What's on my mind this morning? Litigation. Like, Paul Allen suing everybody. And everybody suing Facebook.

What's up with that? Has the economy gotten so bad that the world is looking to lawyers to boost buisness activity?

In other news:

Genzyme rejects Sanofi bid (Wall Street Journal)

Intel to buy Infineon's wireless outfit for $1.4B (CNN Money).

Blackberry gets a stay in India (BBC). Quick -- figure out how to let people spy!

HP authorizes $10B buyback (Bloomberg). Bidding wars, buybacks -- who needs all that cash, anyway.

Government to propose new fuel economy stickers (USA Today). They'll come with pretty new graphics! Yay, now that's what I call bureaucracy at work...

Most people don't want to be located (NY Times). Especially me. Right now.

Google plans pay-per-view films (Financial Times).

Cisco is reportedly trying to buy Skype before its IPO (TechCrunch).

Happy Thursday and welcome to our news brew, where the headlines are almost as strong as the coffee. There is the usual boring round of news involving Greece, government-owned banks, and healthcare... but we're going to move on to something that's much more interest to us: TV. And more specifically, Tivo, which just won a patent suit against Dish. Tivo is soaring today, up nearly 50% to $15, on news that a Federal court has upheld a lower court's finding that Dish has been violating Tivo's patent on DVR technology. For those of you who live in a cave, those are the little boxes that allow you to digitally record and play TV content, the most effective tool I've found for skipping really annoying ads. In June, Tivo received a judgment in its favor and Dish was ordered to pay $193 million in damages. I think this victory is a victory for technology, and sports fans everywhere who need a way to cram 3 NFL games into 1 hour of viewing time. Elsewhere in the news:

• Pending home sales "unexpectedly" drop (Bloomberg). People don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy houses. Is that really unexpected?
• Greek P.M. demands that aid plan be detailed (BusinessWeek). Tell us how much money you're going to give us, dammit! The Ouzo is waiting...
• Jobless claims fell to 469,000 (BusinessWeek).
• Mortgage windfall misses many (Wall Street Journal). This is kind of sad, pathetic, and depressing, isn't it?
• What labor productivity means for employment (The Atlantic). It means that because executives need to keep their bonuses up, they're going to fire half of your coworkers and make you work twice as hard.
• Gizmodo reports that Microsoft is doing something with Verizon (maybe) related to a device that may or may not be the project code-named "Pink." They think.
• An explosion of mobile patent lawsuits (New York Times).
• Continental Airlines has figured out a way to generate extra revenue from tall people (Houston Press).
• Study says you may be more gullible when in a good mood (Physorg.com). Ah-ha, I'll try to remember that next time I'm in Vegas.
• Virgin Galactic is planning test space flights in 2011 (Reuters). Start saving now!

That's all for now! Time to get back to my Tivo...

Greetings, it's Tablet Wednesday! It would be so much better if it were a Tuesday so that we could call it Tablet Tuesday. I find it funny that people are still trying to print sketchy "scoops" in the hours up to the Apple tablet computer launch. Like this grainy puzzle-pieced photo from Engaget. Holy cow, is that some kind of map... on an LCD screen! Well, that's the news business in 2010. Any piece of incremental information, no matter how shady or inconclusive, needs to be published. With that, we travel onto the world of shady Internet journos, toiling overtime to bring you the n0t-so-much-news: McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw, who I once worked for, tells you all about the tablet. No word on whether the tablet will have an  feature to buy your own S&P ratings.

• The Business Insider rounds up all the rumors. No word on whether Henry Blodget thinks the stock is going to $800.
• Can we link to ourselves? Here's what I think about the notion that the tablet will save the content industry (Rayno Report).
• Apple gets a slew of new patents related to the tablet (Patently Apple).
• Apple Tablet Portends Rewrite for Publishers (Wall Street Journal).

Oh, and in case you thought anything else was going on in the world:

• Treasury Secretary Geithner is getting grilled on AIG (BusinessWeek). He's crispy. Fried. Done.
• Geithner denies role in AIG payment disclosures (Reuters).
• Bernanke says he didn't negotiate with the AIG lenders. (Reuters) Also, rumor has it he's not really sure what "money" is.
• Superbowl ad stokes abortion controversy (Reuters). Not going to touch this one!
• Toyota halts sales on millions of vehicles, stock slammed (Associated Press).
• Roku wants to create a 100-channel Internet TV box (Bloomberg). Memo to Roku: The Internet has infinite channels.
• AT&T to launch Yelp competitor (Forbes). Isn't this kind of like your grandma launching an Internet startup?
• Oracle plans to hire people (InfoWorld). Yes, you too can wash Larry Ellison's car.
• Send inmates to Mexico, says Shcwarzenegger (Agence France Press).
• Five things Obama could learn from Reagan (Time). Somehow, I just don't see Obama reading this article. Or behaving like the Gipper. Or looking like him. Or moving to Santa Barbara. Yep, it's completely confirmed: They're totally different people.
• My vote for the best headline of the day, even though I'm not sure what it means: "Facebook and Twitter? Why not just put a gun to your head?" (Network World).
• The FCC is probing mobile phone termination fees (Digital Trends).
• The Mars rover is dead (National Geographic). Long live the Mars rover!
• Leading space scientist claims Earth becoming invisible to aliens (Telegraph).

Cree (CREE) earnings were out after the market close, confirming that the LED (light emitting diode) market is white hot. The stock is up nearly 10% after hours. The semiconductor and LED company's  second-quarter profit tripled. It cited surging demand for LEDs as one of the drivers of its earnings.The companyprojected fiscal third-quarter earnings of 41 cents to 44 cents, excluding items, on revenue of $215 million to $225 million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters projected 28 cents and $190 million, respectively, according to the Wall Street Journal. The stock was trading up $5.54 to  $59.75, up 10%,  in after-hours trading. That's above the recent 52-week high, which it made last week. The advantage of LEDs, which are more akin to chips than light bulbs, is that they last much longer and consume less energy than traditional light bulbs. In November, the company said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) would use LED lighting in 650 stores. I have just been delving into LEDs lately, but I think the demand for this technology will be huge over the next 5-10 years. Walmart is just a sign of things to come. Investors I spoke to in this market point out that commercial applications of the technology are only the beginning, as LEDs are making their way into the consumer market in the form of flashlights and house lightbulbs, which is huge. Imagine every light bulb on earth being replaced with LEDs. Cree benefits in several ways in the market. Not only is Cree a manufacturer of LED technology, but it holds key patents on the technology. The patents in LEDs are closely watched in the industry because they are held by a key group of companies and controlled by cross-licensing agreements. Read this article in LEDs magazine to learn more. This cool chart from LEDs magazine demonstrates the complexity of the LED patent world: (Disclosure: No position in Cree. Unfortunately)