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Tag: patent war

  • Apple vs. Samsung Jury Decision Coming Soon

    The Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit has been long, frustrating, and bizarre. When Apple first sued Samsung over one year ago, it appeared as if Apple was simply protecting its iPhone and iPad designs from companies who were beginning to mimic those devices. Samsung promptly countersued Apple, claiming it violated wireless technologies patents it holds.

    Why exactly Apple decided to break the smartphone-market detente when it did is unknown. Apple, as a company, has never been doing better. Just this week, iPhone 5 rumors pushed Apple stock through the roof, making Apple the most valuable company in history. Throughout the past year and a half, however, it has become clear that Apple considers Samsung a serious threat to its position in the smartphone market.

    Apple has sued Samsung (and other smartphone and tablet manufacturers) in countries throughout the world. During the trial in the U.S., Apple successfully blocked the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 throughout the country. In the U.K. Apple was ordered to place ads stating that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is not an iPad rip-off. These types of absurdities have become the norm for patent trials.

    Judge Lucy Koh, who has presided over the U.S. trial, knows that U.S. patent law is complicated and confusing at best. Last week she told the companies that they should give a settlement one more go before allowing a jury of people who aren’t patent lawyers to make billion-dollar decisions for them. The disagreements between Apple and Samsung apparently run too deep, or each is confident enough that it will come out on top, though, because the companies seem perfectly willing to drag each other down and possibly have their own patents invalidated.

    Ultimately, the losers in the lawsuit are customers, who would benefit more from competition outside the courtroom than in it. No matter what the jury decides this week, it will have repercussions for the entire smartphone and tablet industry. With current U.S. patent laws, however, this will be just one of many huge patent trials in the coming years.

  • Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Hulu Case

    The Supreme Court this week sent a case involving broad patents back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for reconsideration. The case surround a patent that was granted to the company Ultramercial. The patent is for the concept – not the technology, mind you – of ads supporting online videos. Just the idea that an ad could be played and content could be payed for by an advertiser, all online. That is what the U.S. Patent Office granted to Ultramercial.

    Ultramercial has been using its patent to troll companies such as YouTube and Hulu (the defendant in the lawsuit) by demanding payments. Most patent trolls get away with using overly-broad patents to extort money from legitimate businesses, but some companies and individuals are beginning to fight back. A Supreme Court ruling that Ultramercial’s patent is too broad would be a huge relief to the tech industry, which is currently in a patent arms war.

    The Supreme Court made no definite decision on the case, instead passing it back to the lower court in light of a recent decision the Supreme Court did hand down involving the patenting of a diagnostic procedure. Again, not the technology to diagnose patients, but simply the method of diagnosis – a list, basically, of the steps a doctor would take. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the patent was too broad. It’s that decision that the justices have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to remember when reconsidering the case.

    The issue of patent trolling, which has grown into a leech-like multi-million dollar business over the past decade, is finally getting the attention it deserves. Both courts and individual businesses are beginning to stand up to companies that have no business operations other than offensive patent lawsuits. Here’s hoping the right decisions are made to free-up innovation, so society can use the technological bridges being built and improved every year, without having to pay the trolls.

    (via Ars Technica)

  • Apple: All Your Unlocking Mechanisms Are Belong To Us

    How many of you use a “swipe to unlock” mechanism to gain access to your smartphones? Quite a few I would guess. The finger-dragging-across-the-touch-screen method of unlocking phones is probably most known for being a feature on the iPhone, but tons of other devices use a similar mechanism.

    Today, Apple owns that mechanism, as they were just granted a patent by the United States Patent & Trademark Office. The patent, number 8,046,721, was filed back in December of 2005. Here’s how it is described:

    A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture.

    Sounds a lot like how many smartphones operate these days, doesn’t it?

    I guess we can add this to the growing list of slightly absurd entries into the patent system. Although most would agree that patenting a motion on a touch screen is a little silly, it doesn’t change the fact that that’s how the patent system currently works. Don’t hate the player, hate the game I guess.

    And it’s kind of funny, but all of those Android devices that users “slide to unlock” are now infringing on patents.

    [Hat tip to 9to5Mac]