Zander Lurie — CBS’s SVP of strategic development, who worked on a number of its key digital initiatives — is leaving the media giant.

Lurie has been involved in everything from the company’s acquisition of Clicker to its recent spate of licensing deals for digital distribution of its premium content to the integration of its CNET tech news unit.

He does not have another job lined up, but is looking for an operational role, he said in an interview.

Lurie was CFO of CBS Interactive, before moving to his corporate role. Previously, he worked on M&A at CNET.

“CBS is now at a place where everything is really integrated and working between all the digital platforms and our sports, news and entertainment products,” said Lurie. “So, I want to get out and build something new and from the ground up.”

Evidently, the company has no plans to sell — not at this time, anyway.

No, RIM is looking for an investment bank to help it license its smartphone software or broker a strategic outside investment in the company.

An inevitable move, as the company conducts CEO Thorsten Heins’s “comprehensive review of strategic opportunities,” though it does sound like a bit of a dead end. After all, who could possibly be interested in licensing RIM’s BlackBerry platform, particularly the as-of-yet unreleased and unproven BlackBerry 10? Nokia has cast its lot with Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. And Motorola, Samsung and HTC have all cast theirs with Google’s Android OS. Both platforms have broader and stronger app ecosystems than RIM’s.

So, again, who could possibly be interested in licensing an unproven fourth BlackBerry OS with an inferior ecosystem?

The consumer-electronics company has put forth proposals to Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. to settle some pending litigation in exchange for royalty payments to license its patents, among other terms, these people said.

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It was Yahoo legal head Mike Callahan who had the thankless task yesterday of calling Facebook’s general counsel Ted Ullyot to tell him the Silicon Valley Internet giant was intent on pursuing patent lawsuits against the social networking giant.

The charge was being led by Callahan, as well as Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and, especially, Yahoo’s new CEO Scott Thompson.

Much of Yahoo’s senior leadership had no idea of the impending move until Callahan informed them it was about to happen at meeting Monday.

Facebook had known of the patent concerns of Yahoo for some months — the issue had also gotten some coverage in the media — but had not engaged formally on the topic, several sources said.

So, the suddenly aggressive call also apparently blindsided Facebook, even though it had been aware of the possibility of such an outcome.

Thus, it had little time to respond, since Yahoo was also simultaneously briefing the New York Times, according to numerous sources at both companies, and then released an astonishing statement to the newspaper:

“Yahoo has a responsibility to its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders to protect its intellectual property. We must insist that Facebook either enter into a licensing agreement or we will be compelled to move forward unilaterally to protect our rights.”

Apparently, Yahoo’s new motto: If you can’t beat ‘em — and it can’t — sue ‘em.

That would be Yahoo — the perpetual 98-pound weakling of the Internet these days — threatening powerful Facebook, which had cleanly bested it by attracting hordes of users with a plethora of popular products and services.

Yahoo has already lost its audience to Facebook, which was most recently followed by its frittering away a commanding lead in display advertising, too.

That would also be the Yahoo whose most recent success in improving its increasingly tenuous connections with customers was, in fact, by deeply integrating Facebook’s social hooks into its Web properties.

That would be the Yahoo which has failed time and again to innovate its own offerings so drastically over the years that it has now apparently decided that its first and best strategic move under Thompson’s rule is a shakedown.

Such a cynical move on rights Yahoo has long held seems more a play for the cheap seats of Wall Street, given that the company needs to look like it is doing everything it can to turn things around right now as it faces a proxy challenge.

First, it ended difficult talks with its Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, over selling back lucrative stakes there.

Now, according to sources, Yahoo’s Thompson has actually been trying to make very nice with activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — on-the-down-low chitchats that might have played a part of this latest unusual move.

At least Kodak had a good excuse. The once iconic camera company had recently been trying to take advantage of its trove of patents as a way to stave off declaring bankruptcy.

That didn’t work for Kodak, and it will also not work for Yahoo, whose only real option is to try to innovate its way out of the mess it has landed itself in.

You know, with good ideas.

Instead, the company’s leadership has opted for a road that could rain down trouble and paint Yahoo as a company bereft of talent to win any other way.

And while a range of intellectual property lawsuits have broken out all over the digital sector, involving Apple, Microsoft, Google and many others, such a strategy for Yahoo could be dangerous if it fails in its legal effort to take advantage of its 1,000-plus patents, including those related to search and advertising.

