Hands up who wants 3D finger-controlled fridges? That’s the spirit
The companies betting that we'll want to manipulate everything electronic around us with a wave of a hand are already laying claim to various types of body movement.
The technology to detect gestures is included in laptops and televisions shipping right now, but like the touchscreen phone world, it is riddled with patent applications.
Just as no one except Apple can make a phone with a "slide to unlock" feature, no one except PointGrab can make a TV that mutes when a finger is placed on one's lips. No one except EyeSight can recognise a gesture without taking the background into account, at least until the lawyers get to work. Read more...
German court says nein to Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent
Apple's slide-to-unlock patent has been ruled invalid by a German court because it's not really a "technological innovation" in the eyes of European patent law.
The Bundespatentgericht (federal patent court) in Munich ruled that the famous patent is invalid because European law doesn't allow for the patenting of software that doesn't represent a "technical solution to a technical problem", the Frankfurter Allgemeine (translated with the help of Google) reported. Read more...
Microsoft scores victory in German patent fight with Motorola
Google-owned Motorola Mobility is infringing a Microsoft patent related to text input, a lower regional court in Munich decided on Thursday. The verdict will result in a sales ban on some phones and Motorola will also be liable for damages if an expected appeal is unsuccessful, the court said.
For Microsoft, the verdict in Munich -- which is related to patent EP1040406, which describes a method for handling communication between a keyboard and an application -- is a victory in a series of infringement cases against Motorola in Germany.
"We're pleased this decision builds on previous rulings in Germany that have already found Motorola is broadly infringing Microsoft's intellectual property. We will continue to enforce injunctions against Motorola products in Germany and hope Motorola will join other Android device makers by taking a license to Microsoft's patented inventions," Microsoft said in an emailed statement. Read more...
Samsung wants Galaxy Tab ban lifted in the U.S. after Apple patent verdict
Samsung Electronics asked a Californian court on Sunday to lift a preliminary ban on sales of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S., after a jury found that Samsung does not infringe on an Apple design patent. Samsung also said it wants Apple to pay damages for lost sales.
Apple had alleged that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed on its U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889, but in a decision that otherwise went largely in Apple's favor, a California District Court jury decided on Friday that it did not. However, the jury also decided that the South Korean company must pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages because its smartphones and tablets infringed on several of Apple's other patents. Read more...
Apple, Samsung begin battle for billions in US patent smackdown
Apple and Samsung's tit-for-tat patent posturing will finally come to a head in the US today, as jury selection starts on a trial that could kill a massive audience for Samsung stuff, and result in a win (or loss) of billions of dollars for either side.
The last lines of the battle were drawn over the weekend as Judge Lucy Koh overruled Samsung's objections to opening Apple slides featuring images of Steve Jobs.
The Korean firm said that the "gratuitous images have no evidentiary value and have been asserted in order to turn the trial into a popularity contest", but the judge didn't agree. She said that all five of the slides with the Jobsian visage would be allowed because they were relevant to the iPhone or iPad design patents.
The rest of Samsung's slide objections and Apple's oppositions to Samsung's slides were given a more or less even mix of winners and losers and there's no more time for any dickering before the trial starts today. Read more...
Watch out, Google: Apple gets patent for wearable device
Google is already getting some stiff competition in the race to develop a wearable computer. Apple on Tuesday was awarded a U.S. patent for a head-mounted display device that's designed to project an image in front of a user's eyes, creating an "enhanced viewing experience." The Apple patent notes that the device could focus on "augmented reality" by using a see-through image imposed upon a real-world view.
That sounds a lot like a feature Google is touting in its new computerized glasses technology, dubbed Google Glass. At Google's annual Google I/O developer conference last week, Sergey Brin, a company co-founder, showed off a prototype of the Android-based glasses, which are designed to have a processor, memory, GPS sensor, cameras, microphone and speaker. Brin pointed out that the Google glasses are expected to have a display screen that sits just above one of the user's eyes so it doesn't impede his vision. Read more...
Apple patent may foretell an end to iPhone autocorrect Tourette’s
An Apple patent application just published by the US Patent Office shows that the masterminds of Cupertino have figured out (or hope to figure out) a cunning way to work out what words you're going to tap into your little Jesus mobe before you type it.
The US Patent Office has not yet granted the patent, but in accordance with its policy of publishing patents after a certain amount of time has elapsed since their submission (this dates from Dec 2010), it has unveiled the Cupertino application titled: "Combining timing and geometry information for typing correction" . Read more...
