Learning lessons from TiVo: Don’t make patents your business
Google and Cisco are going to pay TiVo close to $500 million to settle a patent lawsuit – but investors wanted more. What does that tell us about TiVo’s business? Read more »
EU warns Motorola over standards-essential patent ‘abuse’
Europe’s antitrust authorities have invited Motorola to defend itself over its use of essential patents as legal weapons against Apple, despite Apple’s willingness to pay what it considered a reasonable royalty rate. Read more »
Rackspace fights patent troll in the name of every mobile developer everywhere
Rackspace is taking one for the team by trying to invalidate a patent that an alleged patent troll claims covers the ability for mobile displays to rotate as the device turns. Read more »
Can big tech overcome its love-hate relationship and destroy patent trolls once and for all?
Almost every tech company claims to hate patent trolls, but they certainly don’t always back up their words with actions. Recent patent activity around the Hadoop big data platform might show how companies can effectively battle trolls — if they really want to. Read more »
The week in cloud: AWS goes mobile; Google vows patent pledge; cloud wars rage on
photo: Shutterstock / Gena96
New AWS group appears to gird for mobile development; Google issues non-aggression patent pact; and PayPal caught in cloud war crossfire. Read more »
Google donates patents to protect cloud software from lawsuits
photo: alphaspirit
Google announced a “patent pledge” in which it will donate 10 patents related to MapReduce to protect the emerging cloud and big data industry from lawsuits. Read more »
Apple ensnared in Chinese patent fight over Siri
Shanghai Zhi Zhen makes a product called Xiaoi, which the company calls a “chat robot system.” It says Siri violates a patent it holds on man-machine interaction. Read more »
German court backs HTC over Nokia patent claims
photo: Flickr / adulau
HTC did not infringe on two of Nokia’s patents, a Mannheim court has found. Nokia had claimed that one of the patents covered app store functionality found in Google Play. Read more »
Amazon wins broad patent to create marketplace for used digital content
photo: Flickr / Tracy O
Amazon has won a patent to create a virtual marketplace where users could resell digital content like apps, songs and ebooks. But it’s unclear whether such a marketplace would be legal under current copyright law. Read more at paidContent »
USPTO rejects another Apple patent — but it’s far from dead
photo: pressureUA / Shutterstock
Like last week’s reexamination and invalidation of the “Steve Jobs patent,” also used in the same trial, this is by no means a big setback for Apple — yet. This is an initial answer from the USPTO. Apple will be able to respond to the ruling. Read more »
Groups backed by Apple, Google win Kodak patents with $525M bid
Wednesday’s announcement confirms what had been reported last week. The sale price will help Kodak meet its bankruptcy obligations, while 12 companies will receive licenses to Kodak’s image patents. The deal also settles outstanding patent disputes. Read more »
Samsung drops bid to keep Apple devices out of European countries
Samsung said in a statement that the move was “in the interest of protecting consumer choice.” But it also could have been related to the European Union’s simultaneous investigation into whether Samsung had violated any laws in fairly licensing standard-essential patents. Read more »
Jury says Apple’s iPhone infringes patents from Nokia and Sony
In a surprise ruling, a Delaware jury has found that Apple’s iPhone infringed on three patents issued in the early 2000′s. The verdict is the latest incident of a global patent battle that appears to have gotten out of hand. Read more »
Apple, Google find common ground, team up to buy Kodak patents for $500M
photo: Shutterstock / shyshak roman
That the two would partner on a deal is somewhat surprising, given they are direct competitors in the mobile world. But, as Google’s chairman said this week, businesses who have disputes also need to “trade with each other” and not just “send bombs at each other.” Read more »
Judge calls for “global patent peace” as Apple, Samsung fight anew
A Thursday courtroom hearing went on for three and a half hours, bogging down with continual disagreements from both sides. Here’s a brief roundup of what happened in the first day of Apple and Samsung’s long appeals process Read more »
Ericsson takes its fight against Samsung to the ITC
photo: Shutterstock / zimmytws
Ericsson is exercising all its options in its ongoing patent dispute with Samsung. Last week it sued the Korean handset and infrastructure vendor after the two failed to reach a technology cross-licensing agreement. Now Ericsson is seeking to ban Samsung’s products from the U.S. Read more »
Samsung gets it from all sides: Ericsson files patent suit
photo: Flickr user opensourceway
While Apple hammers Samsung on smartphone and tablet design, Ericsson is accusing the Korean vendor of infringing on its mobile networking and technology patents. The pair’s cross-licensing deal has expired so Ericsson is taking Samsung to court. Read more »
Former Google lawyer to lead Silicon Valley patent office
The United States Patent Office will open a branch in San Jose this year as part of its effort to provide better quality patents for regional economies. The office’s first leader will be from a company that has been a prominent critic of the patent system. Read more »
Apple, Motorola talk arbitration — end to patent fight may be near
Less than a week after Apple settled out of court with HTC, a court filing unearthed on Friday shows that Apple wants to resolve its ongoing dispute over standards-essential patents with Google-owned Motorola. It’s not clear if Motorola agrees. Read more »
Of course Samsung’s not going to settle with Apple now
Samsung has already experienced the worst case scenario in going head-to-head with Apple and has been tagged with a billion-dollar verdict. The company has so little to lose now that it’s not at all surprising Samsung says it has no plans to settle like HTC. Read more »
Patent peace: Apple, HTC settle all outstanding litigation
Apple and HTC have agreed to settle all outstanding patent litigation between the two companies, signing a ten-year licensing deal but not disclosing financial terms. The settlement ends one of the most prominent battles over Google’s Android smartphone operating system. Read more »
