(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that Australia's Alice Corp does not hold valid patents on a computerized trading platform, but it remained unclear how the decision would affect other software patents.

The software industry had been watching the case for a clue to legal protection of intellectual property rights that generate much of the sector's profits. But the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals failed to reach a consensus on how to determine what software is patentable.

How innovative an invention should have to be to receive legal protection is an issue of debate in the software industry.

Technology companies had hoped the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases, would provide clarity on what software is patentable.

The deeply divided court upheld a Washington D.C.-based district court's decision that patents held by Alice were based on abstract ideas, which is not eligible for patent protection.

In the case, Alice had argued that even if its patents for exchanging financial obligations involved an abstract idea, the idea is "patentable if the computer plays a significant role in the invention."

Adam Perlman, an attorney for Alice, declined to comment. Alice is owned in part by National Australia Bank Ltd.

The court did not come up with any unified standard for determining what is abstract, said Matthew Moore, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP who was not involved in the case.

Under patent law, an abstract concept - such as the idea of a self-driving car - may not be patented, but the engineering that creates a self-driving car may be patented.

The divided opinion shows the courts' struggle with coming up with a bright line rule, Moore said.

Instead, whether or not an invention is abstract will continue to be determined on a case by case basis, which judges knowing it when they see it, he said.

Google and Dell both had filed friend-of-the-court briefs stating that "bare-bones" patents like those owned by Alice court do not innovate enough to deserve patent protection.

International Business Machines Corp, however, said that most software inventions do qualify for patent protection.

In Friday's opinion, five judges joined a portion of the opinion, authored by Circuit Judge Alan Lourie, that suggested judges ask whether there are "genuine human contributions" to the invention when determining whether it should receive patent protection.

It will take future cases to determine whether the test can earn the support of a majority of the Federal Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Federal Circuit's Chief Judge, Randall Rader, did not join that portion of the opinion authored and noted that the test is not precedent-setting.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Kimberly Moore said that the test described by Lourie could cause a "free fall" in the patent system and that the opinion defines what is "abstract" much too broadly.

CLS is pleased that the district court's decision was affirmed and said the appeals court's decision "strikes an appropriate balance between innovation and competition."

The case is CLS Bank International v Alice Corporation, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 2011-1301.

(Reporting By Erin Geiger Smith)

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) -- AAA Michigan says gasoline prices were relatively steady during the past week around statewide average of about $3.75 per gallon.

The auto club says Monday the average is about 9 cents per gallon less than last year at this time.

Of the cities it surveys, AAA Michigan says the cheapest price for self-serve unleaded fuel is in the Benton Harbor area, where it's about $3.71 a gallon. The highest average is in the Grand Rapids and Marquette areas at about $3.78.

Dearborn-based AAA Michigan surveys 2,800 Michigan gas stations daily.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Carrie Underwood has assumed the title of "Sunday Night Football's" resident country-music singer.

"American Idol" winner Underwood has been tapped to replace Faith Hill as the singer of the opening theme song, "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night," NBC said Tuesday.

Underwood will make her "Sunday Night Football" premiere on September 8, as NBC kicks off its first "SNF" broadcast of the 2013 NFL season with a faceoff between the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants.

"I am thrilled to be a part of NBC's 'Sunday Night Football' and am so honored they asked me," Underwood said. "I have always loved football season, and it is so exciting to now become part of it every Sunday night!"

"Sunday Night Football" producer Fred Gaudelli added, "Carrie Underwood was our first and only choice to perform the 'Sunday Night Football' opening. She's one of America's most popular entertainers and the perfect fit for our show."

Hill announced that she was leaving the hugely popular sports show in April, noting on Twitter, "Amazing 2 have been part of SNF - an honor. I've just let everyone there know it's time 2 let someone else rock the open."

The annual Lyrid meteor shower will peak tonight (April 21) and early Monday, but the moon's bright light may spoil the celestial fireworks display.

Theoccurs each year in mid-April when the Earth passes through a trail of dusty debris from the Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), which orbits the sun once every 415 years. Humans have been observing this particular meteor shower for at least 2,600 years.

Typically, the Lyrid meteor shower is a relatively faint stargazing event, though observers with clear dark skies away from city lights can usually spot up to 15 or 20 meteors an hour. The meteors appear to radiate out of the constellation Lyra (hence their name), which can be found in the eastern night sky tonight. []

The moon is expected to spoil much of this year's Lyrid meteor display because it is currently in its bright gibbous phase, with the lunar disk nearly 85-percent illuminated, according to SPACE.com's stargazing columnist and meteorologist Joe Rao. That means that moonlight will likely wash out fainter Lyrid meteors, with only the brightest streakers being visible.