Others — including such tech luminaries as LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, who co-owns the seminal Six Degrees patent for constructing a networking database and system — hold a number of critical social networking patents, too, so who knows where this thing will go.

Nonetheless, Yahoo has decided to emulate those companies with one of the few valuable assets it might have, waging its little war, right as Facebook is in the midst of its initial public offering period.

Yahoo has done this before, of course, having wrangled with Google until right before it went public in 2004 over search patents from its Overture acquisition. The pair settled 10 days before the Google IPO, with Yahoo getting several million more shares of that stock (which it then, of course, sold too soon).

That certainly could happen here, with Yahoo managing to grab a chunk of Facebook’s pre-IPO stock.

That would mean that Yahoo’s most valuable asset would be those shares, as well as its stake in Asian companies it bought a while back for a bargain and now makes up a bulk of the company’s valuation.

As to Yahoo’s core business — investors consider it almost entirely worthless.

And let’s not forget: Facebook could also sue right back, which it very well might do. Or, perhaps, cut off agreeable ties that have aided Yahoo in recent years.

In other words, in poking Facebook, Yahoo might now learn what it is really like to be de-friended.

In other words, we could see a board game of FarmVille, Words With Friends or CityVille in the not too distant future. In addition, we could potentially see action figures based on some of its game characters.

Merchandising around videogames is not new, and has recently spread like wildfire to mobile and social gaming with rising stars like Rovio’s Angry Birds or ZeptoLab’s Cut the Rope.

In a press release, Zynga says Hasbro has obtained the license to develop and distribute a wide range of product lines based on Zynga’s game brands, but does not get into too many details.

It also says the deal covers opportunities for co-branded merchandise featuring a combination of both Hasbro and Zynga brands, it said. Could we see a co-branded Words With Friends Scrabble game?

Hasbro already has a long-standing relationship with Electronic Arts, which publishes such titles as Scrabble and Monopoly across many platforms.

In a statement, Zynga’s CEO and founder Mark Pincus said, “This partnership is so special because it represents an exciting leap forward in enabling people to connect their virtual and real worlds. Hasbro has inspired play through their famous toys, games and action figures and we look forward to working with a company that continually creates meaningful and fun brands.”

The two companies said the first products will hit shelves in the Fall.

However, antitrust enforcers in the U.S. and Europe remain concerned about Google’s commitment to license key Motorola patents to competitors on fair terms, those people said, and are likely to closely monitor Google’s use of the patents. The European Commission has set a deadline of Monday to decide whether to approve the acquisition.

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In a letter to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Apple said the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.

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In a letter filed in a California court last month, a lawyer said Motorola, which is being acquired by Google Inc., had “demanded” the royalty for a license of its patents.

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So let’s take a minute to praise a big music label for something that — on paper, at least — looks pretty flexible and clever. EMI Music is offering developers a way to leapfrog onerous licensing negotiations and just start building cool stuff with the label’s songs.

The idea: Developers building an application that needs music can sign up for access to a “sandbox” which will let them play with a pool of the label’s songs. And after a minimium of hoop-jumping, the “OpenEMI” plan is supposed to let developers bring their stuff directly to market, without having to track down rights holders, negotiate rates, etc.

EMI has precleared a selection of about 12,000 songs — 2,000 from its general catalog, another 10,000 from its Blue Note jazz label, and a few artist-specific catalogs from bands like Gorillaz and the Pet Shop Boys — and has worked out a standardized fee for all of them, via a revenue split.

The label takes 60 percent of net revenue and uses that to pay rights holders; 40 percent is split between developers and the Echo Nest, a Boston-based music tech company that helped cobble the deal together and which provides developers with tools they might use to build their apps. EMI and Echo Nest say developers should end up with the lion’s share of that 40 percent.

Given that Citigroup, which ended up owning EMI after financing a disastrous private equity deal, may or may not be selling the company any day, it’s always possible that this kind of offer may disappear if and when new management shows up.

And there are a few catches, but they seem doable — for instance, the deal requires EMI to act as the publisher for any apps that eventually make it to venues like Apple’s iTunes or Google’s Android Market. So, at least on paper, it looks like an attractive way for developers to get their hands on music without having to worry about breaking the law or hiring lawyers.