Bad Apple: UK judges rip iPad maker over “lack of integrity”
Apple and British judges have been in a long-running fight over an order that requires Apple to say that Samsung didn’t copy the iPad. Today, the frustrated judges got the last word in a decision scolding Apple. Read more »
Commutist podcast: Patent trolls, Costco ban and Passbook’s home run
On this week’s show we talk about the trouble with those pesky patent trolls, take a look at how buying a bunch of hard drives got BackBlaze banned from Costco, and how Apple’s Passbook could change the way you enjoy America’s pastime. Read more »
Study: Trolls account for 40 percent of patent lawsuits
photo: Shutterstock / zimmytws
A study of 500 patent lawsuits found that those brought by patent trolls, which the study’s authors call “monetizers,” account for nearly 40 percent of the cases brought in 2011. Of course, their study doesn’t account for the untold thousands that never make it to court. Read more »
The Apple Roundup: MLB fans embrace Passbook baseball tickets
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: will mobile tickets replace paper, past complaints about Apple Maps, a gathering in Europe to hash out patent problems doesn’t accomplish much, and teens continue buying iPads. Read more »
Twitter: It’s time for patent trolls to bear the costs of frivolous lawsuits
photo: Shutterstock Composition: Bird via basel101658 / Gavel via Alexander A. Sobolev
Win or lose, it usually doesn’t cost a lot for patent trolls to bring spurious lawsuits against companies and technologists. In this guest post, Ben Lee of Twitter argues that it’s time for trolls to bear more of the costs they create with baseless lawsuits. Read more »
The Apple Roundup: Don’t forget about the iPod
Here’s our daily pick of stories about Apple from around the web that you shouldn’t miss. Today’s installment: The iPhone 5 event will also include iPods, Apple’s winning event formula, the security expert who solved the Apple UDID mystery, more iPads in the air, and more. Read more »
Genius or troll? Patent owner sues dozens over anti-piracy method
A patent holder who claims to own “signal abstraction” is going after companies that use basic anti-piracy techniques. The dispute has spawned dozens of lawsuits and raises questions yet again about the state of America’s patent system. Read more »
It’s the economy, stupid: Why Congress is getting vocal about patent disputes
John McCain and Ron Wyden are among the dozens of congresspeople people from Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico lobbying the ITC against harming the economy by banning the import of computers containing some of Intel’s most-popular processors. But saving the IT economy goes beyond patents. Read more »
Apple may have won, but software patents are still evil
photo: Flickr user Stefan
The implications of Apple’s recent billion-dollar victory over Samsung in a patent-infringement case go beyond the specifics of this particular battle — the reality is the war over software and design patents is bad not just for individual companies but arguably for society as a whole. Read more »
Samsung’s exposure: It can survive the Apple hit
Samsung can easily absorb the $1 billion judgement if Friday’s jury award holds. With a $4.5 billion profit in the second quarter alone, Samsung has the cash to keep fighting. But will the larger patent issues of the verdit will impact its tremendous smartphone momentum? Read more »
Victory over Samsung on historic anniversary for Apple
photo: Tricia Duryee
It was Steve Jobs that vowed to go “thermonuclear” on Android for infringing on Apple’s patents. He stepped down from the company he founded a year ago today, so Apple’s huge win in court over Samsung on that anniversary is infused with even more meaning for Apple. Read more »
Disaster for Samsung: Jury awards Apple $1.05 billion in patent case
Samsung has suffered a massive defeat at the hands of Apple in the first major patent trial of the smartphone wars. The ruling appears to be a clear win for Apple which could help entrench the iPhone maker’s power in the marketplace. Read more »
Apple, Samsung CEOs to negotiate once more, but don’t expect a miracle
Though the legal drama hasn’t offered the most flattering view of either company, Apple, particularly, has taken a huge gamble with this trial. It’s hard to believe it would squander the ability to exact a legal judgment by opting for resolution outside of court. Read more »
Google opens prior-art patent search to the entire web
In yet another move to simplify the process of patent search, Google is now tackling the particularly tough problem of prior with a new feature. But all this innovation begs the question of whether Google, not the USPTO, should become the de facto patent search engine. Read more »
Patent trolls and horse-powered boats: 8 highlights from Stanford’s IP powwow
Intellectual property is about assigning ownership of brands and ideas. Here are some highlights from a gathering of leading thinkers in the field — in an easy to skim format. Read more »
More secrets revealed: Galaxy Tab’s uninspiring U.S. sales numbers
Is it possible that a tablet that’s not selling well in the U.S. is thriving and selling millions outside the country? Sure. But the more likely explanation boils down to the problem with reporting numbers of products shipped versus sold. Read more »
iLegal: As Apple’s products evolved, so did a strategy to protect them
Apple’s legal tactics are as carefully designed as its products. Here’s a look at Apple’s distinct efforts to wrap its gadgets in a legal forcefield and drive away competitors. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate
Despite its current decline, RIM is a different firm today than it was in 2007, with new management, a full awareness of its shaky position, an upcoming OS release and a number of lingering advantages that can still be leveraged. Here’s how it just might survive. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Judge in Apple-Samsung case says patent drawings can ‘speak for themselves’
The judge in a highly-anticipated trial over smartphones and tablets sided with Apple on Friday over how a jury should look at four key patents. The ruling means the jury will act as “ordinary observers” instead of relying on detailed legal instructions to understand the patents. Read more »
