To make a supersonic man out of him

The sky proved no limit for Felix Baumgartner. The Austrian daredevil, in fact, rose to the edge of space (40 km above the Earth) yesterday before plunging faster than the speed of sound. Minutes later, he landed in southeastern New Mexico, dropped to his knees, and pumped his fists to the sky. "He made it - tears of joy from Mission Control," his support team said. Dubbed "Fearless Felix," the helicopter pilot and former soldier had parachuted from such landmarks as the Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. And he'd been preparing for this latest feat for five years - physically, mentally, and logistically. By most accounts, all the hard work paid off. According to preliminary findings cited by Brian Utley, an official observer monitoring the mission, the 43-year-old Baumgartner flew higher than anyone ever in a helium balloon and broke the record for the highest jump. Still, even Baumgartner seemed taken aback when Utley detailed how fast he had fallen at one point - 833.9 mph (1340 km/h or Mach 1.24), smashing his goal to break the sound barrier. But breaking the sound barrier is nothing new, and neither is copyright infringement. In fact, a company that fiercely protects its own intellectual property was recently caught using another's. The irony of Apple being accused of stealing the intellectual property of a Swiss clock designer was not lost on the tech press that had just spent a month covering the company's patent infringement suit against Samsung. So when the Swiss railway operator SBB politely complained three weeks ago that the face of the clock app in iOS 6 was lifted from an iconic (and trademarked) design familiar to anyone who has ever waited for the next train from Zurich, the accusation made for several days of amused headlines.