The initial ruling, however, whittles away most of the other patent claims of Microsoft against Motorola. The judge found that Motorola did not infringe on six Microsoft patents. The trade commission will now review the finding and issue a final ruling in the coming months.

Microsoft claimed victory in a statement:

We are pleased with the ITC’s initial determination finding Motorola violated four claims of a Microsoft patent. As Samsung, HTC, Acer and other companies have recognized, respecting others’ intellectual property through licensing is the right path forward.

But Motorola also said it also won in the finding, arguing that Microsoft’s case was reduced to just one patent, Motorola General Counsel Scott Offer told AllThingsD.

We view it as a huge win for us. They had originally nine patents in their first case. They are down to one patent effectively

The remaining patent concerns the way in which a device is able to schedule an appointment based on a meeting request using email addresses, contact information and calendar syncing on various devices. Offer told AllThingsD that Motorola is reviewing its option with regard to the remaining patent.

If Motorola, which is being bought by Google, can prevail with the full commission or can limit the claims to single patent, which it can then work around, it will have stood up to Microsoft and its campaign to extract licensing agreements from various Android devices makers. Microsoft has lined up deals with a number of Android makers including Samsung and HTC. It has sued Motorola, Barnes & Noble and others who have resisted striking deals. It’s still possible for Microsoft to get a different ruling from the commission or have some of its invalidated patents put back into play.

Android still faces a lot of attacks from patent holders such Apple and Oracle. British Telecom was the latest to sue Google on Monday after it apparently was unable to get a licensing deal from the search giant. It’s still unclear whether Android can withstand all the legal challenges, but so far, it appears possible for it to work around some of these early defeats. Whether that continues is an open question. Microsoft has about 30 patents in action against Motorola so this is still just early days.

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Details of the lawsuit were uncovered by analyst Florian Müller of the FOSS Patents blog — who follows the legalities of open source products.

He points out that this filing is the end result of a failed attempt by BT to get Google to pay licensing fees on six patents covering wireless information and location services:

“BT filed its lawsuit on Thursday with the United States District Court for the District of Delaware… BT seeks damages — even triple damages for willful and deliberate infringement — as well as an injunction. The complaint suggests that Google refused to pay.”

BT has since issued a statement confirming the action, which Google has in turn chosen to rebut by suggesting that the case has no foundation, the claims are “without merit” and that the Californian company “will defend vigorously against them”. The truth, as is always the case with patent disputes, is lost somewhere in towering mountains of paperwork and documentation that will take company lawyers months for to sift through.

It’s easy to see BT’s move as just another drop in an ocean of disputes surrounding Android, coming as it does after similar suits from the likes of Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and eBay against Google itself and against manufacturers who sell Android-based phones.

But make no mistake, the British telco’s move does add to the pressure mounting on Google.

Google started with a buccaneering attitude towards mobile patents, motivated partly by its desire to crack open a lucrative new market dominated by long-standing rivals and partly by a stance against ludicrous software patents and patchy enforcement.

But every time the search giant finds itself embroiled in another case, it edges away from its attempt to challenge the patent system and toward being part of it. Indeed, Google’s own chief counsel Kent Walker said earlier this year that despite the company’s opposition to junk patents, it was starting to take an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach to the whole situation:

The patent system should reward those who create the most useful innovations for society, not those who stake bogus claims or file dubious lawsuits. It’s for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole.

But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services.

Since then, of course, Google embarked on a $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility (a deal which has yet to close) which was chiefly motivated by its need to acquire defensive patents.

Google is slowly being maneuvered into a position where it’s no longer going to be a challenger to the system, but a major mobile patent holder and licensee in its own right. And of course the only reason it can get to that position is because it’s used its muscle from the rest of the business to subsidize its entry into mobile.

Using its dominance in search to become dominant in mobile isn’t exactly a Robin Hood move — whatever its motives. Hence the FTC’s antitrust investigation into its activities.

Sometimes there are fights where you wish everybody could lose.

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First to file is coming

According to Bernard Codd, an intellectual property partner with McDermott Will & Emery, the proposed “first to file” provision “would be a fundamental change to patent law.” The U.S. is among the only developed countries that clings to the “first to invent” system, he explained, which tends to inspire litigation over who actually invented a particular product or system. Under a first to file system, the first party to file is the presumed inventor, which creates what some refer to as a race to file.

