Today VIA announced that it has filed suit against a subsidiary of Asustek as well as four of its employees over allegations of misappropriations of trade secrets. The civil lawsuit has been filed in the Taipei District Court with VIA seeking damages equating to $138 million US.

The lawsuit states that misappropriation of VIA intellectual property related to USB technology occurred and names Asmedia Technology, Asustek, Asmedia Chairman Jerry Shen, Asmedia President Lin Chewei, and other Asmedia employees as those responsible for the misappropriation.

"As a long-time leader in IC design and technology innovation, VIA strongly believes in the importance of protecting intellectual property rights," commented Wenchi Chen, CEO of VIA Technologies, Inc. "In addition to protecting interests of VIA and our shareholders, the aim of this suit is to ensure our industry operates in a healthy market environment that fosters innovation and promotes fair competition." Further information can be found in a excerpt from the official announcement below.

The New Zealand government has inked a deal with James Cameron and major studios for not one, but three Avatar sequels to be filmed in the country. New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, announced the news, stating that there would be a budget of at least $NZ500 million ($461 million or so) spent locally during its production.

Where Cameron and the movie studios benefit by shooting in NZ, is that if the three Avatar movies meet the requirements of the deal between the NZ government and the studios, they will qualify for a total tax rebate of 25%, which gets pumped into the Avatar movies. The requirements include:

The new movies will reach us on Christmas 2017, 2018, and 2019.

It looks like ASUS could have a great year in 2014 with its PadFone line of devices, with a new PadFone turning up on AnTuTu's benchmark database, which was pulled down quite quick.

The PadFone X, as it was teased, featured the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC, Android 4.4 KitKat, and smashed into some benchmarks, smacking around a few of the established smartphone heavyweights. The screen resolution on the PadFone X should be 1920x1080, but we don't know what size just yet. 2GB of RAM is featured, and 16GB of on-board flash storage should make the cut.

We should see a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, backed up by a decent front-facer, but that 5-megapixel camera on the rear is most likely a placeholder for something better in the final consumer version. We should be expecting 8-megapixel cameras by default now. ASUS should unveil the PadFone X sometime in early 2014.

Our friends over at New Gadgets have been on the ground with Bungbungame, a company that took to crowdfunding through Indiegogo for its Project S smartphone.

I've never heard of the Project S smartphone until now, but wow does it pack a punch: 8-core processor, 3GB of RAM, WQHD resolution, a body made from glass and aluminum, but the best bit? Just $299. Yes, $299. We're looking at a 5.8-inch 2560x1440 screen, which is just super impressive, especially given its $299 price.

The Project S is just a prototype right now, but with a finalized design, we should expect everything you see here for $299. For shooting abilities, we have a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing snapper. Expandable storage is also featured, which is a nice touch these days.

McLaren's Chief Designer, Frank Stephenson, has teased that a new system will be placed in McLaren's new vehicles, which will replace the ageing windshield wipers with some next-gen wipers.

The new wipers use ultrasound to send 30kHz waves across the vehicle's windshield, which would keep it clear from any debris, even those tiny insect remains that build up on your windshield, even after you've used the wipers over and over. The way it works is by creating a force field that stops rain, snow and insects from even touching the windshield itself.

If McLaren can get this technology working as it has said, I'm sure we'll see most other car makers using McLaren's patent and rolling the technology across vehicles all around the world starting ASAP.

EA DICE has pushed out the December 16 patch for Battlefield 4 on the PC, which fixes a list of bugs, but has its own issues, too. The new update improves BF4's netcode, so that it will hopefully stop "kill trading".

Kill trading is something where two players who fire at each other, and die in the same place. The patch fixes the amount of time where players with high pings should already be dead, but get the kill instead. The patch also fixes:

But, there are new issues: users with NVIDIA GeForce SLI systems, like myself, get massive flickering issues - with the only option to stop this is by disabling SLI. DICE has said: "Both of these have our attention, and we're investigating them."

With Mobile World Congress 2014 under two months away, the rumor mill is working hard at churning out new unconfirmed specs on the most anticipated smartphones of 2014. Today a new rumor has surfaced about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.

The latest rumors include reports of Samsung developing both a plastic and metal framed version of its next-generation flagship, and that they will be sold side by side with the metal version being branded as the premium model. Other reports are suggesting that the phone will feature a Quad-HD 2560x1440 display, 16-megapixel camera, 3GB of RAM, and a 4,000mAh battery.

While the high-resolution screen and metal framed chassis are expected, many analyst suggest that 4GB of RAM and a 2.5GHz processor will be needed to handle the 2560x1440 screen. Android 4.4 will most definitely be on board and an upgrade to Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will come before years end.

Rumors about a Smartwatch from Apple have been circling for months now, and today information was released from a Chinese technology site that says we could finally see the iWatch next October when the iPhone 6 releases. At the moment the hold-up is said to be that Apple has yet to decide on what size screen the iWatch should have.

The report also states that the iWatch will feature a 100mAh battery, which is 1/20 the power of a standard rechargeable AA battery. In comparison, Samsung's Galaxy Gear features a 315mAh battery and has been heavily criticized over its short battery life. Today's report seems to somewhat confirm a report last month from Digitimes who said the iWatch would be released in Q4 of 2014.

Rumors about secret hidden software in tech devices are as old as tech itself, and since the beginning of personal computing people have been devising clever ways to trick others into formatting their machines. Unfortunately, a new rumor has popped up that has tricked Mac owners into doing just that.

A new infographic is spreading like wildfire around the internet that claims that Apple has been installing Bitcoin mining software into their Mac devices since 2009. The infographic informs users that they can unlock this feature by opening up the terminal and entering the command "sudo rm -rf/*" Unfortunately, this command does not unlock any hidden programs, apps, or features, but actually tells the users Mac to format itself, which causes a loss of all data, and a bricked device.

Apple or Linux gurus who are use to the terminal will instantly know what this command means, but for those who have no clue, let me break it down for you.

Avago, a leading designer and developer of compound semiconductors, has announced their intention to purchase the smaller LSI for $6.6 Billion. Avago, with its market cap of 11.3 Billion, is much larger than LSI, with a cap of 4.32 Billion.

Stocks of both companies are skyrocketing in early trading, with LSI up 38% in the first 6 minutes of trading, and Avago is up 11.7% and climbing.

Avago turned to Silver Lake for partial funding for the venture. Silver Lake, a technology investor, is a common player in the storage space. Silver Lake actually owned, and sold, Avago last year. The Avago deal was the largest payoff for Silver Lake, they received a 5X return on their investment, and have a seat on Avago's board.