• A New York Times article examining the mobile world’s current patent landscape includes some vital history on how Apple’s founder suddenly became obsessed with filing patents, and what’s happened at Apple since.
• We’ve already heard that Apple has begun production for a smaller iPad. Now comes a report of just how many it’s ordering: 10 million units right off the bat, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s a pretty good indication Apple’s planning on selling a bunch of these.
• In order to price an iPad mini competitively, it’s been reported the device won’t have a Retina display like the larger iPad. But All Things D quotes an analyst today who’s been poking around Apple’s factories in China and says the smaller device does not “skimp on the aesthetics” and could even “outshine” the larger iPad’s design.
• Fortune argues for why the iPod — whose sales are shrinking every quarter — still matters.
• Good news for iPhone 5 owners: Apple is reportedly beginning to clear a backlog of Lightning adapter orders. MacRumors says shipments of the backordered items have begun.

Image courtesy of Flickr user opensourceway

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Lower-level representatives of the company have apparently been in “ongoing” talks, but Page and Cook spoke last week via telephone and plan to talk again “in the coming weeks.”

But talking isn’t action. It’s great that they have each other’s phone numbers. But what could these talks actually mean for the bad blood between the companies, the claims of “theft” and the recent lawsuit filed by Google-owned Motorola against Apple? Here’s what Reuters’ source is saying:

One possible scenario under consideration could be a truce involving disputes over basic features and functions in Google’s Android mobile software, one source said. But it’s unclear whether Page and Cook are discussing a broad settlement of the various disputes between the two companies – most of which involve the burgeoning mobile computing area – or are focused on a more limited set of issues.

The impetus for these talks was reportedly Apple’s landmark victory in its Samsung patent case reached by a California jury last Friday. And it’s obvious why: Apple hasn’t sued Google directly for infringing on iOS design and utility patents with Android, but a jury found very easily that Google’s most important and most successful Android customer, Samsung, did.

Still, the possible effects of the verdict reach much further than Samsung. On Monday morning a lot of post-trial analysis focused on what Apple’s victory over Samsung meant for Google, and for good reason: Google’s Android was a huge factor in allowing smartphone and mobile device makers to easily imitate the iPhone, and eventually the iPad, with inexpensive, ready-made mobile software.

Apple has responded to the invention and subsequent proliferation of Android not just by vowing to destroy Android, but by taking steps to avoid reliance on any Google products or software in iOS. In addition to building its own Maps app in place of default Google Maps, Apple is also planning to drop the YouTube app from iOS. It’ll be interesting to see if any resolution between the two companies reverses any of Apple’s decisions on these fronts.

Then again, Cook also “talked” with Samsung’s CEO before and during the recently concluded trial — and we know how much good that did.

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While Samsung spectacularly lost the patent fight over smartphone design and features, it still possesses the strongest patent portfolio in tech when it comes to mobile infrastructure IP. Even as it vows to challenge last week’s $1.05 billion jury verdict, the company is also brandishing a set of patents it could assert against Apple. According to the Korea Times:

Samsung confirmed that it will immediately sue Apple if the latter releases products using advanced long-term evolution (LTE) mobile technology. LTE has been emerging as the top standard in the global mobile industry.

Apple does not currently make any LTE-capable iPhones — though that is very likely to change in about a month or so when the new iPhone is likely to be released. Apple does, however, already make an LTE-capable device: the newest iPad, which comes with the option to add AT&T or Verizon 4G wireless service.

So why the sudden threat now, when Apple already has an LTE iPad? Samsung has one of the strongest patent portfolios when it comes to mobile. It owns more mobile communications patents in the U.S. and Europe combined than anyone. When it comes to mobile infrastructure in particular, Samsung is also the leader in patents, according to Chetan Sharma Consulting. What’s not clear is how powerful its LTE patent trove is.

It could be that Samsung is fishing around for a cross-licensing deal with Apple. In other words: instead of continuing the long and expensive appeals battle with Apple and risking having its devices possibly banned from the U.S. (and potentially having to pay triple the $1.05 billion damages for willful infringement), Samsung could try to coerce Apple into a truce. This would involve offering to license LTE patents to Apple while Samsung in turn would agree to license some of Apple’s patents covering the iPhone and iPad.

