Micron Technology Inc. won a big legal victory Wednesday when a California jury ruled in its favor in an antitrust case.

The Boise computer-memory maker did not conspire to keep a memory product developed by a California chip designer from becoming an industry standard, a California State Court jury decided.

The jury’s 9-3 vote came after jurors deliberated eight weeks. The jurors sat through 15 weeks of proceedings and testimony before that.

The jurors rejected Rambus Inc.’s claims that Micron and South Korea-based Hynix Semiconductor Inc. are liable for colluding to manipulate prices of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips in violation of California antitrust law.

Jurors also found, by the same vote, that the two companies aren’t liable for plotting to interfere with Rambus’s business relationship with Intel Corp. and driving the world’s largest chipmaker away from their collaboration on RDRAM, or Rambus-designed memory, that began in the 1990s.

“The jury’s verdict validates our assertion that Micron acted in accordance with the law and consistent with its values of innovation and fair competition in the marketplace,” said Steve Appleton, Micron chairman and CEO.

Source: (IdahoStatesman)

After a poor earnings release due to weaker-than-expected trading revenue and fears about the company’s exposure to European debt (rumored to be upwards of $6 billion), the stock plummeted. Yes, the entire market cap for the company wasn’t even worth $1 billion a few days ago. This looks like another case of over leveraging on Wall Street.

In August the stock (MF) was trading for $7 a share. This morning it touched down to $1.07 a share. What’s more, the stock was trading for $3.22 a share just five days ago. However, what with such a huge drop in price, well over 50%, it was ripe for some traders to take a gamble and go long. One trader who had the guts to buy the stock was Jon Najarian.

We reached out to Mr. Najarian via Twitter to learn a little more about this risky trade. It looks like he got in with an average price of $1.23 and got out around $1.75 a share, a nice .52 increase. However, we can only really guess as to how big this trade was – meaning just how much he wagered or how many shares he bought. He does say Cha-Ching though, so must have been a nice sum.

MF Global is run by former Goldman Sachs executive and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. It seems the company is now looking for a buyer to save them. Dick Bove saying one of those prospective buyers could be Goldman Sachs. And at least that’s the hope for MF Global at this point. Meanwhile, the percentage of shorts in MF Global is around 17%.

Apple is a monster of a stock that you just can’t doubt, even in these troubled times where unemployment is over 9%, the European Union is in a crisis, and the United States is on shaky ground with its own debt worries.

As we’ve said before, people will buy iPads, iPhones and Macs even if they can’t pay for their mortgage, or so it seems. In truth, Apple is just taking share from a load of companies.  Everyone is buying Apple products and not much else it seems. And yes, down below, where it says Apple has $76 billion in cash on its books, that’s not a mistake.

From Barrons:

CEO Steve Jobs remarked, “We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent. Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

Apple sold 20.3 million iPhone units in the quarter, it said, and 9.52 million iPads.

The company sold 3.95 million Macs and 7.54 million iPods.

By contrast, analysts had been modeling perhaps 16 to 18 million iPhone units, with some expecting even lower numbers than that. iPads were generally modeled at around 8 million units. The Street had been looking for 4.2 million Mac units and about 8 million iPods.

Apple ended the quarter with $76.2 billion in cash and equivalents, short- and long-term marketable securities.

For me, I always wonder how the Apple executives and Steve Jobs celebrate after such an incredible quarter. I’m sure Steve Jobs is still holding and stroking his cat, sipping some tea and listening to Philip Glass, but maybe he lets loose from time to time. Shots all around after sushi, maybe? What do you think? I’m guessing he might take a pin or two out of his Steve Ballmer doll, just to ease his pain.

Yeah, then there’s the other side, what do executives at Research in Motion, HP, Microsoft, Dell and other mobile phone and computer companies do when they see Apple blow out the numbers for the quarter. Don’t they want to give up? Or are they just calling for mercy?

The truth is, it’s best to do your own research in conjunction with Cramer’s, and to follow his Charitable Trust via subscription, Action Alerts Plus, and not just watch the show – it’s too risky to just buy stocks based on his on the show calls. You need to see his real trades in real time, which he doesn’t show unless you’re part of the paid subscription.

But he does get more than a few right on the Mad Money show, and sometimes in a big way, as he did with Petrohawk Engery. See tweet below. The stock is up huge after BHP Billiton’s $12.1 billion bid for Petrohawk Energy – up over 60% today as a matter of fact.

This buyout offer made one Cramer watcher quite happy. Schools paid for he says.

Cramer was on Petrohawk pretty early, as far back as March 1st, 2011, he said the Houston-based natural gas company was a “teriffic buy” in his lightning round portion of Mad Money.

Then, on the June 3, 2011 Mad Money show, which Cramer references in the above Tweet, Cramer talked about Petrohawk Energy specifically in a whole piece on the search for shale in the United States. He said: “Petrohawk held 350,000 net acres in the Eagle Ford shale area. Although it’s mainly a natural gas producer, it’s shifting toward oil and liquids.” Here’s the video from the show. If you listened to Cramer on this one you nearly caught a double.

Never heard of MultiCell (MCET)? Neither had we, but when a stock, even a penny stock like MultiCell, screams up by over 300%, it’s worth looking into.

