New Home Sales hit 2-year High

NEW YORK  -- In another sign of a housing market recovery, new-home sales rose in September to the highest level in more than two years, according to a government report released Wednesday.

Sales sold at an annual rate of 389,000 homes in the month, according to the Census Bureau report, up 5.7% from the 368,000 sales pace in August. The last time sales were at this pace, in April 2010, they were being helped by a short-term home buyer's tax credit.

This time, the new home market has been showing steady signs of improvement. The pace of home building hit a four-year high in September, according to a separate government report. The year-over-year sales improvement in September reached 27.1%.

The improvement in the market is part of a broader recovery in real estate, helped by a number of factors all coming together.

Mortgage rates are near record lows, pushed down by the Federal Reserve's decision to buy $40 billion in mortgages to spur greater economic growth. The low rates, coupled with years of weak home sales, have resulted in affordable housing prices. Recently, home prices have started to rise, which is attracting buyers who were waiting for prices to bottom out.

There has also been a drop in unemployment, a positive development for people looking for mortgage loans.

Foreclosures have fallen to a five-year low, reducing the supply of distressed homes available on the market.

NY Man Faces Charges in Facebook Scam

Paul Ceglia, a wood-pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York, was charged with mail fraud and wire fraud over what the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan said was fabricated evidence to support his claim of a large ownership stake in Facebook. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

The businessman sued Facebook and its CEO in 2010 claiming a 2003 contract he signed with Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard University student, entitled him to a stake in the social media company. This past March, as part of that case, Facebook released emails sent by Mark  Zuckerberg around the time of the contract to show Paul Ceglia's claims were false.

"Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme," Orin Snyder, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn representing Facebook and Mark  Zuckerberg in the civil case, said in a statement.

Paul Ceglia, 39, was arrested at his home Friday morning and was to appear in federal court in Buffalo later in the day, authorities said.

Investigators for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which is conducting the probe, made the arrest following Paul Ceglia's return this week after spending time out of the country, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly on the case.

The case is USA v. Paul Ceglia, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

TiVo Settles Verizon Lawsuit for $250m

Verizon will pay  TiVo Inc. at least $250.4 million to license its digital video recording technology and settle a patent lawsuit. It is the third settlement that Tivo has garnered in recent patent cases. At the heart of the cases, Tivo has alleged that companies have copied its DVR technology. The company's string of settlements "bodes well for its future litigation," said Alan Gould, an analyst with Evercore, in a research note.

TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., is set to go to trial in patent lawsuits over DVRs made by Google Inc.'s Motorola unit and Cisco Systems Inc. next year. Gould reiterated his "Overweight" rating on shares with a $13 price target. News of the settlement sent Tivo's stock up 38 cents, or 4 percent, to close at $9.94 Monday. The stock traded at a 52-week high of $12.37 in late March. Shares of New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. rose 4 cents to $45.68.

The two companies agreed to dismiss all pending litigation. They had been scheduled to go to trial in October. The deal with Verizon is the latest in a string of patent settlements for TiVo, which developed the first commercially available DVR. The device made it easy for people to record programs and watch them later, skipping over ads. Last year TiVo settled with satellite TV company Dish Network Corp. and its set-top box provider EchoStar Corp. for $500 million, and earlier this year resolved a lawsuit against AT & T Inc. for $215 million. The payments from those settlements are staggered over several years. The company has said the settlements bring its operations closer to profitability.

TiVo has posted an annual loss in eight of the past 10 years. Under the settlement with Verizon, TiVo will get an initial cash payment of $100 million and quarterly payments totaling $150.4 million through July 2018. Verizon will also pay monthly license fees through July 2018 for each of its DVR subscribers above a certain level. If the companies work together on certain joint initiatives, $29.4 million of the payment would be subject to a credit. The companies may also make Internet video services developed through Verizon's joint venture with video rental kiosk Redbox accessible through TiVo's DVRs.

Shepard Fairey Sentenced for Comtempt Charge in "Hop" Poster IP Case

NEW YORK -- Shepard Fairey, the street artist who created the "Hope" portrait of Barack Obama that became the symbol of the President's 2008 campaign, was sentenced to community service by a New York court on Friday after admitting he had lied about which image he used.

The Los Angeles native became a celebrity for creating the red, white and blue image of Obama silhouetted above the word "Hope" on a poster. Fairey pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of criminal contempt in February for doctoring and destroying evidence once he realized the photograph of Obama he used for the poster belonged to the Associated Press (AP). "I'd like to apologize for violating the court's trust, which was the worst thing I've ever done in my life," Fairey said at his sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors had sought some prison time for Fairey, who faced up to six months in prison on the charge, but the Court sentenced Fairey to serve 300 hours of community service, the details of which were not immediately decided.

Although lawyers at Friday's hearing sparred for nearly an hour over what sentence Fairey should receive, the word "Obama" was not uttered a single time. The conclusion of the case coincided with Obama accepting his Democratic Party's nomination on Thursday night to run for re-election in November.

The dispute over the "Hope" poster began when Fairey pre-emptively sued AP in February 2009 seeking a ruling that his work was protected from AP's potential claims over the copyright of the original photograph of Obama. AP then countersued for copyright infringement. After it was discovered that some of Fairey's records had been improperly deleted, he admitted that he had intentionally lied about which photograph he had based his poster on. He was charged because deleting his files and altering them was a violation of an order by the federal judge overseeing the civil dispute with AP.

The judge said both parties must share all documents with the other side. In January last year, AP and Fairey settled their copyright dispute. AP said in a statement on Friday that it was "glad this matter is finally behind us." The photograph that Fairey based his poster on was taken by AP photographer Mannie Garcia at a panel discussion at the National Press Club in April 2006 when Obama was still a U.S. senator from Illinois.

The case is USA v. Shepard Fairey, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-180.