For the second time in three days, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper took the rare step of declassifying some details of an intelligence program to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government.

"Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a 'playbook' of how to avoid detection," he said in a statement.

Clapper said the data collection under the program, first unveiled by the newspapers The Washington Post and The Guardian, was with the approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court and with the knowledge of Internet service providers. He emphasized that the government does not act unilaterally to obtain that data from the servers of those providers.

The National Security Agency filed a criminal report with the Justice Department earlier this week in relation to the leaks, Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an email Saturday to The Associated Press.

President Barack Obama defended the counterterrorism methods on Friday and said Americans need to "make some choices" in balancing privacy and security. But the president's response and Clapper's unusual public stance underscore the nerve touched by the disclosures and the sensitivity of the Obama administration to any suggestion that it is trampling on the civil liberties of Americans.

Late Thursday, Clapper declassified some details of a phone records collection program employed by the NSA that aims to obtain from phone companies on an "ongoing, daily basis" the records of its customers' calls. Clapper said that under that court-supervised program, only a small fraction of the records collected ever get examined because most are unrelated to any inquiries into terrorism activities.

His statement and declassification Saturday addressed the Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, that allowed the NSA and FBI to tap directly into the servers of major U.S. Internet companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL. Like the phone-records program, PRISM was approved by a judge in a secret court order. Unlike that program, however, PRISM allowed the government to seize actual conversations: emails, video chats, instant messages and more.

Clapper said the program, authorized in the USA Patriot Act, has been in place since 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, and "has proven vital to keeping the nation and our allies safe.

"It continues to be one of our most important tools for the protection of the nation's security," he said.

Among the previously classified information about the Internet data collection that Clapper revealed:

It is an internal government computer system that allows the government to collect foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.

The government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. It requires approval from a FISA Court judge and is conducted with the knowledge of the provider and service providers supply information when they are legally required to do so.

The program seeks foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States.

The government cannot target anyone under the program unless there is an "appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose" for the acquisition. Those purposes include prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities or nuclear proliferation. The foreign target must be reasonably believed to be outside the United States. It cannot intentionally target any U.S. citizen or any person known to be in the U.S.

The dissemination of information "incidentally intercepted" about a U.S. person is prohibited unless it is "necessary to understand foreign intelligence or assess its importance, is evidence of a crime, or indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm.

The Post and the Guardian cited confidential slides and other documents about PRISM for their reports. They named Google, Facebook, Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Paltalk as companies whose data has been obtained.

All the companies have issued statements asserting that they aren't voluntarily handing over user data. They also are emphatically rejecting newspaper reports indicating that PRISM has opened a door for the NSA to tap directly on the companies' data centers whenever the government pleases.

In his statement, Clapper appeared to support that claim by stressing that the government did not act unilaterally, but with court authority.

The Guardian reported Saturday that it had obtained top-secret documents detailing an NSA tool, called Boundless Informant, that maps the information it collects from computer and telephone networks by country. The paper said the documents show NSA collected almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from U.S. computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March, which the paper says calls into question NSA statements that it cannot determine how many Americans may be accidentally included in its computer surveillance.

NSA spokesperson Judith Emmel said Saturday that "current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication." She said it may be possible to determine that a communication "traversed a particular path within the Internet," but added that "it is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address."

Emmel said communications are filtered both by automated processes and NSA staff to make sure Americans' privacy is respected.

"This is not just our judgment, but that of the relevant inspectors general, who have also reported this," she said.

Amid unsettling reports of government spying, Obama assured the nation Friday that "nobody is listening to your telephone calls. What the government is doing, he said, is digesting phone numbers and the durations of calls, seeking links that might "identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism."

While Obama on Friday said the aim of the programs is to make America safe, he offered no specifics about how the surveillance programs have done that. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., on Thursday said the phone records sweeps had thwarted a domestic terror attack, but he also didn't offer specifics.

The revelations have divided Congress and led civil liberties advocates and some constitutional scholars to accuse Obama of crossing a line in the name of rooting out terror threats.

Obama, himself a constitutional lawyer, strove to calm Americans' fears but also to remind them that Congress and the courts had signed off on the surveillance.

