Washington Mutual settles Comerica lawsuit

Seattle-based Washington Mutual said Monday it has agreed to pay financial-services company Comerica $47 million to settle a lawsuit against Commercial Capital Bancorp.

Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, bought Commercial Capital in October. Washington Mutual said none of the lawsuit's claims involved WaMu or its employees and the settlement was made without any admission of fault or wrongdoing. It also said the settlement would have no material financial impact.

The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of San Francisco County, said Commercial Capital hired top employees from Comerica's 57-member financial-services division to launch its own commercial-banking unit. None of the employees mentioned in the lawsuit became WaMu employees, said WaMu spokesman Alan Gulick.

As part of the agreement, WaMu will return or destroy documents that contained Comerica's "trade secrets."

El Al cancels options for 787s

El Al Israel Airlines canceled options to buy eight to 10 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners in a deal that was worth as much as $1.5 billion at list prices.

The airline is in the midst of a recovery plan and doesn't want to make any commitment to buy planes after 2010, said a spokeswoman who asked not to be identified.

Separately Monday, Boeing said KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has ordered six Boeing Next-Generation 737s this year, valued at about $423 million at list prices. The customer for the planes was previously unidentified on Boeing's order Web site.

Piasecki to head Japan operations

Boeing promoted Nicole Piasecki, 44, to president of Boeing Japan and vice president of Boeing International.

Piasecki, who will be based in Tokyo when she takes the new position in March 2007, was previously vice president of business strategy and marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She will replace Robert "Skipp" Orr, who will retire.

Microsoft

CompUSA stores to sell licenses

Small businesses that want to get Microsoft's new products at the same time as their larger counterparts will be able to buy software licenses at some CompUSA stores beginning Nov. 30, Microsoft announced Monday.

Businesses that want five or more licenses of Windows Vista or the small-business version of Office 2007 will not have to wait until broad availability of Microsoft's products, scheduled for Jan. 30.

Microsoft said buying and downloading its software through this program will cost less than small businesses would pay for packaged software.

Microsoft

21 companies set to form alliance

Microsoft and 21 other companies are forming an alliance to make their products work better together.

The Interop Vendor Alliance, to be announced today at a conference in Barcelona, Spain, includes several open-source players such as Sun Microsystems and Novell, which Microsoft partnered with earlier this month on developing server software that works with both Windows and Linux.

The alliance will work to find and jointly market interoperability solutions, according to Microsoft's announcement.

Dendreon

Application seeks fast drug approval

Dendreon said Monday it has submitted the final portion of its application to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to market its prostate- cancer drug in the U.S.

The Seattle biotech company has asked the agency for a priority review of Provenge as a potentially life-saving drug. If the FDA grants the request, it would review the application for six months, instead of the usual 10 months.

Provenge is designed to stimulate a patient's immune system to attack prostate-cancer cells. The company is asking for approval based mainly on a 127-patient study of men with terminal prostate cancer, which showed Provenge patients had a 4.5-month median survival edge over patients on a placebo. The drug's side effects primarily involve fever and chills that last for one or two days.

About 232,000 American men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, and 30,000 die from the disease.

Targeted Genetics

Arthritis treatment called encouraging

Targeted Genetics said Monday its experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis demonstrated safety, and preliminary indications are that it can reduce joint tenderness on its own or in combination with other drugs.

The Seattle biotech company said it has received data on 60 patients at three dose levels. The therapy is designed to be directly injected into painful joints, where it can block inflammation. Several other biotech drugs that circulate throughout the body are effective, but Targeted said it believes there is demand for its therapy because many patients who take them still have at least one painful joint.

Based on the early results, an independent safety-monitoring committee recommended the company enroll 60 more patients at the same dose levels.

ZymoGenetics

Progress reported in lupus-drug trial

ZymoGenetics and its partner Serono said Monday that their experimental drug for lupus was safe and well-tolerated at all dose levels in an early-stage clinical trial.

The study involved 49 patients at six dose levels who took an injection of atacicept or placebo. The results showed no serious side effects, no increased risk of infections, and patients on the drug did not mount an immune reaction against the drug. The study was not designed to measure effectiveness, but the companies said they observed some positive signs among patients taking the drug.

Based on the results, the companies said they plan to start a midstage study of the drug's effectiveness, beginning in mid-2007.

Sony

Problems reported for PlayStation 3

Sony said its PlayStation 3 has problems playing software designed for older consoles, marring the company's launch of its newest machine after a shortage.

About 200 titles of the 8,000 games sold for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 are affected, the Sankei newspaper reported today, without saying where it got the information.

The software problem is another setback for the launch of the PlayStation 3, which Sony is counting on to revive earnings growth. A shortage of components for the high-definition Blu-ray DVD player in the console caused Sony to delay sales in Europe by four months and halve this year's shipments to 2 million.

Sony started sales of the PlayStation 3 on Saturday, offering 100,000 units in Japan. Sales begin in the U.S. with 400,000 consoles available Friday.

Quad-core chips ready for launch

Intel, the world's largest computer-chip maker, today launched a family of chips with four computing engines inside a single microprocessor.

Intel rolled out four processors for servers under the Xeon 5300 branding, and another processor under the Core 2 Extreme series aimed at hardcore computer gamers, programmers and other people with heavy-duty computing needs.

Intel plans to release three more quad-core processors in the first quarter of 2007, including a more mainstream model for entertainment and multimedia uses under the name Core 2 Quad, and a Xeon processor designed for low-voltage uses and another for single-socket servers and workstations.

Intel, which is locked in a fierce battle for market share with smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices, had originally promised the quad-core chips for mid-2007 but earlier this year announced it was ramping up production, beating AMD to market by several months.

AMD, which has been stealing market share from Intel with chips that reviewers said were cheaper and faster to run, has said it expects to launch quad-core processors for its Opteron product line by mid-2007.

Supreme Court won't consider case

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider a case in which Qwest had been ordered to produce 220,000 pages of documents to shareholders in a civil securities-fraud lawsuit.

Qwest attorneys had argued the documents were protected by attorney-client and work-product privilege.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision that the company waived its privilege when it gave the documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department.

Apple

IBM executive named new counsel

Apple Computer, facing 10 lawsuits over stock-option backdating, named IBM executive Donald Rosenberg as its general counsel.

Rosenberg, 55, held the same position at IBM, Apple said Monday. He replaces general counsel Nancy Heinen, who resigned in May after working for 12 years with Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs.

Apple is one of at least 176 companies that have disclosed internal or federal investigations tied to stock-option accounting. Shareholder lawsuits, filed in California after Apple announced its internal review in June, claim Jobs improperly benefited from a 7.5 million-share grant. Heinen hasn't been accused of wrongdoing.

Compiled from Seattle Times business staff, Bloomberg News and The Associated Press