Mark Bridge writes:

I’m not the first person to point out that mobile phone patent battles are raging all around us. They’ve been going on for years.

However, the topic of FRAND patents - those designated as ‘industry standards’ and therefore required to be licensed on Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms - has become an increasingly newsworthy topic.

In the last couple of weeks we’ve reported on an EC investigation into Samsung’s licensing of mobile patents and a Motorola/Apple legal battle that involves FRAND licensing.

Twitter has announced partnerships with the Iridium and Thuraya satellite phone services to give their customers access to Twitter via SMS.

It means the service is now available without any need for land-based communication.

Two flaws in the Google Wallet payment service have recently been revealed.

The Zvelo security blog discovered that a ‘rooted’ Google Nexus S could have the encrypted PIN code broken if the phone was stolen, while The Smartphone Champ found that Google Wallet would retain payment card details if the app was reset.

Phones 4u has announced the national rollout of a new mobile contract called ‘Just Upgrade My Phone’.

It’s been trialling JUMP in a hundred stores since May last year and expects the scheme to be available in all its outlets by May 2012.

UK-based mobile marketing business 2ergo - the company behind a number of high-profile campaigns including the Pizza Express app - is helping retailers to set up a mobile presence while avoiding common pitfalls.

It’s published a free white paper entitled ‘Mobilising Your Business - the time is now’, which can be downloaded from the company’s web site.