The program won’t do you any good if you want music that EMI doesn’t own. And a pool of 12,000 songs won’t do you any good if you’re trying to create a comprehensive music service like Spotify, which features some 15 million songs. Instead, think of applications that incorporate music, like Disney’s Tapulous, or any other Rock Band-like game. Developers might eventually want to use music that isn’t in EMI’s pool, but it seems plenty deep enough to get going.

This is the 10th Android-related licensing agreement Microsoft has signed in the past 18 months alone in what is fast evolving into a significant revenue stream for the company. Indeed, according to some estimates, Microsoft will collect about $444 million in fiscal 2012 from Android device makers compensating it for use of its patent portfolio.

Not all that surprising, really. As Microsoft brags in a blog post today, it now has patent license agreements with companies accounting for more than half of all Android devices.

With the deal, Microsoft will get royalty revenue on every Android smartphone and tablet that Samsung sells. Redmond already has a deal with another major handset maker — HTC — that sells both Android and Windows Phone devices.

“Together with the license agreement signed last year with HTC, today’s agreement with Samsung means that the top two Android handset manufacturers in the United States have now acquired licenses to Microsoft’s patent portfolio,” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and top IP lawyer Horacio Gutierrez said in a blog post. “These two companies together accounted for more than half of all Android phones sold in the U.S. over the past year.”

The pair point out that the list of licensees notably excludes the No. 3 player in the Android market in the U.S. — Motorola Mobility.

Microsoft sued Motorola, as well as Barnes & Noble, over Android-related patent claims. Meanwhile, Redmond inked licensing deals with several other companies, including Acer and ViewSonic, and several lesser-known companies.

While much of the focus around the Samsung agreement is likely to concern patents and Android, the deal also calls for the companies to continue to work together on Windows Phone.

“Microsoft and Samsung see the opportunity for dramatic growth in Windows Phones and we’re investing to make that a reality,” Windows Phone unit president Andy Lees said in a statement.

In the blog post, Smith and Gutierrez point to the deals with Samsung and HTC as a model for the industry.

“These agreements prove that licensing works,” the lawyers wrote. “They show what can be achieved when companies sit down and address intellectual property issues in a responsible manner.”

For more on Microsoft’s Samsung deal, check out AllThingsD’s interview with General Counsel Brad Smith.

The Acer deal is specific to Android, while the Viewsonic deal covers both Android and Chrome-based devices, indicating that Microsoft may also have Google’s browser-based operating system in its legal crosshairs.

For those keeping score at home, Microsoft has struck Android-related deals with HTC and a number of smaller companies, while taking legal action against Motorola and Barnes & Noble.

As I’ve noted before, this pattern looks familiar to longtime Microsoft watchers, who saw the company take a similar approach with Linux, though it was more hesitant to file suit in that instance.

It wasn’t until dinner this past Sunday night that CEO Léo Apotheker told Todd Bradley, the head of its Personal Systems Group, that he was about to push key parts of Bradley’s huge unit off the cliff.

That included stopping selling hardware — smartphones and TouchPad tablets — based on the webOS it acquired from Palm last year, a $1.2 billion deal that Bradley played a big part in.

In addition, HP said it was considering spinning out its PC business and would “explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

But, until a few days ago, several sources close to the situation said, Bradley knew nothing of these plans and neither did webOS’s key driver of late, former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein.

This surprising lack of disclosure by HP to two of its key execs begs the question: Will they stay or will they go now?

According to sources, staying put is the plan for both for now, although it depends on what such a spinoff will look like.

It’s clear at this point that Bradley — who was once the CEO of Palm himself and was once considered the most likely successor to former CEO Mark Hurd, before Hurd’s sudden resignation last year — is the leading CEO candidate of its spun-out independent PC company if that’s what HP decides to do.

But it’s not a lock, either. And, apparently, Bradley has not been locked in with regards to a spinoff either and would likely have a lot of offers from tech companies in Silicon Valley to choose from if he wanted.

“Who will they get if Bradley goes at this point, if they want to spin it off?” said one person at the company.

But, added another: “Bradley is in the catbird seat if he wants to be and it’s his to lose.”

That depends, of course, on what his is.

Questions include:

Will that new company include any of the consumer part of the printer business — a huge cash cow — if HP is indeed leaving the arena?

Will webOS go with the new set-up, so that it can take advantage of the patents and licensing income?

Will HP continue to be the brand name on the devices this computer company spinoff would make?

These are just a few of the issues in a deal of untold complexity. But perhaps the most obvious one is who would get custody of Rubinstein?

