Kodak, the company that defines the Film camera days of our own country, has decided to let go of its Film business in order to save the brand from plummeting into bankruptcy . Kodak had already announced the sale of their patent portfolio, online gallery, commercial scanning, photo kiosk and theme park businesses. The company will now keep focus on the upcoming Printer business, and that to if it picks up. The company needs $660 million to revive itself and pay back the creditors by next year.
If popular media company “Bloomberg” is to be believed Amazon is planning a smartphone to be launched this year. Amazon is apparently already in pursuit of wireless patents and a production agreement with major OEM Foxconn for manufacturing the said Smartphone.
No further details on the matter are available, although Amazon is very capable of delivering a smartphone to the market, with their ecosystem already in place, the App Store, the Cloud services, the Music streaming and Kindle. The only thing you can be sure of is, that if Amazon does make a Smartphone there is almost a 100% chance that it will be an Android ICS 4.0 or Jelly Bean 4.1 device and it is likely to be skinned by Amazon to match the Kindle Fire UI.
Google’s Nexus 7 is fast, slick, and cheap, but Nokia claims it also infringes some of its patents in the process.
Nokia has announced that the tablet infringes a number of its patents connected with the IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi standard. In fact, most mobile device manufacturers license the patents from Nokia; currently, neither Google nor Asus is on the list of licensees.
A Nokia spokesperson told The Inquirer that “companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license.” Hence, Google and Asus can almost certainly approach them to get their paperwork in order—if they think they need to.
Asus replied by saying “at the moment, Asus will not be providing any response/comment related.”
HTC has assured that after a final assessment of the worth of S3 graphics the company will wrap up the buyout some time soon. The 270 patents that come into HTC portfolio will help the company fight off any legal issues that may arise in the future.
The strong Patent portfolio may also scare potential competition and make them think twice before any other patent wars begin
They are at it again. Apple and Samsung are in legal hot waters yet again, only when things couldn’t get worse. Apple has called for early ban on Samsung’s new flagship device the Galaxy SIII. According to Apple the Galaxy S III violates at least two patents, one is the data tapping patent, the exact on in their suitagainst HTC and the other a unified search patent that covers Siri.
Apple is also arguing that a Million Pre-orders are evidence of the potential damage if the US court lets the dispute slide. Samsung has confirmed that the injunction will not affect the US launch schedule. But knowing how this battle has heated up, we can only wait nd watch what really will happen.
Both Apple and Samsung have dropped several claims from the case against one another, after Judge Lucy Koh informed them to do so. Apple has reduced its case to one claim from each of its asserted utility patents, its four iPhone and one iPad design patents, and its trade dress claims for those two devices. While Samsung has dropped their cases to 15 altogether from a a total of 75 and completely deleted two claims.
Both parties can later re-assert the removed claims in another lawsuit if they choose to do so.
The case date for the hearing is on July 30th, after which a real outcome may finally be achieved.
Microsoft’s new patent for Interactive back panel displays could actually change the way we utilize a smartphone today, or tomorrow. The new patent by Microsoft simply describes a device with two screens. The Second Screen is however a low power screen with a lot of potential ( something like an e-ink display) displaying different information based on the current state and information on the original front facing screen. Looking at the patent images you can see a curved back panel which can be used as a display for clock connectivity or simply a status bar.
According to the patent, the display will continue to work even if the device is off. This is something that actually is exciting and hopefully can actually make it to devices in one form or another.
We are hoping you have already heard of the Nokia Morph concept by now, if you haven’t you should see the video below. According to the patent application the phone will switch between the leaf-shaped candy bar and the wristband. The patent also talks about remote handling of Data and information feeding.
[USPTO]
This is possibly going to be the biggest battle since the Apple vs Samsung saga began, Yahoo has allegedly filed a lawsuit to sue social networking giant Facebook for infringing on several patents that are owned by Yahoo. These patents include a series of things Facebook is famous for, ten patents in all, which cover everything from advertising and privacy measures to messaging and social networking itself.
Yahoo claims that the company licenses its patents to several other companies but the matter of Facebook remains unresolved.
Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed. These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.”
– Yahoo Spokesperson
Facebook on the other hand claims that there has been no real discussion when it comes to the matter of Facebook infringing Yahoo Patents.
We’re disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo’s decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”
The Munich I Regional Court handed down a decision awarding Apple an injunction against all Motorola devices for Apple’s patent on “portable electronic device[s] for photo management.” According to FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller, there is a chance that Apple could choose to enforce the ban, which could require Motorola to destroy all existing products that violate the claim.
“Today’s ruling in Munich, Germany on the patent litigation brought by Apple concerns a software feature associated with performing certain functions when viewing photos in a ‘zoomed in’ mode on mobile devices. We note that the Court ruled that performing the functions in a ‘zoomed out’ mode does not infringe on this patent. We expect no impact to supply or future sales as we have already implemented a new way to view photos on our products that does not interfere with the user experience.”
-Motorola
Apple’s endless patent applications have yet another addition. A new water damage sensor, that will help Apple avoid being misused for their warranties. A new patent application uncovered by AppleInsider imagines an Apple portable device that detects water damage using a sensor covered in water soluble conductive glue that, when dissolved, allows the sensor to detect its absence and log damage. Currently all iDevices use soluble stickers that turn color when wet. Apple hopes to install several of these inside your iDevice to ensure accurate water damage sensing.
No more pool parties with your iDevices.
With the old lawsuit not yet over, Apple has filed a new complaint that attack 18 new Samsung devices. According to Apple the devices infringe 8 patents that are currently owned by Apple. Four of the patents in question having been granted since the last time Apple filed suit against the Korean firm including missed call management, slide-to-unlock and data-syncing technology.
The devices infringing the patent include the new Galaxy Nexus along with all variants of the Galaxy SII, Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0, the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and Galaxy Tab 8.9.
Looks like this battle is going to be a never ending one, or at least till cupertino gets some korean slaves in its undertone.
German Court has denied the Preliminary ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus, as requested by Apple on the basis of Touchscreen copyright infringement. The court declared the patent invalid due to the market presence of the same technology before the patent was granted. The court in Dusseldorf has yet to give its final decision on the ban of Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which may finally give us the expectancy of the said Tab.
Its like winning and loosing all round, Apple was denied injunction lift suspension and Samsung was denied primary sale ban in France. The french courts yesterday denied Samsung’s request to ban the sales of Apple iPhone 4S in France. The court called the reaction out of proportion with its claims of intellectual property theft and ordered Samsung to pay a fine of €100,000 (about $134,000) to cover Cupertino’s legal fees.
The case is one of many legal battles being waged between Samsung and Apple in the United States, Italy, and several other countries over intellectual property protecting their smartphones.
First Apple managed to get an injunction against the sale of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia, The Korean company managed to get the courts to temporarily lift the injunction . Apple then appealed this lift of injunction, But it seems that this appeal was denied by the Aussie Court, as is being reported by The Register. Samsung will be now allowed to sell its Galaxy tab 10.1 throughout the holiday season, gathering up enough sales to recover initial costs of ad investments.
Samsung says the device will on on the shelf on Monday, December 12, with list prices of $579 for the 16 GB WiFi Galaxy 10.1 Tab, and $729 for the 3G version in Australia.