Apple Settles Patent Suit With HTC

Apple and HTC have brought an end to their lawsuits against each other, in the first settlement between Apple and a maker of Android smartphones.

In a statement issued Saturday night, the two companies said the settlement includes the dismissal of all current lawsuits and sets up a 10-year license agreement between the two companies that includes rights to current and future patents held by both parties. Apple and the Taiwan-based HTC said the terms of the deal were confidential.

“We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC,” said Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, in a statement. “We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation.”

“HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation,” Peter Chou, the chief executive of HTC, said in a statement.

Apple's battle with HTC had a much lower profile than Apple's legal fight with Samsung, a much more signifi cant rival in the smartphone market and the biggest maker of handsets based on Google's Android operating system. A jury awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages in its lawsuit with Samsung in August, though Samsung is challenging the ruling.

The HTC suit, however, was the first one Apple filed against an Android phone maker and a harbinger of future Apple legal challenges aimed at the software. Apple filed patent infringement suits against HTC in March 2010 in federal court in Delaware and before the International Trade Commission.

The suit was the start of what is widely viewed as a proxy war between Apple and Google, the creator of the Android operating system. The week Apple filed the suit against HTC, Steven P. Jobs, then Apple's chief executive who died late last year, erupted in fury over Android, in a scene depicted in Walter Isaacson's biography of Mr. Jobs.

“I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product,” Mr. Jobs said, acco rding to Mr. Isaacson's book.

Apple sued Samsung in 2011. Another Android maker, Motorola Mobility, sued Apple in late 2010, and Apple subsequently countersued the company. Google now owns Motorola.

Chef Charged in Fire at Restaurant

A sushi chef has been arrested after a soy sauce container he had filled with gasoline ignited at a restaurant close to Sutton Place in Manhattan, starting a blaze that severely injured three people.

The fire, which occurred about 10 p.m. Friday, raced through the kitchen of Eno Asian Bistro and Lounge on 1066 First Avenue at East 58th Street, the Fire Department said.

Authorities said the sushi chef, identified as Fei Teng, 42, of Queens, had asked a dishwasher to carry a five-gallon soy sauce container filled with gasoline through the kitchen to his car. Mr. Teng, fire officials said, acquired the gasoline a day earlier from an acquaintance and had stored it in the restaurant's basement.

Somehow, as the dishwasher was carrying the gasoline through the kitchen, it spilled and ignited. Another chef was immediately engulfed in fire, receiving first- and second-degree burns to his face, neck, arms and legs before bystanders extinguished the flames, the Fire Department said.

A busboy and another woman also sustained second- and third-degree burns to their legs. As of Saturday, the victims were still recovering at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Fire marshals arrested Mr. Teng at the scene. He was charged with reckless endangerment.

It is unclear why Mr. Teng was storing gasoline at the restaurant. Fire officials said he had purchased 10 gallons of gasoline on Thursday and transferred it into two five-gallon soy sauce containers. He used one container to fill up his car and stored the other in the restaurant's basement until the fire, fire officials said.

Lenny Pan, a cashier at Eno Asian Bistro and Lounge, said by telephone that most of the damage from the fire had been repaired. The restaurant, she said, would be closed for at least two weeks pending an inspection by the Fire Department.

She said that she was unaware of the circumstances of the fire and said a supervisor would o nly be available for comment on Monday.

Brooklyn Prosecutor Arrested in Assault of Emergency Medical Technician

A prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney's office was arrested early Saturday and charged with assaulting an emergency worker in an ambulance that was bringing him to a Manhattan hospital, the authorities said.

A police spokesman said that the prosecutor, Michael Jaccarino, was crossing Brooklyn Bridge on foot around 1 a.m., when an ambulance picked him up. It was not immediately known why the ambulance was called, but the police said Mr. Jaccarino seemed to be intoxicated.

As the ambulance was taking Mr. Jaccarino to Beth Israel Medical Center, the police said, he began unstrapping a belt that secured him to a stretcher inside the vehicle. When an emergency medical technician tried to restrain him, a police spokesman said, “he strikes her in the right side of the face.”

A moment later, the police spokesman added: “He holds her down by choking her.”

The technician, who was not identified, suffered bruises to her right cheek, right wrist and chest, the police said. A Fire Department spokesman said that an emergency medical technician was treated at Beth Israel and released. The spokesman said he had no further information.

Mr. Jaccarino, 30, was charged with assault, criminal obstruction of breathing, menacing and harassment.

Jerry Schmetterer, the chief spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said that Mr. Jaccarino had begun working in Mr. Hynes' office as an assistant district attorney in 2008.

“He's been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation,” Mr. Schmetterer added.

Information on file with the New York State Office of Court Administration said that Mr. Jaccarino graduated from the State University of New York Buffalo Law School.

San Francisco Tech Companies Win a Proposition to Save on Taxes

San Francisco's tax-cutting Proposition E, backed by the venture capitalist Ron Conway, passed with a resounding 70 percent of votes. It was among the most prominent examples of the technology sector's flexing its political muscle in city affairs.