"I think the American people understand that there are some trade-offs involved," he said when questioned by reporters at a health care event in San Jose, Calif.

Obama echoed intelligence experts both inside and outside the government who predicted that potential attackers will find other, secretive ways to communicate now that they know that their phone and Internet records may be targeted.

An al-Qaida affiliated website on Saturday warned against using the Internet to discuss issues related to militant activities in three long articles on what it called "America's greatest and unprecedented scandal of spying on its own citizens and people in other countries."

"Caution: Oh brothers, it is a great danger revealing PRISM, the greatest American spying project," wrote one member, describing the NSA program that gathers information from major U.S. Internet companies.

"A highly important caution for the Internet jihadis ... American intelligence gets information from Facebook and Google," wrote another.

Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who served on the House Intelligence Committee for a decade, said "the bad folks' antennas go back up and they become more cautious for a period of time."

"But we'll just keep coming up with more sophisticated ways to dig into these data. It becomes a techies game, and we will try to come up with new tools to cut through the clutter," he said.

Hoekstra said he approved the phone surveillance program but did not know about the online spying.

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Associated Press writer Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.

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Follow Lara Jakes Twitter at: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP.

To many, the Eiffel Tower is an architectural marvel and a symbol of Paris. But a musical instrument?

Composer Joseph Bertolozzi believes it is, and he plans to play it.

As he explains , he will "harvest the Eiffel Towers sounds with microphones placed on its surfaces and record a work entitled 'Tower Music' or 'Musique de la Tour,' using only the natural sounds of the Tower itself."

"I took great care to prove to the [Eiffel Tower] administration that I would not physically damage the surface," he told Yahoo News in an email. "That would be plain wrong."

The idea was born, he recalled in an interview with , when his wife took a mock swing at a poster they have of the Eiffel Tower. He put the request in to the Eiffel Tower administration four years ago.

The New York state resident also looked closer to home. The result was , a 2009 composition played on New Yorks Mid-Hudson Bridge. The CD climbed to No. 18 on the Billboard Classical Crossover Music Chart. The composition is also a permanent installation on the bridge, complete with .

Very helpful to have done it before, he told Yahoo News. I could anticipate the challenges of mic placement, the properties of the sounds and the time it takes to collect the sounds efficiently."

It also helped convince the Eiffel Tower administration, which only recently approved the plan, that it could trust him with the iconic structure. As he writes on his website, the earlier project showed "the care he took with ... Bridge Music, using techniques that would not damage structural integrity and providing safe conditions for the musicians."

Translation: Getting sound out of the tower requires banging it with mallets of various sizesand not leaving dents.

Bertolozzi has raised $40,000 from private donors and has a team helping him with harvesting the sounds.

So what exactly does the Eiffel Tower sound like? The soundsof a percussion ensemble of metallic drums, marimbas and the gongs of an Indonesian gamelan, Bertolozzi told Yahoo News.

That Indonesian instrument is significant, noted the composer, as it was featured at the World Exposition for which the tower was built. It was also of great interest to several famous French composers such as Debussy.

Bertolozzi hopes to complete his opus, Tower Music, in eight to nine months.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Rob Ford lost two more staff members on Thursday, two weeks after allegations first surfaced that the leader of Canada's largest city was caught smoking crack cocaine on camera, something he has strongly denied.

Security ushered policy advisor Brian Johnston out of city hall around midday on Thursday, and he told reporters he had resigned. Kia Nejatian, the mayor's executive assistant, also left his job, the city confirmed in a statement sent to local media.

The 44-year-old mayor, who hails from a conservative political family and was elected to lead Toronto in 2010, has lost five staffers in seven days, including his chief of staff, who was fired, and his press secretary.

A defiant Ford told a crush of reporters gathered outside his office that "everything is going fine," said he was bringing in new staff and vowed to weather the political storm.

"I'm not stepping aside," Ford said. "I'm running in the next election, and if the great people of this city want to go in a different direction that's what their prerogative is, but I guarantee, my name will be on the ballot."

He repeatedly refused to answer questions on Thursday about the alleged video, shrugging them off with a refrain of "anything else?"

