WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hewlett-Packard said Friday it has appealed a court decision in a patent dispute with Cornell University and expects to take a charge of one to two cents in the second quarter.

The Palo Alto, California-based computer maker said it would appeal a March 30 ruling by a US District Court reducing to 53 million dollars a jury award of 184 million dollars to Cornell and the Cornell Research Foundation.

"HP will be increasing its reserve to reflect the latest developments in the case and expects to record a one to two cent charge to second quarter fiscal year 2009 earnings per share," HP said in a statement.

The patent dispute involves allegations that HP?s PA-8000 microprocessors, and servers and workstations using the processors, infringed a patent held by Cornell.

A federal jury found in June of last year that HP infringed on a Cornell patent for a computer instruction-processing technique invented by H.C. Torng, a Cornell professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering.

In its statement Friday, HP said the patent in dispute expired in February 2006 and the litigation would not affect future sales of HP products.

The Japanese government and the ruling coalition parties have finalised an additional stimulus plan to pull the nation's economy out of the worst recession of the postwar era.

Japan's third stimulus package since September is to inject 15.4 trillion yen ($A217 billion), equivalent to 3 per cent of the gross domestic product, into the world's second largest economy in what is considered the nation's largest-ever stimulus plan.

Including other non-spending measures and loan guarantees, the package totals 56.8 trillion yen ($A800 billion).

The government is expected to submit a supplementary budget to parliament on April 27 for the current fiscal year that began on April 1.

Prime Minister Taro Aso said the fresh measures are intended to "avert a freefall of the economy at all costs, secure jobs and alleviate people's pains, and boost Japan's future growth," according to media reports.

To finance the extra budget, the government would issue deficit-covering bonds worth about 8 trillion yen ($A112.7 billion) and construction bonds, bringing the total amount of bond issuance in fiscal 2009 to a record-high of 44 trillion yen ($A620 billion).

Aso also plans to revise Japan's consumption and gift taxes to increase tax revenues, while corporate and income tax revenues would likely be cut amid worsening economy.

Analysts expected that the amount of new bonds would exceed tax revenues in the current fiscal year for the first time since fiscal 1965, when Japan resumed issuing government bonds.

The stimulus measures are to encourage ecologically friendly facilities and products, help create jobs, stimulate consumption, assist companies' funding and provide support for child-raring, the government said.

Aso intends to focus on environmental policies by granting "eco-points" that give 5-13 per cent discount on the purchase of eco-friendly home electronics.

On buying a hybrid car, consumers can receive a rebate of up to 250,000 yen if they scrap gasoline-powered cars older than 13 years.

The Japanese premier on Thursday promised to create 1.4 million to 2 million new jobs in the next three years, while in aiming in the long term to increase the nation's real GDP by Y120 trillion yen ($A1.69 trillion) and create 4 million new jobs by 2020.

The government's stimulus plan helped boost Tokyo markets on Friday, pushing the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average above the 9,000-points level for the first time in three months.

A judge has given investors a green light to go after Bernard Madoff's personal property by forcing the disgraced financier into bankruptcy.

In a ruling in federal court on Friday, US District Judge Louis L Stanton lifted a temporary order barring involuntary bankruptcy for Madoff while the government continues its pursuit of his ill-gotten gains.

Victims of the massive fraud would benefit from a bankruptcy court's "orderly and equitable administration of his individual estate", the judge wrote.

Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty last month to federal charges that he cheated investors of billions of dollars over several decades with a gigantic pyramid scheme that paid long-time investors with money from new investors. He is jailed, awaiting a June sentencing for charges that carry a sentence of up to 150 years in prison.

The ruling on Friday came after a small group of investors had requested the court's permission last week to directly pursue Madoff's personal assets in bankruptcy court. Their lawyers argued that without it, those assets might land in the US Treasury rather than their pockets.

In court papers filed earlier this week, authorities sought to assure the judge that any proceeds recovered in the case would go to the victims.

The Securities and Exchange Commission argued bankruptcy would create unnecessary confusion and cause costly and potentially wasteful litigation. Prosecutors also weighed in, claiming such a proceeding might delay recovery of funds.

The judge found that personal bankruptcy would be the best and only way to allow victims to go after "assets which are not the proceeds of his crime or forfeitable ... property".

The SEC had assumed in its argument, "with no citation of proof, that Mr Madoff has few, if any, assets that are not proceeds of his crimes", he added.

In a document prepared for the SEC late last year, Madoff claimed he and his wife had $US823 million ($A1.16 billion) in assets at the end of last year, including $US22 million ($A31.06 million) in properties stretching from New York to the French Riviera, a $US7 million ($A9.88 million) yacht and a $US2.2 million ($A3.11 million) boat named Bull.

But the bulk of Madoff's assets, according to the document, consisted of an estimated $US700 million ($A988.42 million) value put on his investment firm. A court-appointed trustee already is in the process of liquidating his business assets.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - New Frontier Bank, one of Colorado state's biggest banks, was closed down by state regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said in a statement.

Based in Greeley, Colorado, New Frontier had, as of March 24, total assets of two billion dollars and and total deposits of about 1.5 billion, the FDIC said.

It was the 23rd bank closed to business since January. Until New Frontier, the bigges bank failure this year had been California's Merced Bank, with 1.7 billion in assets.

Unable to have a rival bank take charge of New Frontier's credits and deposits, the FDIC said it "created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Greeley (DINB), which will remain open for approximately 30 days to allow depositors time to open accounts at other insured institutions."

New Frontier's failure will cost the FDIC around 670 million dollars.

After suffering no bank failures at all in 2005 and 2006, the US banking system saw three banks going under in 2007, followed by 25 in 2008 and 23 so far this year.

This Easter weekend various Christian leaders have expressed the view that the global economic crisis will result in many people rediscovering religious faith.

Others believe the global recession coupled with the G20 blueprint will mark a significant change in the way corporate business is conducted.

Simon Longstaff, the executive director of St James Ethics Centre, has written extensively on corporate greed.

He believes the genesis of the global financial crisis did not simply come down to greed and excess, but to a failure of ethics.

"I think the bigger story in this is although some people would attempt at the beginning of their analysis of these events to say that what was to blame was the failure of regulation, in fact the better interpretation, I think, is to say there was a failure of ethics, full stop," he said.

"Part of it's to do with greed. Now, there's no doubt about it. Part of it is to do with a failure to properly understand the kind of obligations that attach to various organs within the market system, and I'll give you one example, that is the ratings agencies.

"And some of it was just blindness. It wasn't greed, it wasn't dishonesty, it wasn't a failure to understand, it was just a kind of conditioned blindness where people were doing things because that's the way it was always done.

"All of those things are a failure of ethics."

However, he says greed has played a significant part in some of the problems corporations are facing.

"It's in the case of executive remuneration structures, which are based on the assumption that you cannot rely on people to work hard for the company simply because they promised to do so or because they have a commitment to the excellence of their own craft," he said.

"Rather you have to create a remuneration system which assumes they will only do that if in effect you bribe them.

"So there's a model of human nature sitting inside the system, which I think is the elephant in the room, which says, 'we don't believe in honour, we don't believe in promises, we don't believe in any of these things.'"

"[That] is just one dimension, a narrow form of self-interest which will drive people's behaviour. Now to the extent that you do that, you do embed what might best be described as an orientation towards the greedy."