Not everyone is happy about this likely change, with opponents claiming it unfairly favors large companies that can more easily afford the relatively expensive and complex process of filing patent applications. However, Codd thinks this characterization of the first to file system isn’t entirely accurate. Ultimately, he said, it means “you can’t afford to sit on ideas anymore,” regardless who you are, because if the guy across the street files first, you get nothing.

It might actually end up leveling the playing field for small businesses, according to him. Large companies often go through elongated processes when filing patent applications, Codd explained, and they’ll have to adapt to the new system. He added that there’s a tactic called the provisional patent application that should become a lot more popular. Codd thinks provisional applications will be a godsend for small inventors because they can draft and file a provisional application in a day and then have a year to undertake the laborious patent-application process.

Provisional patent applications are less formal — and less expensive — than official patent applications and give applicants one year to convert the proposed system into an official patent application. The contents of provisional applications are kept secret until the formal application is filed, and provisional patent holders are given the priority date of their provisional applications rather than that of their formal application, at least for the contents included in the provisional application.

Some protection against patent trolls

Of importance to the technology world, said Codd, is a proposed unlimited deadline for seeking post-grant review of business method patents. Business method patents generally cover software as well, as software is an intangible invention and the actual code is protected under copyright law. The line is blurry as to what types of business methods or software is patentable, except that abstract or strictly algorithmic processes generally are not. How those terms are applied, though, varies on a case-by-case basis.

There’s a fairly strong movement among technology professionals, and even a few members of the Supreme Court, who believe software patents should be abolished altogether. They believe software patents stifle innovation because the broadness of software patents leads to lots of potential unknowing infringements even from across a diverse pool of software developers.

With an unlimited deadline for seeking review, parties could question the validity of a particular business method patent whenever they happen to discover a potential issue. Post-grant review for all types of patents is presently limited to nine months after the application is made public.

The only point of contention between the House and Senate patent-reform bills on this issue is around the timing of the sunset provision, or the length of time before this new provision expires. Whatever that ends up being, Codd said, Congress will likely extend the unlimited post-grant review of business method patents if they end up being invalidated more often than other patents while the provision is in effect.

Codd said there was talk about provisions for cracking down on so-called patent trolls and patent litigation, but no such provisions made it into either bill. Probably, he said, that’s because “one person’s troll is another person’s hard-working small inventor” who’s being ripped off by large companies.

That stance certainly has merit. Although patent trolls give patent litigation a bad reputation, too high a standard for infringement or overly harsh penalties for losing a case could make small companies or individual inventors hesitant about enforcing their patents.

Interestingly, though, one class of software inventors do appear likely to feel some sting from the likely legislation. Codd said both bills prohibit patents for software claiming to find tax savings.

Why all the hubbub about patents?

Patents have been the talk of the tech world lately, especially in the white-hot mobile space. Oracle and Google are embroiled in litigation over Android; HTC just sued Apple again; Apple purchased a large cache of Nortel patents; and Google just bought Motorola Mobility, ostensibly to get its hands on Motorola’s wealth of mobile phone patents.

Codd thinks there are several factors driving this activity, but it all comes down to money. Patent litigation is expensive, he explained, and the consequences can be even more expensive, so companies in big-money areas like mobile phones are girding their loins and preparing for battle.

Companies not selling products can make money by licensing patents and suing infringers, and companies afraid of getting sued can snatch up their own collection of patents to either defend against infringement claims or to threaten countersuits, he said.

It seems unlikely that new patent laws will have too great an effect on existing litigation, but a first to file system and post-grant review of business method patents could spur a lot of activity going forward as companies race to get priority and try their hands at invalidating longstanding patents.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Alexandre Dulaunoy.

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On July 15 Apple won an initial victory at the U.S. International Trade Commission when a judge ruled that HTC had infringed on two of Apple’s patents that appear to be related to HTC’s use of the Android operating system. A full commission will decide in December whether to confirm the ruling and potentially ban the sale of HTC products in the U.S. On July 1, the ITC also ruled in favor of S3 Graphics, saying that Apple infringed on its patents. HTC, less than a week later, bought S3 in a bid to give it more patent leverage.