The best time to seekis actually in the wee hours of Monday morning (April 22) after the moon has set, but before the sun rises. This observing window opens at about 4 a.m. your local time and can close by about 4:30 a.m. At that time the Lyrid radiate will nearly directly overhead in the night sky, Rao explained.

Here are some tips to view the Lyrid meteor shower:

Don't stare directly at Lyra:Focusing on the radiant point of the meteor shower sounds like a good idea, but the Lyrid that tend to occur there appear to have short tails and look more like unimpressive dots, NASA scientists have said. A better technique is to lie on your back (or a comfortable reclining chair) and look straight up.

Get comfortable: It can be a long, cold night without warm clothes or a blanket, depending on your location. Also, don't expect to just step outside and see some meteors. Make sure to give yourself at least 40 minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Get away from city lights:They really can spoil a , and this year that potential is doubled since the moon is already interfering with the display.

The Lyrid meteor shower is not the only celestrial event occuring this week. On Thursday (April 25) the moon will pass through part of the Earth's shadow in a partial lunar eclipse. The eclipse will be primarily visible in its entirety from parts ofeastern Europe or Africa, central Asia and western Australia, according to NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak.

Editor's note:If you snap a great photo Lyrid meteor shower thatyou'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to managing editor Tariq Malik at.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow himand Follow us,and. Original article on.

So: if you've got questions about the HTC One, or about the wild smartphone market in general, there's no better place to be than right here, starting at 1:30 PM sharp on Monday. Ask us absolutely anything, and we'll do our best to answer.

The protesters blocked roads with burning tires and logs during more than five hours of clashes. They also attacked a police station and set fire to at least 30 vehicles, including police trucks, private Ekattar TV reported.

A police official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said 13 people, including two police and a paramilitary soldier, were killed in clashes in Kanchpur just outside Dhaka. He said seven others died in Motijheel, a commercial area of the capital.

Police in southeastern Chittagong city fired on Islamic activists who attacked them with iron rods, meat cleavers and sticks. At least seven people were killed, police official Farid Uddin said.

The private United News of Bangladesh reported that the violence in Dhaka erupted after security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in the central commercial district.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police said all rallies and protests had been banned in the city until midnight Monday for fear of more clashes.

The Islamic activists have been holding protests to demand that the government implement an anti-blasphemy law. They say some Internet users have recently used their blogs to spread atheism and lies about Islam.

The government of the Muslim-majority nation has rejected the demand, insisting that Bangladesh is governed by secular law.

On Sunday, police fired rubber bullets to disperse stone-throwing activists who were among thousands who rallied around Dhaka. Officials said at least one person died and 45 others were injured.

The ruling Awami League and an opposition alliance had both planned rallies Monday in response to Sunday's violence but postponed their plans.

Bangladesh, an impoverished nation of 160 million people, has a history of political violence.

The opposition has sponsored a series of recent general strikes demanding that the next general election due in early 2014 be supervised by a neutral caretaker administration.

SILVERSTONE, England, May 1 (Reuters) - British Formula One Grand Prix organisers are counting on Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button producing the goods in the next few races to boost ticket sales dented by a 'Vettel effect'.

Sebastian Vettel has won the last three championships in succession for Red Bull and the 25-year-old German leads the standings again as the only driver to have won twice in four races so far.

McLaren's Button, the last world champion before Vettel, has finished no higher than fifth this season while Hamilton, the 2008 champion, has had two third places since he moved to Mercedes.

Silverstone managing director Richard Phillips said on Wednesday that ticket sales for the June 30 race were down nearly 10 percent on last year, when 297,000 people attended over the three days despite flooded campsites and torrential downpours.

"If you look at the cycle on selling tickets...on the Monday after a grand prix Sunday you tend to see a spike. The weekend we had Lewis on the podium there was a spike and when you see Vettel there is less of a spike," he told Reuters, referring to demand for tickets for the British Grand Prix.

"I think the needle-movers (for sales) are going to be basically 'not Vettel'.

Britain had the biggest crowd of the season last year, with a record race day attendance of 127,000 and more people turning out on a Friday than on a Sunday in some parts of the world where Formula One has no tradition.

Eight of the 11 teams are based in Britain, including champions Red Bull, and last year saw seven different winners in the first seven races.

Former Formula One driver Derek Warwick, president of circuit owners the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC), said the success of the British pair was crucial.

"When we know that Lewis and Jenson are coming into the grand prix off the back of a couple of wins, we see a massive spike in our sales," he said.

Phillips said they had probably reached the break-even point but the circuit needed to exceed that comfortably to recoversome of the 40 million pound ($62.26 million) investment made on improvements in the past five years.

Hundreds of thousands have been spent since last year's 'wake-up call', with improved drainage to campsites, ditches re-profiled and park and ride spaces added.