Tell Us Who Helped You Get Through the Storm

A year ago, writing his inaugural Character Study column, Corey Kilgannon profiled Ed Shevlin, a New York City sanitation worker from the Rockaways who is one of the city's leading speakers of Irish, the Gaelic language.

This week, he catches up with Mr. Shevlin, who for the foreseeable future is assigned to the immense cleanup in his neighborhood: clearing battered sections of the Boardwalk where he played as a child, and carting away contents of friends' houses to the parking lot of Jacob Riis Park, which has been turned into a temporary dump.

Hurricane Sandy's effects seem to have permeated New York City so deeply that nearly every one of the 50 or so New Yorkers who have been featured in the column has had a telling hurricane experience. There was good fortune for A J Gogia, who runs a school for taxi drivers in Queens and kept gas in his tank because students who work at gas stations brought him cans of it, like apples for the teacher.

There was the wistful resiliency of Otto Mond, the 80-year-old Manhattan man who planned on running his 19th New York City Marathon. With the race canceled, he went for a casual four-mile jog and vowed to “get 'em next year.” There was worry, as in the case of Helen Hays, who monitors the tern populations on Gull Island, off the tip of Long Island, where the battering waves destroyed part of the dock (she remained on the comparatively safer island of Manhattan).

There was the sly resourcefulness practiced by Pete Caldera, the sportswriter and Sinatra singer. His apartment in Murray Hill lost power, so he had to write his articles at a local bar, something Ol' Blue Eyes would have endorsed.

We are inviting readers to share their stories of how the people around them made it through the storm - people who stepped up to lead recovery efforts, who weathered the dire conditions in one of the region's blacked-out areas, or even those lost to the s torm. Share yours in the comments area below.

Around Odd-Even License Plate Rules, a History of Impatience

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times In 1979, a gas line formed at the Hess station at 44th Street and 10th Avenue. There were lines there again â€" for more than a week â€" after Hurricane Sandy struck.

The last time New York City had odd-even gasoline purchase rules, they were in effect for 79 days, and the time before that, 65 days.

This time, the reasons were different. Fuel distribution was disrupted by Hurricane Sandy - among other things, the storm forced tankers bound for the New York area to wait it out and stay beyond the reach of its punishing winds. Also , many service stations had gasoline but no electricity after the storm, so their pumps could not function.

In 1973, the Arab oil embargo choked supplies nationwide. In 1979, a new government took power during the Iranian revolution, and fresh supply worries set off panic buying and long lines at gas stations. There were fistfights at some stations as drivers tried to cut in line. At least one driver was arrested for pulling a gun on a gas station attendant who would not fill his car, with odd-numbered plates, on an even-numbered day.

“It was hectic,” recalled Stanley Gaj, who in 1979 was the manager of a filling station at Queens Boulevard and Albion Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens. “It was chaotic. We opened up at I think 6 or 7 in the morning, and we only stayed open until we ran out. When we ran out, that was it until the next day.” (Mr. Gaj, who now lives in Middle Village, Queens, said that he left the station in the mid-1980s and became a bus driver.)< /p>

The odd-even sales began in mid-June of 1979 after weeks of long lines. They ended on Sept. 6 after officials decided there was finally enough fuel on hand to be certain there would be no more panic buying. Gasoline became widely available again in midsummer after the price passed $1.50 a gallon. It had been less than $1 at the beginning of 1979, before Iran suspended oil exports.

In May of that year, President Jimmy Carter gave governors the power to regulate gasoline sales in their states. That included the power to impose odd-even systems. Three weeks later, Gov. Hugh L. Carey announced an odd-even plan for the city and four suburban counties - Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland. New Jersey and Connecticut soon followed suit.

Mr. Carey had been under pressure from Mayor Edward I. Koch, who called the gas lines and supply problems “intolerable.” That mirrored the situation five years earlier, when Mayor Abraham D. Beame called the outlook “d esperate” and threatened to start allocating gasoline himself if the state did not.

The governor at the time, Malcolm Wilson, initially resisted, saying he did not want to force “governmental regulation upon our citizens and upon our businesses until every alternative has been exhausted.”

He relented in February 1974, saying the gasoline emergency was endangering public health and safety.

Mr. Wilson ended the odd-even plan in May after federal energy officials increased the amount of gasoline available in New York.

The odd-even rules currently in effect brought back memories for New Yorkers old enough to remember the earlier rounds. Robert Sinclair Jr., now a spokesman for AAA New York, remembered a conversation with a cousin in 1979.

“He was supposed to take this girl out,” he said, “but she didn't appreciate how hard it was to get gasoline. He was done with her.”

Week in Pictures for Nov. 9

See the Slide Show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and Election Day.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday's Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times's Richard Berke, Gail Collins, Michael Cooper and David Firestone. Also, New York City Comptroller John C. Liu. Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

A sampling from the City Room blog is featured daily in the main print news section of The Times. You may also browse highlights from the blog and reader comments, read current New Yo rk headlines, like New York Metro | The New York Times on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.