S&P 500 index reaches highest level since ’08

NEW YORK – A two-point gain was enough to push the Standard & Poor’s 500 index to its highest level since June 2008, three months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the darkest days of the financial crisis.

The S&P 500 index closed at 1,365.74, beating its 2011 closing high by two points.

For the second day this week, the Dow Jones industrial average nudged above 13,000 then pulled back. It rose 29 points in the morning but wavered in the afternoon. The Dow dropped 1.74 points to close at 12,982.95. American Express was the leading stock among the 30 that make up the average, gaining 1.2 percent.

Company claiming iPad name sues in U.S.

SHANGHAI – Apple Inc. is facing yet another challenge to its use of the iPad trademark in China – this time in a court in California.

Proview Electronics Co., a unit of Proview International Holdings, which claims it owns the iPad name, filed a lawsuit against Apple’s use of the trademark in mainland China at Santa Clara Superior Court on Feb. 17, Proview spokeswoman Alice Wang said Friday.

An attempt by Proview to win an injunction to stop Apple from selling iPads in Shanghai was foiled this week when a court there rejected the case pending the resolution of a similar lawsuit in a higher court in China.

The companies are feuding over whether Proview sold the mainland Chinese rights to the iPad trademark to Apple in a 2009 deal.

Google bailing out on stake in Clearwire

NEW YORK – Google Inc. on Friday said it will sell its stake in Clearwire Corp., the struggling operator of a wireless data network. The search company is taking more than a 90 percent loss on the original $500 million investment made in 2008.

Google said in a regulatory filing that it’s seeking to sell its stake starting Monday for $1.60 per share, or $47 million total.

Clearwire shares fell 16 cents, or 6.8 percent, to close Friday at $2.11.

Google was part of a consortium that included cable companies and equipment provider Intel Corp. that injected $3.2 billion into Clearwire when it merged with a Sprint Nextel Corp. unit in 2008. The hope was that Clearwire would be a powerful competitor to the established cellphone companies, providing fast wireless data at low prices.

But technical challenges and a lack of scale has sidelined Kirkland, Wash.-based Clearwire.