Google CEO Page returns to stand in Oracle trial
Google CEO Larry Page returned to the witness stand Wednesday in Oracle's patent and copyright case against the Internet search leader over its popular Android operating system for phones and tablet computers.
Page sported a suit and a tie, a departure from his usual casual attire. The Oracle lawyer questioning him was David Boies, who had gone after Bill Gates in the federal government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. Read more...
Samsung wins round in long legal fight with Apple
Samsung Electronics Co won a round of its bruising global patent fight with Apple Inc on Friday when an Australian court lifted a ban on the sale of its Galaxy tablet computer in time for the busy Christmas shopping season.
But the South Korean firm's triumph in a Sydney courtroom was tempered by a setback the previous day in Paris, where another court rejected its bid to block sales of Apple's iPhone 4S in France.
Apple and Samsung have been embroiled in some 30 legal cases in 10 countries since April, as they jostle for the top spot in the booming smartphone and tablet markets.
The Australian High Court ruling allows Samsung to offer the device to Australian shoppers for the final weeks of the key Christmas shopping season and came a week after a U.S. court denied Apple's plea to ban Galaxy phones and tablets in the country. Read more...
Apple patent shows ideas for crack-resistant iPhone airbags
Good news for the Donald LeBuhns of the world, newly uncovered patents filed by Apple show the company has been thinking about upping durability for portables. Future iOS devices may even be getting little airbags installed to prevent your precious mobile electronics from shattering on the first drop.
The patent was apparently filed in 2010′s Q2, and dug up by Pattently Apple who says that one of the patent inventors, Stephen Lynch, worked on the iPod touch and inductive charging projects. Read more...
Kodak: It’s Time To Go Invisible
Kodak, let us admit, is doomed. Founded over a century ago, it has dominated film for as long as film has existed, but now that film is on the verge of ceasing to exist, they have very little to dominate. They’re short on cash and while they deny plans to file for bankruptcy, many question whether they will have the luxury of choice a few years from now.
My first preference for the preservation of this company would be for them to sell off their patents and focus on film until they’re buried by progress. That’d be Kodak going out with its boots on, so to speak. But I doubt that’s going to happen.
What needs to happen instead is Kodak needs to abandon any pretense of being a household word. They’ve had a good run — for an entire century their name has been synonymous with film. But it will never be as recognizable again. So why throw money away on an entire division creating low-margin, unoriginal devices that are going to be obsolete in a few months and duplicated by pirate OEMs anyway? No, Kodak needs to go invisible. Read more...
Apple sued over Mac OS X ‘quick boot’
A lawsuit has accused Apple of violating a patent describing a means of "quickly booting a computer system".
Late last week, an outfit calling itself Operating Systems Solutions filed suit in the Middle District of Florida, claiming that Apple infringes its patent with Mac OS X. As pointed out by Patently Apple, the patent in question – RE840,092 – was originally granted to LG Electronics.
The patent describes a method for quickly booting a personal computer system using information that was previously saved to hard disk. This information includes data from memory and the status of devices attached to the system, and it hinges on a POST routine. Read more...
Lawsuit aimed at Apple’s Mac OS may be Android battle by proxy, says expert
A patent lawsuit aimed at Apple could be the latest shot in the ongoing battle between that company and Google's Android mobile operating system, a patent expert said today.
In a filing with a federal court in Florida, OSS (Operating Systems Solutions) claimed that Apple's Mac OS X operating system and its Mac personal computers infringe on a patent that describes a "method for fast booting a computer system."
The lawsuit, which was first reported by the Patently Apple blog, is notable because it was originally assigned to LG Electronics, the South Korean company that makes smartphones and tablets powered by Google's Android. Read more...
ITC won’t review Apple-Kodak patent decision
The U.S. International Trade Commission has terminated an investigation into a complaint by Apple that Eastman Kodak infringed on some of its patents in its cameras.
The ITC said on Monday that it decided not to review a May 12 ruling by an ITC administrative law judge that Kodak did not infringe Apple's patents. Read more...
Is it risky to relly on WebM?
WebM Community Cross-License Initiative introduced to safeguard WebM against patent problems
In the ongoing spat regarding web video, Microsoft asked earlier this year "Who bears the liability and risk for consumers, businesses, and developers until the legal system resolves the intellectual property issues?" As far as H.264 rival WebM goes, that's now seemingly the organisations behind the new WebM Community Cross-License Administration. The CCL has 17 founder members, including Google, Opera, Mozilla, Samsung and Cisco, and Google is inviting further organisations to join, as long as they "agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL". Read more...