To begin: Bradley is a big fan and would certainly want him around if there were a spinoff, said several sources.

But to do what?

Rubinstein, a well-known tech exec, had been leading the webOS efforts for HP, but was recently moved upstairs to a larger but fuzzy role, to run product development and innovation for the PSG unit. He has been reporting to Bradley.

At the time, the move was seen by many as the first step out the door by Rubinstein, with one person joking that “he’d much rather be at his Mexican beach house than HP.”

Among the disgruntlements: Several sources said Rubinstein felt that TouchPad wasn’t ready to ship and that Apotheker has reneged on a public promise not to until the tablet was “perfect.”

That ire is no surprise, since the device was then subject to tough criticism, including by AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg, who noted in his review:

“… In my view, despite its attractive and different user interface, this first version is simply no match for the iPad. It suffers from poor battery life, a paucity of apps and other deficits.”

In addition, unlike others there, Rubinstein has been more of a product guy and not an HP lifer. That begs the question of whether he’d like to sign up to another big company stint, even if he had more control.

“He’s been to that party before, and the reality is that he is not a career big company person,” said one person.

One important note: Rubinstein was unable to make webOS work when Palm was already a standalone independent company. And, although a new HP spinoff would be huge and better funded, it is still very much an uphill and competitive battle on the computer, smartphone and tablet fronts.

In addition, keeping a competitive operating system going is also a costly bear of an issue.

“It’s a cyclical, high-velocity business and there are other huge players from Apple and Google in smartphones and tablets to Lenovo and Dell in PCs,” said another source. “There might be a lot of great products in the pipeline for webOS, but it will not be easy to make them a success.”

That said, noted another person who knows Rubinstein well, “he really cares about webOS and does not want to see it go away.”

That might be true, although that is just what might happen if HP decides to sell it off to someone else or makes the spinoff a difficult endeavor.

In that case, it’s an offer Bradley and Rubinstein can refuse.

Related posts

• Hewlett-Packard Says Goodbye to PCs, webOS
• HP Pulls Plug on webOS Hardware, Leaves OS Future in Doubt
• HP And webOS: But They Seemed So Happy Together!
• Liveblogging HP’s “Everything Including the Kitchen Sink” Conference Call
• HP’s Apotheker: We Struck Out with WebOS, but Maybe Someone Else Wants a Swing?
• Viral Video: Like Palm’s Creepy Naked Lady, TouchPad’s Floating Celeb Heads Get the HP Boot
• Licensing webOS May Not Be Much of an Option for HP
• Hewlett-Packard’s PC Business: What Happens Next?
• Worth More Dead Than Alive: Could HP Turn a Profit on Palm’s Patents?
• With HP’s Raising of the World’s Biggest White Flag, Will Jon Rubinstein and Todd Bradley Surrender Too?

Given the fears that some have over what Google’s control of Motorola could mean for other Android makers, some have suggested the deal might leave the door open for HP to get more aggressive about licensing its webOS to other device makers.

On one hand, HP has said it is open to some licensing of webOS. That said, the company explained at the time that it was mainly talking about those interested in taking the operating system into new areas, as opposed to those that would compete in the tablet and phone space.

Indeed, licensing webOS would put phone makers in the same position they may find themselves in with Google — that is, competing against the same company whose software they are using. This, tech historians note, is not something that has tended to work well in the tech industry.

Apple briefly licensed the Mac operating system, but ultimately pulled the plug on that effort. Palm tried to be both hardware maker and licensee, sharing its software with Sony and Handspring, among others. Eventually, though, it found that relationship too complicated, and tried to split off its operating system and hardware businesses.

Another option for HP would be to use webOS for tablets, printers and other hardware, but license out the software for use on phones. The appeal of this would be that HP has never been a big player in phones, and it has little revenue today in that area. On the downside, it’s not clear how much interest there is, nor how much money it could make competing against Android, which Google does not charge directly for. Plus, HP has always been more of a hardware company than a software concern.

“It’s hard to imagine licensing would be enough for them without being in the hardware business,” says Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg.

An HP representative declined to comment on the company’s reaction to the Google-Motorola deal, though it may have more to say when it reports earnings on Thursday.

One thing is clear: HP needs to do something if it wants webOS to be a serious player in the mobile space.

