Apple is facing a lawsuit from a Pennsylvania man whose 9-year-old daughter racked up $200 in charges buying "Zombie Toxin" and other game items on her iPod.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status, saying Garen Meguerian of Phoenixville is among many people with bill shock after children went on buying sprees in iPhone, iPad and iPod games. These games are typically free to download, but players can buy items that speed up the game.

An Associated Press story in December highlighted the issue. In many cases, it appeared that children bought items such as "Smurfberries" from "Smurfs' Village" without knowing they were spending real money. ITunes didn't ask for a password for in-game purchases if it had been entered within the previous 15 minutes for any reason. This meant that parents could download a free app, hand over their devices to their kids, and later find big charges on their iTunes accounts.

Apple reversed the charges of complaining customers. It also tightened its password policy with a software update in March. Entering the password outside an app no longer triggers a password-free period for in-app purchases, which now have a separate 15-minute timer.

Google Inc.'s data privacy chief says he's confident Google Street View will be deemed legal in Switzerland ahead of a court hearing later this week.

Peter Fleischer says the service, which allows Internet users to virtually tour locations on a map, is comparable to similar offerings by rivals and meets the country's strict privacy rules.

To produce the service, Google used special vehicles with panoramic cameras to take ground-level, 3-D images. Federal data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer has asked Switzerland's top administrative court to force Google to obscure all faces also caught by the cameras or take the service offline.

The court in Bern will hear both sides' arguments Thursday and likely issue a ruling at a later date.

Former Harvard University classmates of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg want to throw out a $65 million settlement of their lawsuit that alleged the social network was their idea.

Lawyers for twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss argued their case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. They claim they were duped into agreeing to the 2008 settlement after Facebook lawyers and executives misrepresented the value of the company.

But the three-judge appeals panel appeared reluctant to reopen the case. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the judges noted that the Winklevosses were well-educated and had good legal advisers at the time, so they should have known what they were getting into.

An industrial espionage trial between Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, two of the world's biggest business software makers, ended Friday without the testimony of one of its most anticipated witnesses.

The evidence part of the three-week trial wrapped up Friday without an in-person appearance by the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., Leo Apotheker, and without Oracle playing a videotaped deposition he gave.

The cat-and-mouse game of Oracle trying to force Apotheker to testify, and HP refusing to allow it, has captivated technology watchers and overshadowed Apotheker's start as head of the world's biggest technology company by revenue.

Oracle wanted Apotheker to testify because he was previously SAP's CEO.

But Oracle says that HP refused to accept a subpoena on Apotheker's behalf. HP accused Oracle of harassing Apotheker.

Oracle hired investigators to track down Apotheker, but since he started the HP job Nov. 1, he wasn't spotted close enough to the federal courthouse in Oakland, where the case is being tried, for Oracle to serve him with the subpoena. The subpoena only applies within 100 miles of the courthouse, which includes HP's headquarters in Palo Alto.

HP hasn't disclosed Apotheker's whereabouts. Representatives have repeatedly said that the company doesn't discuss its executives' travel plans.

Oracle is demanding billions of dollars in damages from SAP for software and customer support documents that SAP has admitted to stealing. SAP claims it owes only $40 million. Closing arguments are expected next week.

According to a statement from Nokia on Wednesday, "Apple's action is an unsurprising development, which seems designed to put pressure on the ongoing dialogue between both companies". It is not yet clear which patents are the subject of the suit.

Nokia was the first aggressor in the legal war, having sued Apple over the iPhone manufacturer's use of GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi patents in October 2009. Apple struck back with a countersuit in December 2009. In March 2010, a Delaware court put both lawsuits on hold to give the US International Trade Commission time to issue its own deliberation on the matter. Then, in May, Nokia expanded its original suit to include the iPad as well as the iPhone.

According to a Nokia spokesperson, Apple's UK suit "changes nothing in the fundamentals of the matter, which are rooted in Apple's refusal to respect Nokia's intellectual property and attempt to free ride on the back of Nokia's innovation".

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has at least two things in common with his close friend Steve Jobs: his new found love of integrated hardware and software systems, and a ready willingness to diss competitors.

Ellison displayed both attributes during his keynote address here late Wednesday afternoon at his company's Oracle OpenWorld conference.

The colorful CEO pounded repeatedly on the message that with the acquisition of Sun Microsystems Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is now able to offer well-engineered, integrated systems that give it a competitive edge.

"Sunday's announcement of our Exalogic Elastic 'cloud-in-a-box' is our second major project of integrating our software with next-generation hardware," Ellison said. "And it's engineered the right way, to be more reliable, faster and more secure than other systems. It's like the iPhone."

"Steve Jobs is my best friend and I love him dearly, and I watch what he does very closely," Ellison continued. "If you engineer the hardware and software together it just works better."

Unlike some of his past OpenWorld keynotes, when he left plenty of time for a question-and-answer session with the audience, Ellison spent the bulk of his time giving an extended presentation of Oracle's latest product offerings and an update on the ambitious Fusion software project that is set for a partial release later this year and general availability in the first quarter of 2011. He also elaborated on critical remarks he made about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) during OpenWorld's official kickoff Sunday.

Two Los Angeles County teenagers are suing Facebook, claiming the social network effectively sold their names and images to advertisers without parental permission.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles challenges a Facebook feature that allows members to note that they like an advertised service or product. Facebook broadcasts those endorsements to the user's friends.

The lawsuit also claims minors unwittingly endorse Facebook when people typing their names in a search engine are steered to a Facebook sign-up page.

The plaintiffs say Palo Alto-based Facebook is violating a California law that requires parental consent for children to make commercial endorsements. The teens seek unspecified damages.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes says the lawsuit is meritless. He notes Facebook doesn't allow users under 18 to let their profiles appear on public search engines.