U.S. media outlet Gawker and the Toronto Star both reported on May 16 that their reporters had seen a cellphone video that appears to show Ford using crack cocaine. Ford has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Reuters cannot confirm the existence of the video or its content.

Separately, Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne told reporters that the Canadian province's government was monitoring the situation and could get involved, if appropriate.

"As a citizen and as premier of the province, I'm concerned that things are not as they should be at city hall," she said. "It's hard to imagine that it could be business as usual."

The comments, unusual coming from a sitting provincial leader, prompted a sharp response from Ford's older brother, who is a Toronto city councilor.

"Get your house in order before you have the nerve to say anything about the mayor," Doug Ford told reporters at city hall. "We have this city in great financial shape. It's in better shape than what we inherited."

Rob Ford has sparred with Wynne's office over how to fund a massive regional transit expansion, stating that a sales tax hike and gas levy would hurt "hardworking families" in Ontario.

Wynne leads a Liberal minority government that requires some opposition support to pass legislation.

Toronto's "weak mayor" political system already limits the executive's influence and puts more power in the hands of the city council.

Mayor Ford has enjoyed a hard core of support from a segment of Toronto voters, particularly in the suburbs, who lifted him to power on a platform of controlling spending and cutting taxes, along the lines of the populist Tea Party movement in the United States.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Paul Simao)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - FX's border-cop drama "The Bridge" will premiere on July 10, the cable network said on Thursday.

After its debut, the new 13-episode series will continue to air on Wednesdays during the 10 p.m. timeslot.

Oscar-nominee Demin Bichir ("A Better Life") and Diane Kruger ("National Treasure") star as two detectives, one from each side of the U.S.-Mexican border, trying to solve serial murders.

Executive Producers Meredith Stiehm and novelist and writer Elwood Reid adapted "The Bridge" for American television from the international hit series "Bron," which was set on the border of Denmark and Sweden.

"Bron" was produced by Shine Group's Filmlance and Denmark's Nimbus Film Production. Shine America's Carolyn G. Bernstein and Filmlance's Lars Blomgren are executive producing the American version.

Ted Levine, Annabeth Gish, and Thomas M. Wright, and Matthew Lillard guest star in the pilot episode directed by Gerardo Naranjo.

Roy Hibbert recorded 23 points and 12 rebounds, Lance Stephenson scored 20 and the Pacers responded to a blowout loss in Game Three with a determined home-court effort.

Game Five is on Thursday back in Miami where the defending NBA champions will try to regain control.

"When (Stephenson) plays like that we're unstoppable," Hibbert told reporters. "We're here, we're not going anywhere. We're going back down to Miami to go out there and fight again."

Miami roughed up the Pacers in an 18-point rout on Sunday but Indiana scored the first 11 points of Game Four and led for most of the contest, fending off runs from the Heat.

LeBron James led Miami with 24 points and Mario Chalmers added 20 but the Heat fell short in the fourth quarter.

Miami used a 14-2 run to turn a nine-point deficit into an 86-83 lead midway through the fourth quarter but Indiana quickly responded with a 7-0 run of their own and when James fouled out in the final minute there was no way back for the Heat.

(Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

After four years of development, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One entertainment console and touted it as an all-in-one solution for playing games, watching TV and doing everything in between. Microsoft wants the Xbox One to be central to your living room, so it packed the new Xbox with such features as the ability to change TV channels through voice commands.

Although the device won't go on sale until later this year, at a price that hasn't been disclosed yet, Microsoft invited attendees of Tuesday's announcement event to take a closer look at the system.

Based on limited time with the device, the Xbox One feels like an improvement over its predecessor. But it fails to include features some fans have demanded, including the ability to play games bought for the existing Xbox 360 system.

Of course, many particulars about the Xbox One could change between now and when it's released. The specific date hasn't been revealed. More details are expected in three weeks at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry's annual convention in Los Angeles.

For now, the system looks to be a thoughtful piece of technology, but there's still a lot that isn't known.

DESIGN: With contrasting matte and gloss finishes, the Xbox One is the slickest video game console so far, although we don't yet know what Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 will look like. (Nintendo's Wii U is already out, although sales have fallen short of the company's forecasts.) The Xbox's outer shell, which Microsoft calls "liquid black," features vented flourishes and all the inputs and outputs one might need, including multiple USB ports and HDMI pass-through.