So far, HP’s sales of webOS devices have been poor, and that is probably putting it mildly. The Pre phone business essentially disappeared from the radar screen as HP integrated Palm. HP’s only phone to go on sale is the tiny Veer. Though cute, its diminutive size makes it a niche product, and it is available so far from only one U.S. carrier, AT&T. A promised Pre 3 phone has yet to start shipping.

On the tablet side, HP has come out with the TouchPad. Like the original Palm Pre, the first webOS tablet shows a nice combination of ease of use and innovation, but criticism of the hardware and a lack of apps dominated early reviews.

HP hasn’t officially commented on sales, but all indications are that they have been bad. HP has been trying all manner of price cuts, and sources say sales at Best Buy have been especially bad — and that’s from a retailer that said it was pleased with early sales of RIM’s PlayBook.

In June, Leo Apotheker, chief executive of the electronics giant based in Palo Alto, Calif., said his company plans to begin talks with various companies to gauge interest in webOS, which powers HP’s TouchPad tablet computers and Pre smartphones.

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The deal will settle all patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, and both companies will withdraw their complaints before the International Trade Commission. Specific terms weren’t disclosed.

“We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees,” Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.”

Although Nokia didn’t say how much Apple will pay in either royalties or in its one-time payment, Nokia did say the settlement should improve the quarterly outlook the company gave as part of its May 31 earnings warning.

As part of the deal, the two sides are licensing some, but not all of each other’s patents. Nokia first sued Apple in 2009 over fundamental cellphone technology patents and the two companies have since been filing legal actions against one another in legal venues across the globe.

Apple confirmed the settlement in a statement to AllThingsD.

“Apple and Nokia have agreed to drop all of our current lawsuits and enter into a license covering some of each others’ patents, but not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique,” the company said. “We’re glad to put this behind us and get back to focusing on our respective businesses.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nokia Sues Apple
• Did Nokia Sue Apple Before Apple Could Sue Nokia?
• Nokia’s New Focus Is Mobile Services? Sure It’s Not Lawsuits Against Apple?
• Apple Countersues Nokia for Copying iPhone (Plus Disputed Patents and Full Text of Counterclaim)
• ITC Investigating Nokia Over Apple Patent Complaints and Vice Versa
• Nokia Accuses Apple of “Legal Alchemy.” Stops Short of “Chymistry” and “Heresy.”
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain II
• ITC: Apple Did Not Infringe Nokia Patents

This according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who says $5 from the purchase price of every HTC Android handset sold ends up in Microsoft’s pockets.

Evidently, the terms of the patent licensing deal Microsoft negotiated with HTC over its Android offerings last April included some very lucrative royalties.

Which isn’t all that surprising. At the time Microsoft went after HTC, sources close to the company claimed the handset vendor’s infringement of its IP was very broad, ranging from the user interface to the guts of the OS itself.

Over at Asymco, Horace Dediu figures HTC has shipped roughly 30 million Android handsets, which works out to about $150 million in Android revenues for Microsoft.

Interestingly, HTC may have gotten off easy. Pritchard says Microsoft is looking for even higher royalites from the other Android handset manufacturers it’s pursuing. “Our understanding is that Microsoft is looking for a $7.50 to $12.50 per unit license to settle alleged infringement of Microsoft patents,” he writes.

According to sources close to the situation, Intel Capital and Advance Publications will lead a $30 million investment round in Kno, the high-profile student tablet start-up.

In addition to the funding from its venture capital arm, Intel itself will consult with Kno on its tablet design. Kno, which is getting out of the hardware business, will now focus on its software to manage the devices that are aimed at the college market.

Intel will not manufacture tablets either. Instead, its engineers will consult with Kno on power management, graphics, display, systems integration, which it does for a variety of its customers.

Along with Intel Capital and Advance, current investors will also participate in the round, said sources. But Intel Capital and Advance, the owner of the Condé Nast publishing empire, make up a big part of the funding.

Sources said Intel Capital’s investment is $20 million and Advance and others make up the rest of it.

BoomTown reported in February that the much-funded and high-profile Silicon Valley start-up–aimed at making tablet computers focused at students–was considering selling off the entire hardware part of the business.

Sources said Kno execs have recently decided that the quicker-than-expected uptake in tablet production by a multitude of powerful device makers had made its efforts to package a seamless offering less critical.

Instead, the company will now focus on its robust software and services to offer students on the Apple iPad, as well as upcoming tablets based on Google’s Android mobile operating system and others.

