Attempting to overcome national debt

   Gas prices have been a huge money gusler and have taken a toll on people from all places.
   Oil shipments fell Tuesday after China said it would raise interest rates again to help control inflation. Declining gasoline demand and a rare oil shipment from Libya also pulled crude lower later in the day.
    Benchmark West Texas Intermediate agreed for May delivery to give up 13 cents to settle at $108.34 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, Brent crude added $1.23 to settle at $121.89 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
    China hiked interest rates for the fourth time since October. Higher interest rates could slow China's economy and shrink its appetite for oil. China trails only the U.S. in oil consumption and should still drive world oil demand this year, though it might not increase consumption as much as previously expected, analysts say.
    "With higher interest rates, it's tougher to raise money," PFG Best analyst Phil Flynn said. "Businesses won't be able to hire as much. People will buy (fewer) cars and they'll drive less."
    The Energy Information Administration expects China to account for about 40 percent of increased world demand this year, as it boosts consumption by another 600,000 barrels per day. The U.S. will increase consumption by 130,000 barrels per day, according to the EIA.
    U.S. oil and gasoline consumption has fallen as prices rise. MasterCard SpendingPulse said this past Tuesday that retail gasoline demand slipped for the fifth straight week when compared with the same period last year. SpendingPulse also said gasoline purchases fell 3.6 percent to 64.3 million barrels for the week ending April 1. MasterCard analyst Jason Gamel pointed out that demand has been dropping as gasoline prices surged 31.7 cents since the end of February.
     Companies are also suffering, money  wise. A federal judge has overturned a federal jury's order that Apple Inc. pay $625.5 million in damages for violating patents held by a Mirror Worlds LLC, a small technology company. The decision by U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis in Tyler, Texas, which was disclosed in a Monday court filing, dismisses one of the largest-ever patent infringement verdicts.
    In his ruling Monday, the judge said that "Mirror Worlds may have painted an appealing picture for the jury, but failed to lay a solid foundation sufficient to support important elements it was required to establish under the law."
    In October, a federal jury in Tyler determined that Apple infringed on three of Mirror Worlds' patents, which cover several features on Apple's Mac computers, iPhones and iPods. The technologies at issue include Cover Flow, which lets users flip through album covers and other content as if through a stack of cards; Time Machine, which performs automatic backups; and Spotlight, which is software for searching computer hard drives.
    The jury awarded Mirror Worlds $208.5 million for each patent violation.
By: Becky Welc