Application and file sharing app Bump (free) has been updated to allow for photo transfers between a phone and a computer. Users of the app can go to the Bump website on a computer, then after selecting photos to share, can bump the phone into the spacebar to send the images to the browser. Images could then be saved to the computer or shared through social networks with a short link.
Apple and Samsung have failed to reach any kind of settlement after court-ordered talks on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Korea Times. A Samsung official tells the publication that the companies could find "no clear agreement" on their patent dispute. The talks were extremely high-level, involving Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung.
The Microsoft Xbox 360 S is to be banned from sale in the US following an International Trade Commission ruling. In a court document released on Monday, ITC Judge David Shaw recommended the sale of both 4GB and 250GB versions of the console be blocked. His recommendation related to a ruling made last month that Microsoft was infringing on four patents owned by Motorola relating to the H.264 video format.
Samsung has accused experts on Apple's side of patent litigation as being strong fans of the Cupertino-based company, pointing towards an engineered “cult-like following to all things Apple.” The claims that the experts had “cast aside established scientific methods... in favor of slavish adoration of their client” appear in Samsung motions filed on Thursday, as noted by Florian Mueller.
Samsung is still hoping to settle in its global legal disputes with Apple, Reuters reports. The head of the company's mobile division, J.K. Shin, spoke to journalists at a Seoul airport yesterday shortly before flying to the US. "There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple but we still have several negotiation options including cross-licensing," he said. Shin is joining Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook today for court-ordered settlement talks.
The US District Court of Delaware has ordered Apple and HTC to enter settlement discussions. Judge Sherry Fallon will be moderating the talks, which follow the import ban that has stalled HTC's Evo 4G LTE and One X from entering the US, reports Florian Mueller.
Yahoo lawyers accusing Facebook of fraudulently filing patents, as part of an ongoing lawsuit, may have been quickly proven wrong. Facebook, accused of deception, appears to have not only proved the Yahoo legal team wrong by producing the required evidence, but also discovered that there were no previous requests for the relevant document in the first place.
Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures have acquired a sizable patent portfolio from IPWireless. The list of pending and granted patents, totaling approximately 500, consists of wireless communications technologies including essential concepts in 3G, 4G, LTE, and LTE-Advanced. The purchase price of the patents bundle were not disclosed.
On May 1st Apple filed a motion through a court for the Northern District of California, claiming "spoilation of evidence" by Samsung, according to NetworkWorld. Apple says that Samsung failed to preserve documents it needed to submit for the discovery process in the companies' ongoing legal battle. In fact, Apple accuses Samsung of spoiling "vast quantities of relevant evidence in blatant disregard of its duty to preserve all such evidence."
Late Wednesday evening, Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern California Circuit Court filed a decision giving Apple the right to re-file litigation in the future on any of the patent claims it will drop in its current two US cases with Samsung. The decision could have strong strategic importance to Apple, as the company will be free to continue threatening litigation on specific patent claims against Samsung. The trials are schedule to start this summer.
Apple, which has been working and gaining patents for 3D and face-recognition technologies for several years, was awarded another one yesterday for a novel way of creating 3D models out of two-dimensional data. The work in this area started in earnest when Apple purchased Swedish firm Polar Rose in 2010, and has wide implications for commercial applications. One application could be for future iOS or Mac security logins.
Late on Monday, Apple and Samsung both agreed to drop several patent infringement claims in the companies' California legal battle, according to FOSS Patents. Apple is said to have started the process, filing to drop roughly half of its claims. Five hours later Samsung followed suit, offering drop five out of 12 patents, but still arguing that Apple's case is too large to go to trial in the summer. In its filing Apple accused Samsung of being uncooperative.
A US-based International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has accused Apple of trying to get around a page-count limit in court filings in its dispute with Samsung and has struck some 3,000 pages of patent analysis the company produced. Instead, according to Administrative Law Judge E. James Gildea, Apple must submit a one-page table of its invalidity contentions as contained in the ITC rules by the end of business today (Tuesday).
Samsung has filed a patent some time ago with the USPTO for a phone with built-in biometric scanners that is hooked up to the Internet. The so-called biological analysis device would monitor a user's health and could send that data to a hospital, diagnosis service, or a doctor located in another city, country, or continent.
