Search: patent

The Mac Observer's Managing Editor Jeff Gamet joined the British Tech Network's The BIG Show to talk about the NSA collecting cell phone records from service providers, and the White House plan to stop patent trolls. Along with host Ewen Rankin, Sarah Gray, Steve Naybour, Karl Madden, and Richard Harkness the crew also discussed how…

New Zealand's parliament is considering a bill that rethinks software patents. The bill, while not explicitly banning software patents per se, instead declares software alone as not eligible for patent protection because there is no “inventive step” involved. In other words, since all software builds on prior software, and thus are not true inventions. This…

The U.S. International Trade Commission gave Motorola Mobility a tough pill to swallow on Monday when it invalidated the company's proximity sensor patent. The ruling killed the last remaining patent in Motorola's 2010 infringement lawsuit against Apple, and shot down Google's hopes of eventually winning an iPhone import ban. ITC says Motorola's proximity sensor patent…

A review of Apple's so-called overscroll bounce patent has invalidated a key claim. Though the review processreaffirmed three of the patents claims (14, 17, and 18), claim 19 was at the heart of (some of) Apple's legal victory in Apple v. Samsung in which Apple won more than a billion U.S. dollars in damages. This…

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs apparently threatened Palm with patent lawsuits as a ploy to deter the company from luring away employees. The revelation came during a hearing for a class action lawsuit against Apple, Google, and Intel from tech industry workers alleging the companies agreed to not poach employees from each other. Ed Colligan,…

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a preliminary ruling declaring a key Apple patent covering touch screen devices invalid. Patent number 7,479,949, or the Steve Jobs Patent, is still in effect, but if the USPTO ruling is upheld, it could spell trouble for Apple's ongoing patent fights with Samsung and Motorola. The…

Patent lawsuits are filling court dockets, big name companies like Apple and Samsung are catching headlines with their cases, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos thinks it's time for governments to step in and put an end to the patent wars. The current patent system, he said, is choking innovation instead of promoting it. “Patents are…

> The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court's finding on Tuesday when it ruled that Apple didn't infringe on patents owned by Mirror Worlds. The patent fight between the two companies started in 2008 over claims that the Cover Flow, Time Machine and Spotlight features in OS X infringe on Mirror…

TMO Artist’s Rendition of the Conversation (Click the image for a larger version) No agreements have been leaked, but the mere fact that Messrs. Cook and Page have been talking suggests that some kind of agreement is possible. Apple has been attacking Google’s Android platform by going after Android OEMs. Apple won a sweeping victory…

According to AllThingsD, Apple revealed in court that it has a cross-licensing agreement in place with erstwhile mortal enemy Microsoft. That agreement specifically covers the same design patents that Apple is contesting with Samsung, but Apple has in place an “anti-cloning” provision. That provision stipulates that the companies, “can’t copy each other’s products,” according to…

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper is supervising Kodak’s bankruptcy proceedings, and those proceedings include the sale of more than 700 patents that Kodak wants to use to pay off creditors. In addition to bidding on the overall portfolio, Apple has claimed ownership of 10 of those patents, accusing Kodak of misappropriating technology jointly developed by…

A Taiwanese man has filed suit against Apple in China, alleging that the Cupertino company’s FaceTime video calling service infringes on his patent, according to Chinese site QQ Tech and translated by M.I.C. Gadget. The Intermediate People’s Court in Zhenjiang will hear the case but, thus far, Apple has failed to respond to the Court’s…

Apple and Google offered bids between $150 million and $250 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Those bids, however, could climb quickly come Wednesday as the two companies fight to keep Kodak’s patents out of each other’s hands.Kodak’s patent auction may not bring in as much cash as it wantsApple partnered with Microsoft is…

The ruling covered the ‘218 and ‘335 patents, two of the key patents that Kodak is trying to sell as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. Apple has claimed that the patents are based on technology that Kodak misappropriated from a technology sharing agreement between the two companies dating back to the 1990s. Judge Gropper essentially…

HTC taking Apple to court over standards essential patentsHTC claimed Apple is using its patents without licensing, although so far the smartphone maker hasn’t been very successful in keeping its complaint in front o a judge. Five of the eight patents in its complaint were tossed out by an ITC Judge for lack of standing,…

According to Patently Apple, the first patent in question was filed in October 2005 and awarded in April 2010 and covers “a method and system for matching speech data.” The second covers a “speech recognition system” and was filed in December 2002 and awarded in September 2007. Siri was introduced in October 2011. The lawsuit covers…

ITC Blows Kodak patent infringement case out of the waterThe ITC panel upheld an earlier ruling, according to the Wall Street Journal, and said that as a result Apple and RIM couldn’t have violated trade laws in this case.Kodak claimed the digital camera preview system iPhone, as well as RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, infringed on its…

Standards-essential patents are patents that have been pledged by the patent holder to be included within a standard. This includes everything from SIM cards to radio chipsets to what constitutes various flavors of 3G, 4G, and other wireless protocols. In exchange for being part of the standard, the patent holder agrees to charge fair, reasonable,…

New Patent Office Locations The move comes amidst a major expansion in the number of patents being applied for, especially by companies based in Silicon Valley. The USPTO said that it hopes the new offices will help cut down on the backlog of patent applications being generated every year. The agency has heretofore been based…

“I think HTC did the right thing. I never believed that its first complaint against Apple had merit,” said Florian Mueller of Foss Patents. “HTC could certainly have afforded to continue with the appeal, but it would only have annoyed the CAFC and the ITC.”HTC drops appeal in ITC ruling on iPhone patent infringementApple and…

This is the same patent that Apple has been contesting in Kodak’s bankruptcy proceedings, accusing the company of “misappropriating” research the two companies had jointly underwent in the 1990s. Apple had asked the court not to allow the patent to be sold in a patent sale being pursued by Kodak, an action protested by Kodak.…

Microsoft’s initial success against Motorola comes just days after Apple achieved a temporary import ban on some HTC smartphones resulting from Apple’s victory in patent litigation last December. HTC’s phones eventually cleared customs although both companies are now heading to court-ordered settlement negotiations. Friday’s ITC ruling did not specify which Motorola devices were affected by…

According to the Smithsonian’s Newsdesk on May 1, “The exhibit, a display of 30 4-by-8-foot panels made to resemble iPhones, showcases more than 300 patents and trademarks granted to Jobs throughout this career. Each panel displays facsimiles of the front pages of 12 patents granted to Jobs, totaling 312 of the 317 he acquired in…

Twitter announced the “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” on Tuesday as a way to keep innovators in the picture and to change the way patents are wielded. The company voiced concern about the way patents may be used to actually stifle innovation rather than promote it. It also wanted to keep some control of the patents with the actual innovators -…