently so can redesigning the oft-criticized Notification Center. Apple has hired Jan-Michael Cart, perhaps best known for creating demos of proposed Notification Center tweaks, to for the next seven months. Cart's internship follows two other recent hires known for notification work, suggesting the company is aware that iOS notifications still need some work.

Cart, currently a junior majoring in Mass Media Arts at the Univeristy of Georgia (go Bulldogs!), specializes in video and graphic design. He has recently begun and learning about iOS development, according to his website. With the release of iOS 5, Cart began creating videos to demonstrate his ideas for improving its Notification Center feature.

Apple may be used to getting its way in most areas of business, but the company is reportedly changing its initial proposition when it comes to bringing advertisers on board with iAd. According to sources speaking to the , Apple is both lowering its minimum dollar commitment and changing how advertisers pay for "clicks" (taps), indicating that Apple's in-app advertising system is slower to take off than the company initially expected.

Apple introduced iAd last year as a way to compete with the likes of Google in mobile advertising. At the time, then-CEO Steve Jobs boasted that Apple would take control of 50 percent of the mobile ad market by the end of 2010; , though analysts were still optimistic about iAd's success. Part of the reason iAd didn't seem to take off as quickly as Apple hoped was apparently due to —several unnamed ad executives claimed that Apple was insisting on heavy creative input, not to mention high initial dollar commitments.

According to Tuesday's report, Apple has dropped its $1 million spending commitment to around $400,000—not terribly surprising, given recent . Apple is also reportedly offering more flexibility on how much advertisers must pay per ad view and tap, letting them cap the total amount they spend so as to preserve the ad budget a little longer. Additionally, Apple is also reportedly starting its own training program with its media buying agency OMD in order to "teach the firm and its clients about the mobile marketing landscape"—a training program that apparently involves extensive visits to Apple's headquarters and discounts at the company store.

These efforts don't necessarily mean that Apple is failing at iAd—according to IDC's numbers from 2010, both Google and Apple claimed almost 20 percent of the mobile ad market. That number has gone down a bit this year for Apple, though (15 percent so far in 2011, or roughly $95 million), and the company would like to reverse that trend in 2012. As the WSJ notes, however, iAd is at somewhat of a disadvantage when compared against Google because iAd only works on iOS devices, while Google's mobile ad system works for iOS and Android.

From an advertiser's perspective, it makes less sense to use multiple mobile advertising networks when Google's will reach a wider swath of the market. Still, with Apple's supposed new flexibility with iAd, the company may be able to attract advertisers again if the deal is sweet enough. Apple did recently to manage iAd and iCloud earlier this year, so the recent changes to iAd may be due to Cue's efforts since taking over those services.

Opera developer Haavard Moen has Apple of repeatedly using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry group that governs and oversees the development of Web standards, requires that every specification it approves be implementable on a royalty-free basis, barring extraordinary circumstances that justify an exception to this rule. The specifications can contain patented technology, as long as royalty-free patent licenses are available.

Apple is sales of its Logic Studio and Logic Express digital audio workstation packages "effective immediately," according to a notice sent to authorized resellers on Thursday. Updated versions of the  app and the live-performance app , previously both part of the Logic Studio suite, are now available separately via the Mac App Store for significantly lower prices. Simplifying its software offerings in the transition, Apple is putting the kibosh on the lower-cost Logic Express and sending Soundtrack Pro into the great hard drive in the sky.

A rumor from September suggested that Apple was on a new version of Logic Pro dubbed "Logic Pro X." As MacRumors noted, however, the notice released Thursday referenced "new" versions of Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2. Those versions appeared in the Mac App Store on Thursday afternoon, with Logic Pro 9.1.6 available for $199.99 and MainStage 2.2 now selling separately for just $29.99.

Following a by the European Commission on Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed on Wednesday that it is also into allegations that e-book publishers conspired with Apple to keep e-book prices from bottoming out. The DOJ has reportedly been investigating the situation for possible antitrust violations since publishers successfully pressured Amazon into last year.

"We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general," Sharis Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ's Antitrust Division, said during a congressional hearing. Attorneys general for the states of Texas and Connecticut are also investigating the matter, according to the Wall Street Journal.

At issue is whether any antitrust violations occurred when Apple signed on several of the largest publishers to publish e-books through its iBookstore, which coincided with the . Apple merely acts as an "agent" for the publishers, selling e-books at whatever price the publisher sets. Apple then takes its customary 30 percent cut as it does with music, movies, and apps.

Publishers seemed to relish having control over e-book pricing, as Amazon had been selling e-books below wholesale value in order to gain users for its Kindle e-reader device. When publishers asked Amazon to , the company originally threatened to pull books from its inventory. However, Amazon eventually and made agency agreements for e-books among several large publishers.

A filed earlier this year accused publishers of being "terrified" that Amazon's discounting was depressing e-book prices, and therefore happily accepted Apple's agency model to keep prices high. It also accused Apple of being a willing partner to the conspiracy since its iPad would ostensibly compete with Amazon's Kindle (though it's worth noting that the recently released is the first truly competing tablet from Amazon).

Given the number of simultaneous antitrust investigations, Apple's agreements with publishers will certainly get a fair amount of scrutiny. The publishers don't appear to be concerned, however. A spokesperson for Hachette told the WSJ that it "feels strongly that its decision to distribute e-books through agency distribution not only better serves our authors and customers, it has also helped to increase competition and consumer choice in e-books and devices."

The European Commission announced on Tuesday that it has formally begun an investigation into claims that publishers colluded with Apple to keep e-book prices high, in violation of EU anti-competition rules. The announcement comes after the Commission raided European offices of five international publishers in March in conjunction with the UK Office of Fair Trading.

The five publishers under investigation include Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Macmillan. The Commission wants to determine if the publishers have "possibly with the help of Apple" engaged in anti-competitive practices, particularly through the "agency agreements" that Apple uses with publishers and others to sell media via its iTunes Store.

Apple recently that some iPhone 4S users aren't getting the battery life they should and intended to fix those problems. However, the effectiveness of the fix appears to vary widely, with some Ars readers reporting improvements while others claim battery life got worse. Apple released the first beta of iOS 5.1 to developers , which is expected to include additional battery life fixes, but early reports suggest it .

We spoke to a couple analysts to try and understand what might be the root cause of the problem, and why Apple has had such a hard time fixing it. It turns out, the answer isn't very simple because smartphones aren't simple devices.