The move is a dramatic shift for the company, which had not shipped significant numbers of the touchscreen device as it has long touted.

In fact, Kno said in November that it would ship a $599 and $899 version of the tablet by the end of the year.

The lower price was for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version was more expensive.

And, although it has been reported no pre-orders were fulfilled, Kno did indeed ship several hundred of them, built by China’s Foxconn, before stopping doing so earlier this year.

Many have been dubious about Kno’s ambitious hardware efforts.

That’s because marketing a new and complex product like the Kno takes a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Before this $30 million, Kno has raised another $46 million in funding to add to an earlier $10 million round.

Sources in February said that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company considering going back out to raise even more.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with angel investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Sources said the shift to deliver textbook and other student-related delivery system would be a better path for all that investment money, since Kno has established a wide range of partnerships with colleges and universities.

In addition, Kno co-founder Osman Rashid has a lot of experience in digital education market. He was also the co-founder of Chegg, the textbook rental business that is reportedly aiming for an IPO soon.

BusinessWeek was first to report that Intel Capital was making the investment in Kno, but the post did not mention Advance’s involvement or that Intel itself was licensing the hardware design business from Kno.

But a small San Rafael, Calif.-based videogame company thinks it has the winning formula as the business moves to digital.

Today, Telltale Games is announcing an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to develop videogames for the comic-book series Fables, and an exclusive worldwide agreement to develop and publish a series of videogames based on the AMC cable network’s zombie hit “The Walking Dead.” It’s also working with Universal Pictures on “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park” games.

The past eight years for the company haven’t always been so rich.

Starting a new videogame company focused on digital downloads in 2003 was a little early (to say the least), so much of the last few years were spent experimenting, developing its own original games and staying afloat by doing work-for-hire projects.

Now, it’s ready for those days to be a thing of the past.

Steve Allison, SVP of marketing for Telltale Games, said that finally the market has caught up with its ambitions.

In 2010, the company’s revenues totaled $10 million, increasing nearly 90 percent over the previous year. This year, revenues are expected to grow at the same pace, and the studio is expected to jump to 140 employees from 90. So far, it’s raised $6 million, and more is expected to close any day.

Allison said the magic is all in Telltale’s formula for building games in bits and pieces–a mission that fits squarely with today’s trends.

Last year, unit sales of PC games via download outstripped sales of boxed games in stores for the first time, according to research firm NPD Group. Based on Telltale’s own back-of-the napkin estimates, it believes that’s a market that could hit $3 billion by 2012.

Telltale’s games are written as a narrative or a cinematic adventure and are divided into five separate episodes. Players download a new one every four weeks for a six-month period. A season pass for a game, including all episodes, costs roughly $35.

Telltale then repeats the process and sells the games across a combination of consoles, mobile devices, tablets, PCs and Macs.

As an example, the company recently released the first episode of “Back to the Future.” The plot picks up six months after the end of the third film, and Marty McFly must help save Doc Brown.

Allison said they can hit profitability on games like these after 100,000 units are sold. Today, the company averages 200,000 units sold across all its titles.

With these new blockbuster titles coming soon, Allison said the goal is to produce a title that hits one million digital downloads, and thinks “The Walking Dead” could become a $20 million to 30 million franchise if all goes well.

However, licensing content from movie studios or other publishers has not always been a recipe for success. Steep fees and up-front guarantees have buried companies in the game industry in the not-too-distant past. ”‘See the movie, play the game’ doesn’t work anymore,” Allison acknowledges, “but the way we make content, it does.”

He says his team works closely with the original filmmakers and screenwriters. “We do want mass-market brands that have a lot of fans, but we want to pay homage to them. We aren’t re-creating ‘Back to the Future,’ we are continuing the adventures of Marty and Doc.”

Additionally, he said, the publishers are more realistic now. “They don’t break the business model, but they do put a little weight on it.”

The new games will trickle out over the next year and will be available on the company’s Web site, and also through downloading services, like Valve-owned Steam.

Seoul-based Enswers plans to extend Soompi into a video portal, based on relationships it already has to provide video search and copyright detection technology to Korean content providers.

The plan could be particularly interesting given Soompi’s audience is international by design, while online video licensing is traditionally not. A large part of Soompi’s audience is in the U.S., but the company has active members in more than 50 countries.

