Apple (AAPL) employees will have to go that extra 12 miles for their employers after all.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken recently denied a request from the Cupertino, Calif., company to transfer an unusual lawsuit it faces to a federal judge in San Jose, Calif.

Apple argued the move would make for a more convenient trek–about 88 miles round trip when leaving Apple HQ–for Apple employees involved in the case.

Lawyers for OdioWorks, which is suing Apple, characterized its legal foes’ request as an “attempt to undermine the assignment procedure” that paired the lawsuit with a judge in the Oakland courthouse. Last week, Judge Wilken set aside Apple’s request without comment, thus leaving the 100-mile round trip commute between Cupertino and her courtroom in Oakland in place.

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Very interesting tidbit today from Macworld U.K., which found a China Unicom (CHU) Web page with information on the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. Macworld notes that the information, which is in Chinese, is apparently part of a list of smartphones that could theoretically be supported by the 3G network China Unicom is building. The Macworld story notes that the page appears only on the Web site for the company’s Shanghai branch, and did not say specifically that the iPhone would be offered by China Unicom. MacRumors.com used Google (GOOG) to translate the page, which appears to mostly be a list of iPhone specs.

Does it mean China Unicom will sell iPhones once they complete their 3G network? Unclear. But interesting, nonetheless.

AAPL today is up 82 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $108.48.

Update: Speculation on Apple cutting a deal with China Unicom has been floating around for a while now, and perhaps for good reason. In a note published last month, Riedel Research, which focuses on emerging markets, noted that China Unicom will launch their WCDMA 3G network on May 17. In an interview this afternoon, Reidel proprietor David Riedel notes that a high-level delegation from China Unicom was in Cupertino this month to meet with Apple execs.

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When the Internet and telecom bubble burst, Silicon Valley jobs evaporated: by 2005, California’s Santa Clara County–which includes San Jose, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View and other tech-focused towns–had given up more than 20 percent of its total job base, a loss of over 200,000 jobs. So how bad will it get this time around?

Well, here’s what we know so far. California’s overall employment rate hit 8.2 percent in October, up from 7.7 percent in September, to the highest level since September 1994. Now, that’s not just the tech industry hurting: the construction industry in the state has lost 69,500 jobs this year, for instance. In Santa Clara County, the jobless rate stands at 6.9 percent; San Francisco is lower, at 6 percent, while San Matero County, home to venture capital’s Sand Hill Road, is down at 5.4 percent. Slightly worse off are the East Bay counties of Alameda, at 7.1 percent, and Contra Costa, at 7 percent. The national jobless rate stood at 6.5 percent in October.

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I’m sitting here in the parking lot on the Apple (AAPL) campus in Cupertino outside Building 4 on Infinite Loop, waiting for this morning’s unveiling of updated Mac laptops. The event should get under way around 10 a.m. PDT. Expectations are that the company has redesigned the MacBook, adopting aluminum casing similar to the Air. Analysts anticipate price reductions across the line with low-end model pricing dropping below $1,000.

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Secure Computing (SCUR) announced a deal this afternoon to acquire privately held Securify for $15 million, plus an earn-out of up to $5 million more. Secure can pay for the deal in cash, or at its choosing, partially in stock. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Securify, based in Cupertino, provides software to allow companies to monitor and control access to network-based applications.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this deal is that Securify is selling out for far less than the amount of venture capital it raised.

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