KINECT: The new version of the Xbox's camera-based Kinect system comes with better motion and voice detection, including the ability to recognize faces, tell if you're smiling or talking and gauge your heart rate. It appears as sexy as the Xbox console and has been overhauled under the hood. It's three times more sensitive and has a larger, 60-degree field of view. In a demo, the doodad's high-definition camera easily displayed crystal-clear 1080p video and could detect up to seven people, though it lagged as more folks stood in front of it. The basic motion detection appears vastly improved, but the voice detection feature wasn't made available to try out, adding to the list of unknowns.

PERFORMANCE: The system seems to work harmoniously together. For example, by combining the Kinect's face detection ability with the machine's wireless controllers, it recognized almost magically when users swapped controllers.

CONTROLLER: The new controller's layout is mostly unchanged, but the bulky battery bump is gone from the back. The smoother Xbox One controller boasts a new directional pad and vibrating trigger buttons. The triggers pulsated in tandem with such imagery as a character's heart beating and a car revving up during a demo with a prototype controller.

REQUIREMENTS: Luckily, the Xbox One won't require a constant connection to the Internet, but there's a possibility that some of the key features wouldn't work as well or at all. The Kinect system is required and will come with the machine, rather than sold separately as has been the case with the Xbox 360. The Xbox One also will feature privacy settings so it doesn't feel like the Kinect's camera is always watching you.

LIMITATIONS: Xbox 360 games won't work on the Xbox One because the underlying technology is different, according to Microsoft. Microsoft was vague about how the Xbox One will handle previously played games bought from other gamers, though it confirmed used games will work somehow. There had been talk that Microsoft might restrict used games on the new machine.

GAMES: What games? Despite the fact that such titles as "Call of Duty: Ghosts," ''FIFA 14" and "Forza Motorsport 5" were teased during Tuesday's flashy presentation, actual games weren't available to try out afterward. Microsoft said it plans to focus on Xbox One titles at the E3 conference, which starts June 11.

The Xbox One shows promise with a sleek shell and a new Kinect detector that seems to perform fine at least if you don't try to confuse it with too many people at once. But the lack of games is notable, as are lingering questions about what it can do without an Internet connection. There are too many questions about the Xbox One, even after experiencing not just hearing what Microsoft has planned. At this point, it's too early to say whether Microsoft or Sony is leading in the latest round of the console wars. They'll have to duke it out at E3.

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Online:

http://www.xbox.com

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang

Tsvangirai said if his party comes to power it will manage the police and military so that Zimbabweans "will not fear their soldiers and policemen" any longer.

Launching his party's election platform, Tsvangirai said security services must be professional and non-partisan in their operations and respect civilian politicians.

President Robert Mugabe's loyalist police and military are widely blamed by human rights organizations for state-orchestrated violence in previous elections.

New polls are expected around September to end a shaky coalition government formed after violent, disputed elections in 2008.

Speaking mainly in the local Shona language to some 15,000 supporters at a rally concluding his Movement for Democratic Change party's conference to map out an election manifesto, Tsvangirai said thousands of political activists have been victims of police brutality since 1999 when he formed the trade union-based party, the first real challenge to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party since independence from colonial-era rule in 1980.

"We will need justice in this country as well as national healing," he said.

Tsvangirai, 60, produced a 247-page document outlining his party's plans for governing Zimbabwe if it wins the upcoming polls against Mugabe, 89.

The report calls for cuts in spending on the armed forces, saying that current payments are excessive considering Zimbabwe is at peace and faces no military threats.

"The goal of security under ZANU-PF was to perpetuate their rule against domestic resistance ... and seek to undermine the freedom of political choice," the report states.

It proposes the formation of a new Defense Service Commission to monitor the promotion of senior officers and stress what it calls "the primacy of civilian rule."

The report makes no mention of firing military and intelligence commanders who have repeatedly vowed allegiance to Mugabe and have refused to salute Tsvangirai since he became prime minister in the coalition agreement brokered by regional leaders in 2009.

