The England and Wales Court of Appeal, upholding a lower court ruling, said Virgin Media’s interactive program guide didn’t infringe Rovi patents because they weren’t innovative enough to be valid. The three European patents at the heart of the three-year legal battle covered the display of program lists in a grid format, the recording of content on a device and the marking of “favorite channels.” Gemstar’s method for selecting favorite channels on an IPG was “anticipated” by STV/OnSat’s SuperGuide, a guide for C-band satellite systems that was introduced in 1986 and locally stored a week’s worth of program data, it said.

The CE industry said it was blindsided by an EPA proposal in the Obama administration’s 2012 budget to charge “user fees” for manufacturers seeking to use the Energy Star label. “The consumer electronics industry is a major stakeholder in the Energy Star program, and EPA did not reach out to us regarding its plans to impose user fees on Energy Star program participants,” said Douglas Johnson, CEA vice president-technology policy.

Philips’ global TV business will post a Q1 operating loss as high as $169 million, nearly double that of a year ago, amid high inventory and sharp pricing pressure, the company said Monday. As a result, Philips will likely fall short of its goal of having the TV division break even in 2011, marking its fifth consecutive annual loss, the company said.

Nintendo of America (NOA) and major U.S. retailers reported strong consumer turnout for the Sunday 3DS launch, but there appeared to be ample supplies of the game system to meet initial demand. Both the “aqua” blue and “cosmo” black SKUs were still readily available Monday at many New York metro area stores and from major retailers’ e-commerce websites.

Panasonic and XpanD are developing a standard for 3D active-shutter eyewear that’s designed to “bring about compatibility among 3D TVs, computers, home projectors and cinema projection,” the companies said Monday. Makoto Morise, manager of the standards group at the Panasonic Hollywood Lab in Universal City, Calif., told us Panasonic this year will bring glasses to market conforming to the so-called M-3DI standard. Although the first-generation standard is based on infrared technology, the group is “considering” an RF-based solution for active-shutter glasses, the companies said. Licensing of the protocol, called M-3DI, will be handled by Panasonic and will begin next month, Morise told us.

A new working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) wants to develop a global standard to determine what TV white spaces spectrum is available to non-licensed users. A global standard would make it possible to use spectrum that has been freed in many countries, vendors said.

The EPA agrees that recognizing the top 5 percent of product models for the Top-Tier energy efficiency program would give device makers “greater predictability,” it said in response to stakeholder comments. But it chose to adopt a model that would ensure that the “number of products earning the designation would be few and really exceptional” because the aim of the top-tier program is to “identify and advance highly efficient products,” it said. The EPA released standards earlier this month for top-tier TVs, clothes washers, heating and cooling equipment and refrigerators and freezers.

Barnes & Noble didn’t respond by our deadline to questions about a report from Digitimes that the company has taken delivery of nearly three million Nook Color devices from its Taiwan-based production source, Inventec, since the e-reader was introduced last fall. Sales of Nook Color, the report said, topped one million units in Q4 2010 and reached between 600,000 and 700,000 units during the first two months of 2011. The report said Nook Color has assumed more than half of “iPad-like market” in the U.S.

Nintendo and retailers reported strong initial turnout in the U.K. for the 3DS launch there Friday. But a Nintendo U.K. spokesman declined to say how many units the company shipped for the European launch, and told us late in the day Friday that it was “still too early to discuss” initial sales. He said the company will discuss initial European sales early this week. Nintendo had said that of the 4 million 3DS systems it will ship this fiscal year, through March 31, 1.5 million will be in Japan and the other 2.5 million will be split between Europe and the Americas (CED Jan 20 p2), where the 3DS was to launch on Sunday.

Dawson “Tack” Nail, 82, who spent more than 50 years as one of the most prominent reporters covering broadcasting and telecommunications in Washington, died Friday from injuries he sustained in a fall a day earlier at his Virginia home. He was the longtime executive editor of Warren Communications News’s Television Digest with Consumer Electronics and Communications Daily.