BRDC chairman Stuart Rolt said the search for outside investors to help fund development was continuing after an exclusivity agreement with an unidentified partner, believed to be a Qatar-based group, ended last year.

"We are still talking to people very positively and we keep going," he said. "There is no threat to the grand prix if we don't find an investor, everything just slows down..."

Rolt said the process had been frustrating due to the difficult economic climate, and a clash between what propertydevelopers wanted and the aims of the BRDC, but hoped "to get something done" this year.

He would not give details about any potential partners.

($1 = 0.6425 British pounds) (Editing by Alison Wildey)

The splashy announcement of his Nike deal, and the commercial with Tiger Woods that raised hopes of a big rivalry. The missed cut in Abu Dhabi. The first-round exit from the Match Play Championship. Quitting halfway through the second round of the Honda Classic. The loss of his No. 1 ranking.

And now, McIlroy is ready to get started.

"I've always said the main golf season is from the start of April to the end of August, so that's when I want to play my best golf," McIlroy said Tuesday.

It all starts with the Masters.

McIlroy can't simply dismiss the last three months and the endless questions about the state of his game and his new equipment. He at least brings some measure of form to the first major championship of the year. Desperate to find his game, he added the Texas Open at the last minute and in turned out "almost perfectly." The 23-year-old from Northern Ireland didn't think about his swing, only his score. He challenged in the final round and wound up the runner-up.

Whether he's ready for Augusta National won't be known until Thursday. But at least he knows it's there.

"I've went through these patches before where I haven't played so well and the game feels quite far away, and then something clicks and then all of a sudden, it's back again," McIlroy said. "I probably should have learned more from it from last summer when I was going through those struggles. ... When I don't play my best, it's when I get into bad habits in my golf swing. Whenever my golf swing is where I want it to be, that's when I produce results.

"And that's what I've seen has started to happen over the past few weeks."

The problem has been the swing, not the clubs he was swinging.

Even so, McIlroy conceded the adjustment took some time. Woods took nearly five years before working all the Nike clubs into his bag. McIlroy did it all at once, and when he played poorly the first two months of the year, it only added to the scrutiny.

"The way I was hitting the ball at the start of the year, I needed a short game just to get myself around the golf course," McIlroy said. "Off the tee has been a big improvement. There was a little bit of an adjustment period getting the driver that really suited me. And once I got that, you gain confidence whenever you play rounds and you see yourself hitting good drives, hitting it in the fairway and setting yourself up with iron shots into the greens."

McIlroy has plenty at stake this year.

He already has two legs of the career Grand Slam, having set the scoring record at the U.S. Open when he won at Congressional in 2011, and then lapping the field at Kiawah Island last summer to win the PGA Championship. A win this year would put him exclusive company. Dating to 1960, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are the only players to win majors in three straight seasons.

Boy Wonder would love for that to happen at the Masters, and he's provided enough evidence that it could happen. McIlroy smiled when he was introduced for his news conference, and the moderator mentioned his best finish was a tie for 15th. That was in 2011, the year he took a four-shot lead into the final round, and still was leading by one shot going to the back nine until his game imploded. He closed with an 80.

A year ago, he was one off the lead going into the weekend, and this time self-destructed on the front nine. He closed with 77-76 and tied for 40th.

But there is no denying the affection McIlroy has for the Masters, which he calls his favorite major. He remembers playing Augusta for the first, so inspired by the purity of the place that he was afraid to take a divot.

Just a month ago, he was happy to make the cut and make progress. Now his goals are back where they should be.

"Would anything less than a win be a disappointment this week? Yeah, it would be," he said. "Every time you come here to Augusta, you're wanting to win that green jacket, and every time that you don't, it's another chance missed. But if I'm sitting here on Sunday night and I've finished second or if I've give it a good run, you can't be too disappointed because you've had a great tournament. But the ultimate goal is getting one of those jackets."

Among those who could be in his way is Woods, the prohibitive favorite with wins at Torrey Pines, Doral and Bay Hill in the last few months.

There was hope of a rivalry between generations, only that hasn't materialized. They only thing they have in common this year is that both have a swoosh on their shirts, both started the year by missing the cut and both have celebrity girlfriends tennis star Caroline Wozniacki for McIlroy, Olympic ski champion Lindsey Vonn for Woods.

Woods has had plenty of rivals over the years, and sees McIlroy as the next one.

"Over the course of my career, I've had a few. Certainly, Rory is this generation," Woods said. "I've had Phil (Mickelson) and Vijay (Singh) and Ernie (Els) and David (Duval) for a number of years, and now Rory's the leader of this new, younger generation. So, yes, definitely."

McIlroy isn't so sure.

Never mind that he became the first player to win consecutive PGA Tour events with Woods in the field, or that he built a big gap in the world ranking by the end of last year. Padraig Harrington once said it could be McIlroy not Woods who has the best chance of breaking Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 professional majors.