Tsvangirai said that if his party wins the elections "there will be no retribution, those who committed crimes must tell the truth and the truth will set them free."

The nation's new, reformed constitution, which was approved by 95 percent of voters in a March referendum, sets up an independent commission on truth and reconciliation as well as a constitutional court, with greater powers than the existing Supreme Court, to rule on outstanding grievances over a decade of human rights violations. Tsvangirai said that with the new constitution and new policies, his party "will restore dignity to the people."

QIANTUN, China (Reuters) - Two years short of 70, Zhang Guosheng spends his days caring for an 81-year-old fellow villager - washing his clothes, bringing meals to his bed, and keeping him company - a routine he'll keep up until he himself needs the type of care he is now giving.

"Living here is better than staying at home alone. We help each other and have a common language," said the spritely Zhang, an enthusiastic dancer. "We are very happy here."

With younger villagers who would traditionally have looked after their parents and grandparents flocking to the booming cities to seek work as part of Beijing's urbanization drive, Qiantun village in northern China's Hebei province has had to pioneer a new model - the old looking after the even older.

Surrounded by green wheat fields that stretch across a flat plain, Qiantun is unremarkable among countless rural Chinese communities, but its old-age care model is now a prototype cited by central government as a solution to the daunting challenge of caring for a vast and rapidly greying rural population.

One of every four Chinese will be older than 60 by 2030, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Massive rural-to-urban migration will further strain the rural areas' ability to provide care for the elderly, as personal savings and family support remain the primary pillars of old-age care.

"Migrants to urban areas are mainly young adults, leaving mostly the elderly in villages with children," said Wang Dewen, an expert with the World Bank's Beijing office. "The formal eldercare system in rural areas is very weak, and basically a blank spot in many places."

As a result, the gap between the number of elderly in rural and urban areas is expected to balloon over the next 15 years, to 11 percentage points from today's 1.24 percentage points, the ministry projects.

The costs of caring for China's rapidly expanding elderly population are likely to be too heavy a burden for the government, forcing Beijing to find cost-effective and creative ways to provide care in myriad localities. The self-help model practiced among the 1,500 residents of Qiantun offers a cheaper and streamlined alternative to a state-run system.

More than 95 percent of China's rural elderly still adhere to the traditional practice of seeking old-age care within their families, Wang said. But families are no longer able to cope, with youth and even middle-aged people heading to cities to find work, leaving the elderly behind to fend for themselves.

THE "LIGHT" OF FEIXIANG

In their search for affordable eldercare models, Beijing's leaders have turned their attention 450 km (280 miles) to the south in Hebei's Feixiang county, where Qiantun lies. The practice of old people taking care of each other posed a simple and attractive solution.

Labeled "mutual assist eldercare", the Feixiang model is set to be expanded to the rest of rural China, with 3 billion yuan ($490 million) set aside by the central government to get it started over the coming three years.

"The light of Feixiang will shine across China," Li Liguo, minister of civil affairs, declared enthusiastically during a trip to Feixiang in 2011. "Feixiang has set an example for the whole country."

But not everyone is as optimistic about the model.

"As people get older, they don't tend to get healthier. So if you have somebody in their sixties caring for somebody in their nineties, are they going to be able, and trained and strong enough themselves to care for somebody who has chronic conditions?" said Tony Buccheri, a manager with Right at Home International, a U.S.-based senior home care provider that offers services in China through a partner.

Buccheri's concern echoes that of Cai Qingyang, pioneer of the model and Qiantun's village chief.

"Old people with critical illnesses need more than the very basic care provided here, and we will have to think of other ways to care for them," said the 61 year-old former soldier Cai, watching several old villagers dancing in the yard.

"But this really is the only feasible way given the local elder care situation. The village and the government simply can't afford proper institutional care for every aged rural resident," Cai added.

In 2008, Cai sought to do something about the lack of care for rural elderly left behind as young adults sought better paying work in cities. He turned an abandoned brick house into an old-age home, where 25 elderly villagers moved into 11 rooms, keeping each other company, sharing meals, as well as farming and doing housework.

His innovation has thrived under state support and more than a dozen other provinces have replicated the model.