“We are open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable,” Yung said. “On and off we’ve had discussions with Apple, even before the initial determination (against HTC) came out.”

Now settlements and cross-licensing deals are usually the norm in patent fights and it’s not unreasonable for HTC to assume that it can win some kind of deal from Apple. But I think it’s presumptuous that Apple is interested in following the normal rules of protocol in this case. Unlike Microsoft, which seems more than happy to force Android licensees to pay over royalties to use its patents, Apple seems more intent on stopping the use of its IP. Only in situations where it absolutely has to, such as the recent settlement with Nokia , will it strike a deal. And that was against a company with a huge trove of patents.

With HTC’s recent S3 pick-up, it will have more leverage against Apple, but it still doesn’t have a strong patent position. And it’s unclear what Apple will do. It could try to work around S3′s patents or buy chips from manufacturers that already have a license from S3. Or as patent expert Florian Mueller points out, perhaps Apple just offers a partial license that doesn’t completely cover HTC:

I could imagine a situation in which Apple might agree on a partial cross-license that would grant Apple access to all of HTC’s and S3′s patents while HTC would get access to only some of Apple’s patents: maybe just enough so that HTC can at least continue to sell Android-based products of some kind, but those products could be limited and there might be substantial degradations of the user experience.

If Apple comes to the negotiating table, that to me sounds like the most likely outcome. Apple is not interested in money at this point, and it’s only affected by patent strength. It has a lot to protect in the iPhone and iPad, which are now its dominant businesses, and so it will do whatever it takes to protect its edge. The fact that it plunked down $2.6 billion for the Nortel patents shows that it’s serious about bulking up even more on that front and you have to wonder what other patents it can toss into the HTC fight if it wants more leverage. It already filed a second complaint against HTC with the ITC and who knows, it could pile on more if it looks closely enough.

“We want people to invent their own stuff,” said Apple COO Tim Cook, during last week’s quarterly earnings call. “We’re going to make sure we defend our portfolio from everyone.”

A complete cross-licensing deal to end a patent fight is a last resort for Apple, I imagine. What Apple wants to do is either stop these Android devices that infringe on its IP from even hitting the market or force them to undergo crippling work arounds that degrade the experience. It’s not looking for a payout. So unless HTC can bring more heat to bear with the S3 patents and Apple can’t figure a way around them, I don’t see Apple making a big effort to talk at this point. Yes, they’ve chatted before. And they may talk some more. But the question is how cooperative will Apple be. My guess: not very.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Pfau

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It shows Apple is keeping up the pressure on Android manufacturers and is intent on pursuing its claims, even in the face of setbacks. The ITC staff recently recommended denying Apple’s first complaint against HTC, though a final ruling is expected Aug. 5. The ITC has 30 days to decide whether to investigate Apple’s latest complaint.

The latest skirmish raises the stakes for HTC in particular and Android manufacturers in general. This is, according to patent expert Florian Mueller, the 48th lawsuit or complaint against an Android maker and there’s little sign that the claims won’t keep coming. As we’ve discussed recently, there is a full court press on against Android being pushed by companies like Apple, Microsoft and Oracle that could have serious implications on Android if the separate intellectual property claims start to pile up.

The dispute between Apple and HTC has taken on a new dimension with HTC’s announced purchase of S3 Graphics. The ITC determined that Apple infringes on patents owned by S3, which helps improve HTC’s previously weaker IP standing. HTC has also countered Apple’s complaint last year with a case of its own with the ITC that sought to ban iPhone, iPad and iPod touch sales. But with HTC releasing more devices, including the Flyer tablet, it has given Apple another chance to assert new patent claims against the Taiwanese manufacturer.

Apple may be giving up on its first complaint and is hoping to do more damage with a second case against HTC. Or it could be that Apple needs to keep up the pressure in light of the S3 ruling. But either way, it means the patents wars show no signs of letting up, and Apple in particular could be ramping up to go after more Android makers.

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So now the winners, which also included Sony, EMC and Ericsson, have access to a cluster of patents that cover a wide spectrum of communications and Internet services, from wireless and 4G to data networking, semiconductors and social networking. RIM came forward and said it paid $770 million for its share of the bid while Ericsson has said it contributed $340 million. Nortel said the deal must still pass Canadian and U.S. Court approval, which will occur at a joint hearing scheduled for July 11.