Soompi founder Susan Kang will remain with the site as chief evangelist, while CEO Joyce Kim will move on. Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Soompi has 1.4 million uniques and 22 million page views per month. It started as Kang’s personal Web site in 1998. With Kim at the helm, the company took seed funding in February 2010 from Softbank Ventures Korea.

Kim said she is likely to found another Web start-up. She hails from a family of tech entrepreneurs, including Jared Kim (her younger brother) of WeGame and Jason Calacanis (her brother-in-law) of Mahalo.

Enswers, which was founded in 2007, noted that this is the first time a Korea-based company has bought a Silicon Valley start-up to expand into the U.S. market.

Nokia, for its part, doesn’t seem much worried by the action. “[We're] confident that all of the 37 patents [we have] asserted against Apple [are valid],” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are examining the filing and will take whatever actions are needed to protect our rights.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nokia Sues Apple
• Did Nokia Sue Apple Before Apple Could Sue Nokia?
• Nokia’s New Focus Is Mobile Services? Sure It’s Not Lawsuits Against Apple?
• Apple Countersues Nokia for Copying iPhone (Plus Disputed Patents and Full Text of Counterclaim)
• ITC Investigating Nokia Over Apple Patent Complaints and Vice Versa
• Nokia Accuses Apple of “Legal Alchemy.” Stops Short of “Chymistry” and “Heresy.”
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain

Something is definitely going on between Intel and Nvidia, and it’s possible that a settlement could be announced after the market closes today, sources said.

[UPDATE: Yes, they settled, in a new $1.5 billion licensing deal. Story to come.]

The two had been scheduled to go to trial in December in the Delaware Chancery Court, but the parties agreed to reschedule that.

Soon, word of settlement talks surfaced. Still, as recently as last week, a source familiar with the matter said a trial was on track for February. Now, other sources are saying that may not be the case, which would suggest a settlement is imminent.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang declined to discuss the Intel dispute in an interview with Mobilized’s Ina Fried at D@CES last week.

The fight between the two tech giants is over the terms of a 2004 agreement under which Intel granted Nvidia access to some of Intel’s technology for use in its chipsets, the chips that sit between the microprocessor and the graphics chip like connecting tissue. The cross-licensing agreement allowed Nvidia to make chipsets that were compatible with Intel microprocessors.

However, while the company is set to discuss the effort at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, there is still a lot that must be done before such products can hit the market.

Among the steps needed is for hardware makers to create ARM-compatible drivers, a time-consuming effort that explains in part why Microsoft is talking about the initiative well ahead of any products being ready.

It took Microsoft years, for instance, to move mainstream Windows users from 32-bit versions of the operating system to 64-bit versions, in large part because it took that long to get all of the necessary hardware drivers to enable the shift.

Microsoft has scheduled a press briefing for 1 pm PT on Jan. 5, ahead of Steve Ballmer’s keynote later that night. The event is expected to be the forum where Microsoft will discuss the ARM effort. A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the reported ARM move.

However, speculation about such a move has been increasing since the two companies signed an expanded licensing agreement back in July. Microsoft was deliberately vague at the time regarding the impact of the new agreement, making reference to then-existing efforts such as Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile.

“ARM is an important partner for Microsoft and we deliver multiple operating systems on the company’s architecture,” Microsoft general manager KD Hallman said in a July statement. “With closer access to the ARM technology we will be able to enhance our research and development activities for ARM-based products.”

Moving to ARM processors as an option for full-fledged Windows could pave the way for machines with significantly longer battery life–an issue that has become more important as competing mobile devices, especially tablets and smartphones, have been able to best the PC in that regard.

While much of the speculation regarding ARM-based Windows machines has centered on the impact this could have on tablets, the move is said to be as much about netbooks and low-power notebooks as it is about slates.

Though the Windows tie to Intel-architecture chips is legendary, it’s not the first time that Windows has run on chips other than the standard fare from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Windows once ran on chips from Digital Equipment, and Microsoft has also done server versions that supported Intel’s Itanium chip. However, such efforts are expensive and time-consuming. The fact that Microsoft is going ahead with the undertaking highlights the size of the threat posed by devices running on the lower-power-consuming ARM chips.

Although CES is an unusual venue to reach PC hardware makers, it does provide a big stage for Microsoft to reconfirm that it is serious about playing in the ultramobile device category.

Bloomberg first reported Microsoft’s plans to bring Windows to ARM earlier on Tuesday.