With a cutthroat tech industry that loves playing fast and loose with the patent-legal system, we're surprised there haven't been more suits among emerging game streaming outfits, but there's at least one on record now as T5 Labs has sued Gaikai for alleged patent infringement.

In its Delaware district court filing, T5 claims that Gaikai has and continues to knowingly infringe on the patent in question (US Patent No: 8,203,568 -- sharing a graphical processing unit between the plurality of programs), which offers the following broadly-painted description:

A centralised server in a bank (50) of servers runs a program for use by a user at a remote terminal (52, 56, 58). In the server, a plurality of programs share a GPU and instructions are used to cause the GPU to store the frames representing graphics of different programs at different memory locations. The frames are compressed and transmitted to remote terminals. Optionally the invention also allows for GPU time slice allocation, such that the GPU completes rendering the frame of one program before it renders the frame of another program. Optionally the invention also allows delivering false information about the capabilities of the GPU to the programs.

Although London-based T5 has been in the streaming business since 2007 and holds patents dating back about a decade, the patent above was only filed last November and issued this June, so it seems the company isn't wasting any time leveraging its intellectual holdings.

This isn't T5's first attempt at strong-arming one of its rivals. In early 2011, the company used a different but similar patent (7,916,147) to threaten OnLive, but that didn't result in a suit and given the fact that OnLive recently buckled under debt, it's probably not the best target.

Gaikai, however, seems like a fine candidate, having been bought by Sony for $380 million in July. Interestingly, OnLive reportedly wants a piece of Gaikai too. Before his company folded, former CEO Steve Perlman planned to sue Gaikai, according to a former OnLive employee.

Perlman allegedly said that he wouldn't "let some two-bit company ride [OnLive's] coattails." Although Perlman stepped down as CEO in August and his company was purchased for $4.8 million this week, its new owner, Lauder Partners, wants to monetize OnLive's patents.

Perhaps T5 has a legitimate complaint against Gaikai and we'll learn more if it goes to trial. Whatever the outcome, the case may set the stage for an appearance from OnLive and perhaps other players. Gaikai and Sony haven't responded to the filing or requests for comment.

The first, fully touch-screen BlackBerry 10 device may just have been caught in the wild thanks to a cheeky Mexican video.

Spotted by the guys over at SlashGear, the video comes courtesy of holatelcel, and features a well suited chap running through some of the key features we witnessed in our recent hands on BlackBerry 10 review.

The handset itself, thought to belong to the new "L-Series" range, looks similar to the Dev Alpha B device we got our mitts on earlier this week, however the corners are more rounded, and the bezel above and below the screen may have shrunk a little.

It also seems to follow the design of the handset which we saw in a video a few weeks ago, which claimed to be an internal promo video for RIM.

Little is known

RIM has stayed pretty quiet on details of its BlackBerry 10 devices, telling us that it plans to launch two BB10 handsets in the first quarter of 2013.

The first will be a fully touchscreen device, which is expected fall into the "L-Series" category, and the second, sporting the firm's well known QWERTY keyboard, could be the first in a range called the "N-series".

We've contacted RIM about this video and we'll update this article once we hear back.

Electronic books, magazines and newspapers have been the next big thing for as long as I can remember: I've squinted at them on Palms and Psions, PCs and Pocket PCs, and in every case the experience was pretty horrible.

E-reading couldn't even put words on screen in a nice way, let alone display something as complicated and wonderful as a magazine.

It turns out that to deliver a decent electronic reading experience, you need two things: a decent screen, and an easy way to get the content.

The Amazon Kindle cracked that, but while newspapers and magazines are available for Amazon's e-reader they're pale imitations of the real things; publishers have tried various other platforms from PDFs to enormous executable applications, but nothing really stuck.

Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that desktop computers, keyboards and mice don't lend themselves to magazine reading: you need something that enables you to swoop and swipe at the pages. You really need a tablet - and that tablet really needs to be part of an e-reading ecosystem that makes it really easy to find, buy and update your publications.

That's what Apple's tried with Newsstand. One year on, is it working?

I read the news today, oh joy

Like a whole heap of Newsstand magazines, TechRadar is published by a company called Future. As Future's Mike Goldsmith told InPublishing, there are two kinds of Newsstand magazines: there are digital replicas, which are essentially the printed title repackaged in a tappable, swipeable tablet format, and there are interactive editions, which can add panoramas, videos and other goodies. Which is better? Goldsmith asks. "the only logical response is 'both'."

I think he's right, for the time being at least. A lot of Newsstand magazines are digital replicas, and that's fine: the format works really well on a tablet, and I'd happily read my favourite mags that way. However in the longer term I think interactive editions are the way forward for many kinds of titles.

I'm old enough to remember the dark days of interactive CD-ROM magazines, and I'm in no hurry to resurrect those horrors, but when interactive elements are used wisely it breathes new life into magazines.

The digital editions of T3, Tap!* and new title Photography Week make great use of interactivity - they're somewhere between magazines and apps, taking the best bits of both to create something genuinely useful and exciting.

Titles don't need to be about tech to benefit, either. I love Car magazine for its great writing and extraordinary photography, but wouldn't it be great if I could look more closely at those landscapes, spin the cars around and hear those engines roar?

The technology isn't quite there yet - tablets are still awfully thick and heavy, although of course that'll change, and if you aren't on an iOS device you're locked out of the Newsstand party - but it's pretty close, and at last electronic magazines are genuinely desirable things in their own right rather than clunky imitations of their printed counterparts.

The most exciting thing of all, I think, is that Newsstand isn't just preaching to the converted: it's bringing in new readers. At a time when print publications are finding it harder and harder - supermarkets are taking over from newsagents in many areas, and they can't and won't stock everything - that's a rare bit of good news.

As Goldsmith says: "Future's research shows that 90% of its readers on Newsstand are new readers, whether it's digital replica or interactive edition, with only 20% being based in the UK. These are new audiences in new lands and with new needs."

* I write for Tap!, but that's not why I think it's great.