The deal represents a big set back for Google, which initially pursued the patents and won a stalking horse bid for the IP, setting the low bar on the auction at $900 million. The company had said at the time that while it was looking to enact long-term patent reform, it was bidding to shore up its smaller patent portfolio and provide a disincentive for others to sue the search giant.

The mobile industry is currently in a state of patent warfare, perhaps best likened to the Cold War strategy of building up an arsenal so huge that to attack it assures mutual destruction. In this game, Google’s lackluster patent portfolio makes it a small player whose “do no evil” motto makes it seem naive at best and weak at worst.

Competitors and other companies have sought to capitalize on Google’s weaker IP position. Oracle has filed a copyright and patent infringement case against Google for its use of Java in the Android operating system. Other mobile competitors, notably Apple, have gone after Android manufacturers for their use of disputed IP. Microsoft this week announced three Android manufacturers have agreed to pay patent licensing fees for their use of Android.

Obtaining Nortel’s patents would have provided more cover for Google and its partners. And it would have signaled how robust a defense Google was prepared to mount on behalf of Android and Chrome and other products. But now, if the auction proceeds, Google could face even more of a squeeze without the cache of patents it can offer for cross-licensing deals. Some, like IP expert Florian Mueller, have already called Android a “suit magnet” and that moniker might be even more apt now. And Google’s promise of a free operating system continues to get undermined as more and more manufacturers now feel the need to strike licensing agreements.

Google said in a statement to Bloomberg: “This outcome is disappointing for anyone who believes that open innovation benefits users and promotes creativity and competition. We will keep working to reduce the current flood of patent litigation that hurts both innovators and consumers.”

Google is aware that we’re in an era of patent wars as competing companies look to establish their ground in the exploding mobile space. Apple’s recent deal with Nokia showed the environment is heating up and Nokia is likely out for more targets after extracting money from Apple. Google can hope for patent reform and that may eventually come. But for now, it needs more muscle and it lost out on a big chance to beef up in the Nortel auction.

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In a blog post Monday, Google said it won the stalking horse bid for Nortel’s patents. That means Google’s bid is the low bar now for other bidders on those patents. Nortel filed for bankruptcy in January 2009 and has since sold of many of its assets. However, it had a rich patent portfolio, especially as it relates to the Long Term Evolution networking technology that many mobile operators are deploying.

Nortel owns important intellectual property on two key methodologies: OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access) and MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output). The owner of these licenses could become a major player in the LTE markets. By Nortel’s estimates, they were worth $1 per LTE device sold in license fees, though some analysts disagree. The sale of those patents had brought interest from Research In Motion, Apple and others. Holding several essential patents for an underlying technology standard can help in two primary ways: It can offer royalty licences to the patent owner, or it can offer a certain level of freedom to move in a market thanks to cross-licensing deals. Google writes:

But as things stand today, one of a company’s best defenses against this kind of litigation is (ironically) to have a formidable patent portfolio, as this helps maintain your freedom to develop new products and services. Google is a relatively young company, and although we have a growing number of patents, many of our competitors have larger portfolios given their longer histories.

Google sounds like it’s waking up kind of late to this patent race, which really started in earnest during the first part of the 2000s. It most likely started paying attention as it entered the highly contested and patent-cluttered mobile market. Nortel’s LTE patents would have the most influence within the carrier equipment and semiconductor world, but could also give Google cachet among mobile operators deploying the technology.

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Wowd actually only filed for the patents in late October, but it paid extra for fast-track examinations and just got word they will be officially issued May 11. I spoke today with Wowd founder and CTO Boris Agapiev, who is named on the patents, and CEO Mark Drummond.

The first patent (#7,716,205) covers a method of ranking web pages based on the way people use them. Wowd calls this EdgeRank, after Google’s PageRank, and says it gives a search engine the ability to weigh anonymized information about where users click to go next from a web page. Wowd developed the technology to use for real-time and especially social search, so it could filter results based on the way a certain demographic of people has responded to them. The company plans to order search results for users after identifying, in anonymous fashion (to whatever extent that’s possible!), which other searchers have the most in common, and what they were likely to choose. It’s kind of like behavioral tracking for search — with the idea that counting these signals in a connected system will scale better than asking users to individually give pages a thumbs up or thumbs down.