Cross-licensing is a fairly common way to end patent disputes — Apple has such a deal with Microsoft; Facebook and Yahoo signed one recently. It wasn’t one that Samsung was interested in before the trial; Apple already offered Samsung a cross-licensing deal before the current suit was ever filed, but Samsung did not agree to the (very pricey) terms. But now? It has a billion reasons — and perhaps a little leverage with a possible LTE iPhone — to consider one now.

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Jobs’ incendiary comments about Android are, by now, famous, including “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong” and “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Samsung, for obvious reasons, wants his quotes to be admitted. According to Reuters, which was present at the hearing on Wednesday:

In seeking to introduce Jobs’ statements in court, Samsung argued in a filing that the thermonuclear quote “speaks to Apple’s bias, improper motives and its lack of belief in its own claims in that they are a means to an end, namely the destruction of Android.”

Koh, who’s already issued an injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, disagreed, saying, ”I really don’t think this is a trial about Steve Jobs.”

It’s interesting how Koh’s response deviates from the answer Apple counsel got in another, similar patent trial. In the Apple v. Motorola case (that was ultimately tossed) Apple made the same request of Judge Richard Posner last month, and he rejected it, making the statements fair game. Posner did not offer an explanation as to why he thought the quotes were relevant. Since that case never made it to trial, we don’t know if Jobs’ comments were actually a distraction from the case at hand.

But it’s notable that he and Koh weren’t that far apart on the Apple founder being a potential distraction. His reputation clearly is a factor to consider. Posner also warned Apple’s lawyers not ”to insinuate to the jury that this case is a popularity contest and jurors should be predisposed to render a verdict for Apple if they like Apple products or the Apple company or admire Steve Jobs.”

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Apple’s proposed new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

• Apple’s proposed “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino has earned praise for looking as sleek and futuristic as one of Apple’s own gadgets. But it’s missing an opportunity, writes Think Progress, which has some suggestions for how the new suburban Apple campus doesn’t have to embrace typical California sprawl, but could be more walkable, urban and environmentally friendly.
• When Apple releases its new desktop OS, some older Macs won’t be compatible with it. Ars Technica has the list — see if yours is one of them.
• If you follow Apple closely you know it’s a party to a high number of lawsuits. But how many, exactly? Bloomberg has a helpful graphic showing how the iPhone and iPad maker is involved in 60 percent of the mobile patent suits going on today.
• This might be completely nutty, but it’s an interesting thought: could Apple one day find itself making robots for people’s homes? The Street reports that one analyst thinks that in about a decade it could — and points to Siri as an important first step.
• For a detailed update on the latest iPad Mini, NFC iPhone and other Apple rumors, Fast Company has you covered.

Image from Cupertino.org

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Sprint originally planned to have the new $199 handset available on May 18, but the devices were held up in U.S. Customs as they infringed upon an Apple patent regarding actions taken when clicking on a link; such as clicking to call a phone number, for example. HTC eventually modified the software on the EVO 4G LTE to allow users to manually associate apps with link actions. As a result, the devices cleared Customs last week.

The entire situation is a shame for Sprint, HTC and Sprint customers. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the last we’ll see phones — or tablets, even — held up for sale due to alleged patent infringements. The smartphone market has matured enough that most of the larger innovations have been made and now device makers are limited to smaller software tweaks and aggressively protecting whatever unique intellectual property they have.

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“I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it.” Cook said, in response to a question during Apple’s earnings conference call regarding reports that the company is considering settlements. “We just want people to invent their own stuff.”

Apple’s decision to sue Google’s Android partners–HTC, Motorola, and Samsung–over alleged violations of Apple patents for the iPhone and iPad was driven in part by emotion, as detailed in Walter Issacson’s biography of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, who died last October.

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion [at the time] in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said in 2010. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

However, as I pointed out last October, Cook is not Jobs. Apple has fought valiantly in courtrooms around the world against Android vendors, and has at times appeared to have the upper hand, but as of late April 2012, it has little to show for two years of combat. Apple has a mixed record at the International Trade Commission, and is tied up in other courtrooms over procedural questions and endless hearings.

“I would highly prefer to settle than to battle,” Cook said, but don’t expect Apple to settle easily. Cook also said that he didn’t want Apple to be the inventor for the world, and demanding steep royalties from those which it has sued could discourage others from thinking about following Apple into a market without innovations of their own.

