Google on Wednesday announced it is selling the Motorola Mobility Home unit to global communications technology company ARRIS in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.35 billion.

"This transformational combination of two complementary businesses will create a leading end-to-end provider of today's video, data, and voice products and tomorrow's next-generation IP-based broadband products," said ARRIS chief executive Bob Stanzione.

A filing Wednesday in a high-stakes legal battle between Samsung and Apple revealed that a "pinch-to-zoom" patent central to the case has been deemed invalid.

The patent was a centerpiece of a trial that ended in August with a jury ordering Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for illegally copying iPhone and iPad features for its flagship Galaxy S smartphones.

It's not your Apple's iPhone.

A Brazilian company has begun selling smartphones with the iPhone brand after winning the legal right to use the name in Latin America's biggest country. Adding insult to Apple Inc.'s injury, the phone runs on Android operating system from archrival Google Inc.

In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits cited include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the "culture of violence" — the entertainment industry's embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games.

"The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.

The European Union will seek an accord with US Internet search giant Google as progress has been made in resolving EU anti-trust concerns, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Tuesday.

Almunia said he made the decision after meeting Google head Eric Schmidt in Brussels as "we have substantially reduced our differences regarding possible ways to address" EU competition concerns since talks began in July.

Instagram backed down Tuesday from a planned policy change that appeared to clear the way for the mobile photo sharing service to sell pictures without compensation, after users cried foul.

"The language we proposed also raised questions about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement," Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom said in a blog post.

Penguin Group has agreed to join three other publishers in a settlement of a U.S. government lawsuit alleging an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with Apple, officials said Tuesday.

The Justice Department said that with four of the five publishers having agreed to a settlement, it will proceed in its case against Apple and the remaining publisher, Macmillan.

Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the top mobile phone brand for 2012 and has opened up a decisive lead over Apple in the smartphone market, a research firm said Tuesday.

This will mark the first time in 14 years that Finnish-based Nokia will not sit atop the global mobile phone business on an annual basis, according to IHS iSuppli.

Israeli authorities say they have put 5,000 fragments of the ancient Dead Sea scrolls online in a partnership with Google.

The digital library launched on Tuesday, with important texts like the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments, and a portion of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, dated to the first century B.C.

The U.S. State Department said it will keep tabs on a Facebook page purportedly created by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that includes both positive and derogatory remarks from followers.

Iranian officials had no immediate comment, but the page's contents and style — including an informal photo of Khamenei riding in a car — raise serious questions about its authenticity.