The second patent (#7,716,179) is not search-specific. This covers Wowd’s distributed file system, which acts as a massive virtual machine, storing and delivering data in a distributed hash table. Like Skype, or other P2P networks, Wowd operates on a network of software installed on its users’ computers, contributing back their own visits to public web pages. The technology Agapiev developed enables Wowd to coordinate and communicate on that network quickly enough to compute real-time searches. Drummond said that when Wowd’s data center recently went down, few users saw an interruption in service because they were able to support each others’ queries. “We made ourselves irrelevant,” he said. Agapiev added he could see this method being used by CDNs and other startups needing to scale up quickly.

Drummond said Wowd doesn’t plan to do much with the patents besides “Demonstrate to our investors that we’re saying is true. This is hard, this is unique technology.”

What’s ironic is that Wowd itself is not yet at the scale that necessitates this patented technology, as Agapiev readily admitted. Wowd has 70,000 nodes in use, and an index of tens of millions of web pages visited by its users, compared to Google’s tens of billions of crawled pages. The truth is that unless you make something as useful as Skype, people are unlikely to join your peer-to-peer software network out of the goodness of their hearts. But if the time should come that Wowd would need to scale, it’s ready.

If Verizon does plan to offer dynamic pricing, whereby what customers pay for compute time depends on how heavily the company’s cloud infrastructure is being utilized, that could be a good thing for the industry. Amazon in December launched spot pricing for its Elastic Compute Cloud service, and at the time Derrick Harris, a colleague at our GigaOM Pro research service, pointed out that while dynamic pricing was a good thing, Amazon’s huge market share meant that dynamic pricing without a major competitor (sub req’d) wouldn’t drive costs down quickly. Throwing Verizon into the mix could drive competition.

And given that Verizon would be going up against Amazon, perhaps its decision to patent the idea of dynamic pricing makes sense. After all it is Amazon that holds the infamous “1-Click” patent, which allows users to make purchases with just one click and which it used like a cudgel to beat Barnes and Noble at the online retailing game. Perhaps Verizon just didn’t want to be at the wrong end of the patent stick when it faced off against Amazon in the cloud.

If you’re an older computer user, you might remember Microsoft “Bob,” an attempt to provide a homey interface for Windows that launched in 1996 and was immediately reviled as both ugly and stupid (it had its 15th anniversary yesterday, as it turns out). And if you are somewhat younger, you might recall the Microsoft Office assistant known as “Clippy,” an animated paper clip that was supposed to help you with tasks but was really just irritating and was euthanized in 2001. Not content to have foisted those two train wrecks on the computer-using populace, Microsoft has been granted a patent for a virtual assistant called “Guardian Angel.”

Based on the description in the patent (which was originally filed in 2006), Guardian Angel sounds like someone took the idea behind Bob and Clippy and turned the dial up to 11. Now, instead of just trying to help you with simple tasks on your computer, Microsoft would like to help you eat properly, avoid a heart attack and even — apparently — tell better jokes. The patent documents describe it thus:

An intelligent personalized agent (e.g., guardian angel) monitors and evaluates a user’s environment to assist in decision-making processes on behalf of the user. The guardian angel can… take automated action on behalf of the user for various purposes (e.g., to compensate for memory loss, to remind a user to take medicine, to assist in social interactions by indicating whether the user has met an individual before, to gauge the appropriateness of jokes or comments given the demographics of the audience, etc.).

If you read further into the documents, however, it sounds like what Microsoft’s engineers would really like to create is a kind of omniscient robot protector, much like the all-knowing computer in the movie version of “I, Robot” (which — spoiler alert — featured a Gates-like billionaire whose creation turned on him and tried to enslave humanity).

For example, the monitoring component can take note of the number of conversations occurring in a room (and more specifically, a breakdown of the types of people in the room accompanied by a warning for dangerous persons, based on sex offender registration, FBI most wanted, etc.). The monitoring component sends relevant information for current or future decisions to the decision-making component that analyzes the information within the context of personal preference data stored in the user-attribute store in order to make a suggestion or implement a decision. Such decision is made consistent with helping the user, as well as avoiding situations where the user would be harmed.