OLD BEFORE RICH

What separates China's ageing pattern from that in other Asian societies such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore is that the country is still relatively poor on a per capita basis. The phrase "getting old before rich" reflects the fact that even though China's economic growth remains robust, its demographics work against it.

Those in the emerging middle class have more options among at-home care providers, and public as well as private senior homes, and are more likely to find them affordable.

The rural elderly have fewer resources and fewer choices, while youth migration patterns unstitch the traditional family safety net. And despite years of efforts by China's leaders, the income gap between urban and rural residents has increased. A report published by the World Bank last year noted that rural elderly have "remained consistently poorer than the urban elderly over time".

Nor is that likely to change. Two-thirds of elderly Chinese currently live in rural areas, and although migration patterns cloud demographic estimates, many demographers believe the majority of China's elderly will remain in the countryside.

To meet the challenge, says the World Bank's Wang, China must make its urbanization an equalizer of basic social services for urban and rural residents. To do that, he adds, it must reform the household registration system that ties social services to people's registered home, to facilitate family migration to cities and receive care there.

But in the short term, rural areas such as Qiantun, which has three times as many elderly residents as young adults, can only make do with the resources they have. The government provides 600 yuan ($97.68) a year in subsidies for each of the 30 elderly Qiantun villagers at the centre. Their average age is 75.

By contrast, offering professional care at an old-age care institution would cost a minimum of ten times as much, 6,000 yuan a year, according to government estimates, offset by a mere 120 yuan annual subsidy from the government.

At the Qiantun villager centre, "old" Zhang, as he is known, talks about the future as he brings a bowl of dumplings and medicine to the bedside of his charge, bedridden by a broken thigh bone.

"He can't move around now, I help him," said a still spry Zhang. "When I can't move, someone will also care for me."

($1 = 6.1428 Chinese yuan)

(Editing by Ben Blanchard and Ian Geoghegan)

He called for a "credible medium term plan" to get the economy back on track and said automatic economic stabilizers should be allowed to work.

He also predicted that North Sea oil output would recover in the next couple of years.

King last week predicted that UK growth would be faster and inflation lower than expected three months earlier.

(Reporting by Mohammed Abbas; Editing by David Cowell)

(Reuters) - Nintendo Co, one of the world's largest makers of video game players, won a U.S. appeals court decision in a patent case that will allow it to keep importing its popular Wii system into the United States.

Monday's decision by the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. affirmed a January 2012 ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission, which handles many technology patent disputes.

The decision against Motiva LLC, which sued Nintendo in 2008, could make it harder for U.S. companies to halt imports of products that allegedly infringe patents on grounds they want to establish a "domestic industry" for similar products.

In January, in a patent dispute between InterDigital inc and Nokia Oyj over wireless phones, the Federal Circuit said companies could seek such relief when they sought to license products incorporating their patents, even if such products were not being made.

Motiva, which is based in Dublin, Ohio, had claimed that Wii infringed two patents for a system to track a game user's position and body movement.

A three-judge Federal Circuit panel agreed with the ITC that the main impetus behind Motiva's litigation against Kyoto, Japan-based Nintendo was to win damages or a settlement, not to license or make products incorporating Motiva's patents.

This panel said Motiva's litigation did not amount to the "significant" or "substantial" investment toward commercializing patented technology that was required under a patent protection law, known as the Tariff Act, that sets limits on imports.

"Motiva's litigation was targeted at financial gains, not at encouraging adoption of Motiva's patented technology," Circuit Judge Sharon Prost wrote. "There is simply no reasonable likelihood that, after successful litigation against Nintendo, Motiva's patented technology would have been licensed by partners who would have incorporated it."

The ITC had also concluded that Nintendo did not infringe the Motiva patents.

Christopher Banys, a lawyer for Motiva, called Monday's decision "unfortunate" but said the case will continue.

"We are confident that Motiva will be vindicated when its case is tried in district court," he said.

Richard Medway, deputy general counsel of Nintendo of America, in a statement said the company is pleased with the Federal Circuit decision.

Wii's major competitors include Sony Corp's PlayStation and Microsoft Corp's Xbox.

The case is Motiva LLC v. International Trade Commission, U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 12-1252.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Andrew Hay and Nick Zieminski)