Apple and Samsung will face off in federal court on Thursday over whether a juror's own legal dispute wrongly led to the South Korean firm being hit with a billion-dollar patent damages award.

At the hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh, Samsung will present a motion to have the $1.049 billion jury verdict tossed out based on the jury foreman's undisclosed legal skirmish with Seagate nearly 20 years ago.

Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that Jay Y. Lee, the only son of its current chairman, had been promoted to vice-chairman, paving the way for his eventual succession to the top post.

Lee is the son of Lee Kun-Hee, 70, and grandson of the late Lee Byung-Chull, who founded the giant, family-run conglomerate.

A software "worm" evidently unleashed by hackers burrowed through Tumblr on Monday, defacing pages at the popular blogging platform with a vitriolic, expletive-laden message.

A hacker group going by the acronym "GNAA" claimed responsibility for the diatribe, which dismissed most of what bloggers shared online as worthless.

Are video games a form of art? New York's Museum of Modern Art thinks so, and starting in March several games will become an integral part of the museum's collection.

The museum, known by the acronym MoMA, has purchased 14 video games, and expects to soon increase its collection to 40, according to Paola Antonelli, senior curator with the museum's Department of Architecture and Design.

Apple announced that the latest version of the iPhone will be released in South Korea on Friday and in more than 50 other countries including Russia, Brazil, and Taiwan later in the month.

The news indicated that the California-based company was on track to make the iPhone 5 available in 100 countries by the end of the year despite being hard pressed to meet demand where the handsets are being sold.

Adobe late Monday release a free tool kit to make it easier for developers to create Flash-based games to ride the growing wave of playing on smartphones, tablets, and in Internet browsers.

Game Developers Tools made available were the first tied to the Adobe's "Creative Cloud," providing computing muscle from Adobe's online datacenters.

Internet freedom will not be curbed or controlled, the head of the U.N. telecommunications body, Hamadoun Toure, said as a meeting to review the 24-year-old telecom regulations kicked off Monday.

Such claims are "completely (unfounded)," Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, told AFP.

The head of the U.N.'s telecommunication overseers sought Monday to quell worries about possible moves toward greater Internet controls during global talks in Dubai, but any attempts for increased Web regulations are likely to face stiff opposition from groups led by a major U.S. delegation.

The 11-day conference — seeking to update codes last reviewed when the Web was virtually unknown — highlights the fundamental shift from tightly managed telecommunications networks to the borderless sweep of the Internet.

It looks like a tough sell for the online daily deals sector.

After much excitement last year and a hyped public offering from Groupon, the main players are now focusing on saving money themselves as consumers show deal fatigue.

Samsung extended its lead as the top mobile phone maker in the U.S. market and Apple moved into second place, an industry tracker said Friday.

A survey by comScore showed that in the three-month period ending in October, South Korea's Samsung was the top manufacturer with 26.3 percent market share, up from 25.6 percent in the prior period.