But the sad truth is that our patent system is hopelessly broken, filled with patents of questionable value on all sides that can turn any patent dispute into a stalemate as major corporations buy patents from struggling ones to hurl at each other. With another ridiculous quarter just entered into in the history books, Apple is clearly not suffering any competitive effects from those companies whom Jobs believed stole Apple’s inventions.

It seems Cook would prefer to focus on keeping Apple’s remarkable business on track, and if he finds a way to wind down the mobile patent wars, it could be the smartest thing he does in his first full year as Apple’s CEO.

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There’s a lot more than needs to happen before Apple will really start to worry, but it would have likely preferred a different outcome. The preliminary ruling involves a Motorola patent on Wi-Fi, which an ITC judge decided covered some aspect of the iPhone according to Bloomberg.

The ITC generally rules more quickly on patent matters than the pace of lawsuits moving through the regular court system, and so has overseen quite a few disputes over the last several years involving mobile patents. The ITC doesn’t have the power to award damages but it does have the power to bar imports if they violate a US patent.

Apple has now been on both ends of an ITC ruling, winning a final ruling last year against HTC that had little actual effect: the ITC delayed the implementation of its ruling, and the HTC then deployed a workaround that bypassed the patented technology very quickly after the ruling emerged.

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Late Wednesday, Samsung filed court documents in California, claiming Apple is infringing on eight of its patents. The action is a response to a February claim originally filed by Apple that Samsung was infringing on two of its patents that cover, among other things, spelling and auto-correct on mobile devices.

The eight patents named in Samsung’s counterclaim cover: “performing non-scheduled transmission in a mobile communication system for supporting an enhanced uplink data channel,” “signaling control information of uplink packet data service in mobile communication system,” volume control for external audio reproduction, multimedia syncing, data display, virtual keyboards, recording and reproducing digital images and speech and remote video transmission.

These technologies covered in Samsung’s claims aren’t limited to mobile devices, which has largely defined the patent litigation between the two companies. Rather, Samsung is effectively targeting  Apple’s entire product line. The technologies named are found among all models of Apple’s iPhones, iPads, iPods, Mac computers, Apple TV, iCloud and iTunes.

And as patent blogger Florian Mueller notes, two of the eight patents are considered FRAND (standards-essential, and must be offered to competitors at fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing terms). Five of them were patents Samsung itself applied for, while the other three were purchased by Samsung from others. This is notable because the European Union has already begun investigating whether Samsung has been abusing FRAND patents, by overcharging on license fees to competitors — like Apple — on technologies that are necessary to any mobile device.

Samsung filed its response claims in the same California court where the two companies just agreed to arrange a settlement conference within the next 90 days. For those hoping there will be an end to the patent bickering between these two partners/enemies, don’t hold your breath — Samsung, at least, doesn’t appear to be in a settling kind of mood.

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Patent blog FOSS Patents says the two actions are unrelated, and that Apple removing some older products comes because Motorola moved to enforce an important patent victory it won back in December. It was then that a judge ruled that Motorola had a patent on a ”method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system.”

The result is that only older devices like the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and 3G iPads were removed. Why not the iPhone 4S? It could be because the iPhone 4S has a chip from Qualcomm. The affected models have Infineon chips. Qualcomm chips could be safe for Apple in this case, according to FOSS Patents, if we assume “that Motorola and Qualcomm have a cross-license agreement in place (just like Samsung and Qualcomm do)” which would mean that “Apple is covered by extension, as a result of what is called patent exhaustion (a patent owner gets paid only once for the same use of a patent in a product).”

Perhaps more worrisome for some Apple customers who own the iPhone 4S in Germany right now is an injunction that affects iCloud users who want push notifications on their phones. The ruling affects any Apple devices that can receive push email notifications from iCloud or the earlier version, MobileMe. While neither service will get shut down as a result of the ruling, Apple will likely have to come up with a workaround for its iCloud/MobileMe customers there.

Apple won’t be letting this one go. As a company representative told PaidContent in a bit of subtle snarkiness on Friday, “Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the court’s decision.”

Update: It looks like the same German court may have suspended the injunction on the older 3G iPhones and iPads and they will be on sale again in “a matter of hours.” Apple told AllThingsD just now: “All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly. Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

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