What’s crazy though, is this stock isn’t even worth 2 cents. Yeah, this stock sits at .0185. Crazy huh? Here are the details from Reuters:

MultiCell Technologies, Inc. announced the issuance of U.S. patent 7,935,528 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) relating to the isolation and use of human liver stem cells to treat liver disease. Under the terms of its license agreement with Rhode Island Hospital, MultiCell Technologies is the worldwide exclusive licensee of U.S. patent 7,935,528. The patent describes methods to isolate and use human liver stem cells to treat degenerative liver diseases, or inherited deficiencies of liver function.

What do you think? Worth taking a closer look? Tread softly with a stock like this. You’d really need some inside information to feel comfortable owning a penny stock like this or be some kind of scientist, who understands the value of a patent for liver stem cells.

What is this company Yippy, though? Yeah, that’s what I was wondering. Turns out Yippy is the ‘world’s fastest, family friendly educational search engine and web portal’. Who knew. I only thought, as far as search engines, there was Google, Bing, and maybe Ask.com. I guess there’s room for one more….or what’s more likely, is maybe we’re in another tech/internet bubble as far as stocks go. Where all you need to do is add something related to the internet to your company and the stock will soar. And I thought no company was going to use an explanation point in their name again, as even Yahoo abandoned it. Not the case for Yippy!

Yippy isn’t just a search engine though, it’s more. Or at least that’s what they say:

‘send your query to multiple search engines, gather their results, and present them to you in a single, intuitive interface, making Yippy a much more powerful research tool than any one search engine.’

Sounds incredible and worth a lot of money, right? I don’t think this penny stock is going to last very long, think it heads back down to 20 cents again, just don’t see what they offer that’s unique. However, maybe there is room for one more ‘search engine’, there’s a big enough pie for one more to eek out a little niche.

This is their ‘unique’ attribute….

Yippy, which provides a “family-friendly” Internet environment offers a closed system that, through its browser, excludes millions of domains and ISPs that parents wouldn’t want children to see, said Richard Granville, CEO of Yippy.

We’ll have to see how this works out. Proceed with caution with this stock. There’s a reason it was a penny stock.

Sure, the stores look nice and pretty and it’s fun to skim through books at their stores and then go buy them on Amazon.  That is understandable. But, their business model is dead. They are just not going to be able to make money in the long run with big retail stores.  It is over. Apple. Google. Those big players are also going to make inroads into the eBook platform. So, this is your lucky day.  Take $17 per share and be done with it.

The bookstore, as it once was, as a giant seller of every book you could every want is dead, gone, buried.  Amazon has replaced those stores and eBooks will eventually replace books themselves. As a shareholder of a book company like BKS, you don’t want to see your shares become worthless, a penny stock, like Borders did before they filed for bankruptcy protection. Get out now, while you still can, you’ve been given a second chance.

It’s been a good run too, as BKS was down to $8 per share just a month or so ago.

Here’s the news from Reuters:

Barnes & Noble, Inc. announced that the Special Committee of its Board of Directors has received a proposal from Liberty Media to acquire the Company at a price of $17 per share in cash. The proposal is subject to, among other things, the signing of a definitive purchase agreement, customary closing conditions, such as the receipt of regulatory and shareholder approvals, and receipt of acceptable debt financing. The proposal states that it is contingent on the participation of founding chairman Leonard Riggio, both in terms of his continuing equity ownership and his continuing role in management.

Who is Liberty Media you might ask? And what do they see in BKS that others have not? Here’s some info from their company website:

Liberty Media owns interests in a broad range of electronic retailing, media, communications and entertainment businesses. Those interests are attributed to three tracking stock groups: (1) the Liberty Interactive group (Nasdaq: LINTA, LINTB), which includes Liberty Media’s interests in QVC, Provide Commerce, Backcountry.com, Celebrate Interactive, Bodybuilding.com, Evite, and Expedia, (2) the Liberty Starz group (Nasdaq: LSTZA, LSTZB), which includes Liberty Media’s interest in Starz, LLC, and (3) the Liberty Capital group (Nasdaq: LCAPA, LCAPB), which includes all businesses, assets and liabilities not attributed to the Interactive group or the Starz group including its subsidiaries Atlanta National League Baseball Club, Inc., and TruePosition, Inc., Liberty Media’s interest in SiriusXM Radio,Inc., and minority equity investments in Time Warner Inc. and Live Nation.

AP Photos

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s chief executive had this to say about the IPO on CNBC:

“We leave the valuation to the good folks at CNBC, the marketplace, etc.,” he told CNBC. “We’re going to continue to focus on the plan. The better we execute, the more likely the fundamentals will take care of themselves.”

If LNKD can become the one and only place for jobs and job searching, then it perhaps can live up to this run up, but as they say, time will tell.

“thanks emBallmer! i will start using google talk now!
i’ve been using skype for 4 years and never paid a dime. nor shall i ever pay anything. that is the vast majority user base of skype and why they could not do an IPO. it took a moron like yourself to do a deal like this.

you just bought NOTHING for 8.5B”

Skype was bought and sold before, for a quarter of the price Microsoft is paying now. It has never made a profit. From the Guardian:

Skype has never made a profit: in 2010 it recorded a loss of $7m on revenues of $860m – $1.30 per registered user a year, or $5 per “connected” user a year. While revenues have been growing it has been able to negotiate better call termination rates around the world with telephone companies.

The acquisition is the second in Skype’s eight-year history. In October 2005 it was bought by eBay for $2.5bn, but was 70% sold in October 2009 to a consortium of private equity and venture capitalists.

Who’s the winner in all of this? Well those venture capitalist who backed Skype of course.