Lawyers for Oracle and SAP made their opening arguments Tuesday in the companies' TomorrowNow lawsuit, with each side giving a very different story to the jury about how damages in the case should be calculated.

SAP is seeking a court order to prevent Oracle's lawyers from making public statements about the companies' TomorrowNow lawsuit, fearing the talk will influence potential jurors and prevent SAP from getting a fair trial, according to an SAP motion filed on Friday.

Microsoft has acquired AVIcode, a private Baltimore-based company that offers application monitoring for the .NET Framework, the companies announced Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hewlett-Packard and Oracle have settled the lawsuit HP filed against its former CEO and current Oracle co-President Mark Hurd as well as "reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership," the companies said Monday.

VMware is among a number of companies in talks to purchase Novell, according to published reports.

Oracle called Hewlett-Packard's lawsuit against its former CEO "vindictive" and said it threatened the companies' close relationship.

The European Commission is considering opening a second enquiry to investigate if China is illegally subsidizing tech companies that produce wireless modems.

A firm owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a lawsuit against Google, Apple, Facebook, and other companies alleging that they have violated patents related to search, multimedia, screen pop-ups and database management.

Overall server spending in enterprises remains weak in 2010 as companies continue to look for ways to save money following the economic downturn, research firm TheInfoPro said in a study released on Monday.

Google has secured a deal to provide search results and related advertising to Yahoo Japan, Japan's most popular Web site, the two companies said Tuesday.

The amount of money people put into U.S. venture capital investments nearly returned to pre-recession levels in the second quarter, with most deals going to information technology companies, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Advanced Micro Devices is looking to invest in technology companies as it tries to build a hardware and software ecosystem around its upcoming Fusion processor, the company said on Tuesday.

Viacom's US$1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Google's video-sharing site YouTube has been dismissed by the court, ending for now an acrimonious legal battle between the companies that has been going on for more than three years.

Some tech industry rumors have an extra-long life, and the one about SAP buying middleware vendor Software AG got an extension this week following public comments by top leaders of both companies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has launched its Energy Star program for data centers, meaning companies can start applying today to see if their facility qualifies for an Energy Star logo.

IBM is buying AT&T subsidiary Sterling Commerce, maker of business-to-business data integration software, for about US $1.4 billion in cash, the companies announced Monday.

VMware and Salesforce.com are jointly developing a cloud computing service called VMforce designed for hosting Java applications, executives from the two companies said Tuesday.

Twitter on Tuesday introduced a new service called Promoted Tweets, which will let companies send ads in the form of ordinary messages, according to a blog posted by co-founder Biz Stone.

TurboHercules accuses Big Blue of freezing out smaller companies.

A number of companies plan to ride Apple's coattails with tablet devices of their own.