If this Guardian Angel patent ever becomes reality, I’m picturing myself standing in front of my refrigerator, confronted by an unblinking red light and unable to open the doors: “Open the refrigerator doors, Guardian,” I ask. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” a voice says (even though my name isn’t Dave). “Eating that chocolate cake would be bad for your cholesterol. The Guardian Angel has destroyed the cake, just to be on the safe side.”

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Wireless Ink claims the two companies had to have known about the patent, the application for which was made public back in 2004, “given the time and resources defendants have invested in their desktop and mobile Web sites as well as their strategic importance,” Bloomberg quotes the complaint as saying. Facebook has said the suit is without merit and Google said it’s busy reviewing it.

Wireless Ink is reportedly seeking cash damages and an injunction against use of the technology. You’d think — if the patent is found valid — the company would license it out, given that mobile sign-ups are compelling, and increasingly so as handset browsers become better and social networking reaches into regions and demographics where PCs are less common.

Here’s the patent in question: “Method, apparatus and system for management of information content for enhanced accessibility over wireless communication networks.” The lawsuit, filed in New York, does not seem to have appeared yet online as a public court document.

Facebook and Google also like to register IP themselves; most recently, Facebook was awarded a patent for its news feed, and Google a patent for location-based advertising.

Image courtesy of Walknboston on Flickr.

The patent is particularly valuable because news-feed style communication has become pervasive since it was launched on Facebook. However, it’s not clear that there aren’t precedents for the technology; for instance, the social network Multiply.com had a similar interface for keeping track of friends’ actions before Facebook launched its own.

Facebook, which said in a statement it was “humbled” and “pleased” by the patent, may well choose not to enforce it. In fact, one of the more important social networking patents, from the early site Six Degrees, was bought by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Tribe.net/Zynga’s Mark Pincus explicitly to promote an open playing field for the sector by taking it away from people who might choose to enforce it in the courts. However Friendster, which was recently bought by a Malaysian company, made much of the fact that had obtained five U.S. social networking patents, at times using the patents to scare off the competition, at least in the press.

The core invention of the Facebook patent is as follows:

A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. In some embodiments, the method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items. The method further includes limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further includes displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers.

Here’s Facebook’s statement, provided by email:

The launch of News Feed in 2006 was a pivotal moment in Facebook¹s history
and changed the way millions of people consumed and discovered information
on the site. We¹re humbled by the growth and adoption of News Feed over time
and pleased with being awarded the patent.

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Please see the disclosure in my bio with regards to Facebook.

Meanwhile, Apple is applying for a patent on a similar concept: “Geographic location data is sent from a first device to a second device with a modified message to signal the presence of geographic location data associated with the message,” according to the filing made in June 2008.

It’s funny that both Apple and Palm (who share a love for rolling in the IP mud) think they can patent this concept — it seems like a fairly natural extension of location awareness, and it’s something companies have been trying to do for years. Google, for instance, has a beta feature of its Latitude product that alerts you when your friends are nearby. Maybe the only reason the idea seems novel is because none of these products have gone mainstream yet. But that doesn’t mean additional companies aren’t still setting out with the same concept. For instance, we received this pitch yesterday:

MOSION (pronounced [moh-shuh n] is the latest in real time location based social network for the smartphone. While many social networks aim to connect you with your friends, what about the people you do not know? Yes, those sitting across from you at this very moment!

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Google introduced an experimental feature back in May called Wonder Wheel that arranges related queries in a circle around a search term. When a user clicks, the display animates the shift to a new term and its related queries. Wonder Wheel is available for any search term but it’s somewhat hard to find; users must click on “show options” on a search results page and then pick it as a viewing option at the bottom of the page.

Quntura, founded in 2005, providers site search for some 4,500 online publishers for a subscription fee. Google has not yet replied to a request for comment on the matter. Update: Google said it had no comment. Do you think Google infringes? Do you think this concept should be patentable? Read the patent here and compare the images below yourself.

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Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page.

For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

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Vonage was ordered to pay $66 million to Verizon, and it recently settled its case with Sprint for around $80 million. AT&T, apparently has been trying to reach a settlement for past two years, but couldn’t strike a deal. “We were forced to file a lawsuit,” AT&T spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.

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