Germany's Mannheim Regional Court has stayed an Apple lawsuit against Samsung over a photo gallery page-flipping patent, says FOSS Patents. The case is now waiting on the resolution of a invalidation proceeding at the country's Federal Patent Court. Regional courts are noted to stay patent infringement cases only if the defendant shows a high chance of a patent being invalidated.
A traveling exhibit featuring former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs' patents will be on display at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC starting on May 11 and running through July 8. During his lifetime, Jobs was awarded 317 patents as inventor or co-creator, and the exhibit showcases 312 of them. Objects from the Smithsonian's collection will be on display to enhance the museum-goer's experience with the exhibit.
Nokia has filed several separate lawsuits against HTC, ViewSonic and Research In Motion. The latter companies are accused of patent infringement for technology that is claimed to be protected by as many as 45 different patents related to hardware and software.
Judge Richard Posner, of the US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, has asked Apple to stop submitting "frivolous filings" in a patent fight with Motorola. "I've had my fill of frivolous filings by Apple," an order by the judge reads. The trigger for the reprimand was an Apple motion to block Motorola from deposing a particular expert. While the expert's identity is still under seal, Posner complained that one half of the motion was "frivolous," and a second "untimely."
Both Apple and Samsung have issued a series of demands for their potential court trial in the Northern District of California, according to FOSS Patents. Apple's filing makes several requests, for instance requiring Samsung displays in the courtroom to have their logos covered up. The company is also demanding a block on any quotes from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs found in the biography by Walter Isaacson. Jobs infamously went on a rant about Android when interviewed, saying he was ready to "go to thermonuclear war" to "destroy" the platform. He considered the Android OS "stolen" from Apple, which may explain the numerous anti-Android lawsuits the company has become involved in, including ones against Samsung.
Recently revealed patent applications filed by Google show that the company has at least considered the production of smartphones incorporating a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The design seen by Patent Bolt, should Google produce any phones based on it, would possibly give the company more leverage in trying to grow the presence of Android in the enterprise sphere.
The patent struggle between Yahoo and Facebook took another turn today, with Yahoo adding two more patents to its list of alleged infringements by Facebook. The move, which brings the total number of alleged Facebook infringements to 12, came in response to Facebook's own countersuit against Yahoo, in which the social network claimed that Yahoo had infringed on 10 Facebook patents.
A Colorado resident, Jerald Bovino, has filed a new lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the company's Smart Cover infringes a 2005 patent. Bovino owns patent 6,977,809, which describes a "Portable Computer Case." One similarity between the patent concept and the Smart Cover is a series of visible "rib" lines.
A newly-discovered USPTO filing has revealed that Samsung is working on a device that will read a user's emotions. It will do so by taking into account Action Units, or components of a facial action coding system Samsung developed.
Apple has won the rights to 25 new US patents, covering numerous different products, Patently Apple observes. Some of these include a second patent on the iTunes Store and its rental system, and a fifth patent on Time Machine, featuring an interface capable of showing earlier versions of files. The former dates back to 2008, while the latter was originally submitted in 2007.
The European Patent Office has revoked a patent owned by IPCom, days after the company won a patent case against Nokia. The patent describes a method for connecting and prioritizing devices on 3G networks.
Facebook is set to buy a large number of patents that Microsoft recently acquired acquire through an AOL auction. The deal, worth $550 million, lets Facebook own 650 AOL patents and patent applications, along with a license to the remainder that Microsoft retains.
A Microsoft patent application revealed on Thursday could, if granted, bring automatically adjustable three-dimensional audio to Kinect gamers with surround sound systems. In addition to the possible audio benefits, the patent implies that the Kinect may be an even more capable attachment than Microsoft previously let on.
A lawsuit filed in a California US District Court this week has alleged that Apple violated the intellectual property rights of a Pennsylvania company that developed touchscreen interaction technologies in the mid-1990s. Flatworld Interactives claims that a patent it holds, USPTO patent 43,318, covers touchscreen-based interactions such as touching an object to select it and flicking images off of a screen.