Not so fast, McIlroy replied.

"When you speak of rivals, you tend to put rivals who have had similar success," McIlroy said. "He's got 77 PGA Tour wins. I've got six. He's got 14 majors. I've got two. If I saw myself a rival to Tiger, I wouldn't really be doing him much justice."

That's precisely what the student winners of a Canadian Space Agency contest wanted to know, and they turned toto find out the answer. The students, Meredith Faulkner and Kendra Lemke of Lockview High School in Fall River, Nova Scotia, designed an experiment to learn would happen when you wring out a soaking wet washcloth in microgravity.

Hadfield, who is Canada's first commander of the International Space Station, performed the special experiment for Lockview High School live in space in an April 16 video webcast. []

"The question is, if you get a cloth dripping wet without gravity and you wring it out, what's going to happen?" . "What will happen to a wrung out cloth?"

Hadfield used somedrinking waterto soak the cloth through, catching the bubbles of water created by microgravity with the hand towel. Then, he began to wring it out.

As Hadfield squeezed water from the dripping cloth students on the ground let loose with "oohs," "ahhs," and some laughs, as the water stayed put instead of falling away like it would on Earth. Instead of dripping, the water formed a strange, wet bubble around Hadfield's hands.

The more Hadfield wrung out the cloth, the larger the bubble of water became.

"It's becoming a tube of water," Hadfield said as he held up the cloth to the camera. "The water is all over my hands, in fact, it wrings out of the cloth into my hands, and if I let go of the cloth carefully, the water sort of has it [the cloth] stick to my hand."

Hadfield also showed off some of the space station's smallest equipment.

"We might have the coolest washcloths ever here on the space station," Hadfield said as he pulled out a small cylindrical "hockey puck" smaller than the palm of his hand.

Hadfield explained that in order to save space, engineers have manufactured various items in the smallest way possible, and the washcloth is no exception.

Hadfield is one of six residents currently living and working on board the. He is joined by two NASA astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts. NASA's Tom Marshburn and Russia's Roman Romanenko will fly back to Earth with Hadfield in May after six months on board the orbiting outpost.

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.

The court on Friday rejected Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's appeal for parole eight months after she was handed a two-year prison sentence for the band's performance of a "punk prayer" in Moscow's main Russian Orthodox cathedral.

Tolokonnikova, 23, has been serving her sentence for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" in a prison colony in central Russia, about 550 km (350 miles) southeast of Moscow.

"I've spent enough time in the prison colony. I've had enough of studying it. Half a year is long enough," Tolokonnikova, a philosophy student, told the judge at the parole hearing, the RAPSI legal news agency reported.

She complained of having frequent headaches in jail in Mordovia, a region that has a large number of prisons.

Her lawyer, Irina Khrunova, said Tolokonnikova's five-year-old daughter Gera needed her mother.

The judge said Tolokonnikova's parental status had been taken into account when she was sentenced - prosecutors had asked for three years - and pointed to two reprimands she has received as evidence her conduct has not been sufficiently "corrected", RAPSI reported.

Tolokonnikova and two other band members, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were sentenced last August after a trial that was widely condemned abroad as part of a clampdown on dissent by President Vladimir Putin.

Performers such as Madonna, Sting and former Beatle Paul McCartney offered their support for Pussy Riot last year.

SENTENCES DIVIDED OPINION

Although the two-year sentences outraged many liberals, many conservative Russians saw their profanity-laced protest against Putin's close ties with the Church, performed in short dresses and brightly colored tights and balaclavas, as sacrilege.

Samutsevich, 30, was freed in October when her sentence was suspended on appeal after she argued that she had been prevented from taking part in the protest because a guard seized her.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, 24, lost their appeals and in January a judge rejected Alyokhina's request for her sentence to be deferred until her child is older. She has also requested parole and that appeal could be heard next month.

The three women said they had not meant to offend Orthodox Christians with their protest in February 2012, while anti-Putin protests were drawing tens of thousands of people to the streets of Moscow and other big cities.

The rallies have since dwindled and did not stop Putin winning a presidential election the next month.

In his annual nationwide question-and-answer session on Thursday, Putin denied using the courts for political ends.

But he made clear he did not regret Pussy Riot's sentences, mentioning them in the same breath as people who desecrate the graves of World War Two veterans.

But Samutsevich says Pussy Riot's protest at least succeeded in drawing attention to what the all-women protest band sees as Putin's unhealthy relationship with the church and a lack of political freedoms.

"We wanted to start a discussion in society, show our negative view of the merging of the church and state ... The problem was raised internationally, the problem of human rights was put sharply into focus," she said in a recent interview.

(Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Mike Collett-White)