Briefcase

Diamond Foods to buy Pringles

NEW YORK – Diamond Foods Inc. took its biggest bite yet of the snack business with a $1.5 billion deal to buy the Pringles brand from Procter & Gamble Co.

The deal is the biggest in a stack of acquisitions for Diamond and will more than triple the size of the maker of Emerald nuts and Pop Secret popcorn.

Adding Pringles will make it a distant second in the snack business to PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay, which controls nearly half of the market.

The Pringles deal will create a new company under the Diamond Foods name. P&G shareholders will get about 57 percent of the combined company and Diamond shareholders about 43 percent.

Associated Press

Judge tosses verdict in Apple patent suit

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge has overturned a federal jury’s order that Apple Inc. pay $625.5 million in damages for violating patents held by Mirror Worlds LLC, a small technology company.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, which was disclosed in a Monday court filing, dismisses one of the largest-ever patent infringement verdicts.

In October, a federal jury in Tyler determined that Apple infringed on three of Mirror Worlds’ patents, which cover several features on Apple’s Mac computers, iPhones and iPods. The technologies at issue include Cover Flow, which lets users flip through album covers and other content as if through a stack of cards; Time Machine, which performs automatic backups; and Spotlight, which is software for searching computer hard drives.

The jury awarded Mirror Worlds $208.5 million for each patent violation.

Associated Press

Icahn, Dish among bidders for Blockbuster

NEW YORK – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, Dish Network and a group of debtholders were the three remaining bidders for movie-rental chain Blockbuster on Tuesday at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

The bankruptcy auction will decide the fate of the Dallas movie-rental chain and could decide whether it will survive at all. The bidding was expected to continue well into the evening. It was not clear when it would finish.

After several rounds of bidding, the last bid by the group of debt holders called Cobalt Video Holdco, of $308.1 million was deemed the best when the courthouse closed for the day. The auction was continuing at law firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, where the proceeding was closed to the public.

Associated Press