Nokia isn't too concerned by losing a court case on Friday related to phone patents belonging to patent firm IPCom. The ruling affects only phones that are no longer sold by the company, so the damage is minimal, according to Nokia. A company spokesperson said the patent was granted in February of 2011 and current products use different technology.
Lawyers for HTC today defended the company in a London courtroom, insisting it isn't violating Apple patents, Bloomberg reports. At stake are four patents, covering multi-touch, slide-to-unlock, zooming and scrolling for photos, and the use of different character sets for text messages. "We are dealing with extremely simple implementations of commonly known techniques," read written statements by HTC's lawyers.
Samsung has submitted a new counterclaim against Apple in a California lawsuit, accusing the company of violating eight patents, reports say. These cover a variety of fields, such as cellular communications, audio, video, sync, and software keyboards. Two of the patents are said to fall under FRAND terms, meaning they should be licensed to other companies in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory manner.
Twitter VP of Engineering Addam Messinger in a statement hoped to reassure developers that it wouldn't sue over patents like Loren Brichter's pull-to-refresh control. A new Innovator's Patent Agreement would only allow using a patent for defensive purposes unless Twitter had explicit permission from the inventor. The pact would also see that level of control transferred with the patents, preventing a company buying the patents from turning around and suing against the inventor's will.
Apple has won a patent on the original concept and interface for the iTunes Store, Patently Apple notes. "Broadly speaking, the invention relates a graphical user interface suitable for reviewing, browsing, previewing and/or purchasing media items. The graphical user interface can be presented to a user at a client (client machine). In one embodiment, the graphical user interface is presented to the user by an application program that runs on the client," part of the patent reads.
Apple may be planning to update the earbuds it bundles with its iPod and iPhone products in the future, as indicated by a newly discovered patent filing. It involves a process called ultrasonic welding and would make for a seamless-looking product, something Apple is a big proponent of in the iMac and other devices. The resulting product would have a "seamless unibody structure," according to Apple.
Previously unknown firm Touchscreen Gestures has sued Apple, HTC, RIM, and Samsung this week for allegedly violating four patents for some of the simplest elements of touchscreen input. iOS devices, newer BlackBerrys, and Android devices allegedly copy methods for single taps, double taps, dragging, and scrolling. The patents had been transferred at some point from notebook trackpad developer Sentelic, although whether they were bought or handed over with hopes of a payout aren't clear.
A new US patent from Apple suggests the iPhone maker wants to rethink the way products are packaged. Hardly an indication of a product due to ship anytime soon, the patent describes an "electrical trace" molded into or printed onto the packaging. The so-called "active electronic media device packaging" will also require at least one method of wireless power transmission to light up the package.
What appears to be a US patent for a Face Unlock feature for smartphones has been granted to HTC. This is odd because we first experienced the feature on the Galaxy Nexus late last year, and it's one of the standard features found in Android 4.0. Since then, a number of other phones from various makers that sport a front-facing camera and were updated to Android 4.0 got this feature as well. How this new patent grant will affect the future of handsets not made by HTC but sporting Android 4.0 remains to be seen.
Judge Paul Grewal signaled Monday that one last attempt at mandated settlement talks between Google and Oracle had failed. The two had encountered another "irreconcilable impasse" and wouldn't be attempting to negotiate a peace on the Android patent dispute before the trial started on April 16. In a memo, Judge Grewal gave an exasperated tone and concluded that the case would have to reach its final conclusion.
Microsoft has reportedly asked a US court to prohibit Motorola from immediately enforcing a potential injunction if the latter company wins a ruling in German courts. As noted in Florian Mueller's blog, the software giant has offered to establish a $300 million bond to cover potential licensing fees and prevent Motorola from interrupting product shipments until a Seattle lawsuit has come to a conclusion.
A Sony USPTO patent shows that the hardware giant is working on a system that would improve the navigation directions users receive from their smartphones. It involves a headset communicating with a smartphone, with the system sending two-way information between the two. The idea is that the orientation of the headset will indicate which way the user is facing, therefore allowing the smartphone navigation app the ability to more accurately tell them which way they need to turn next.
A joint filing by Oracle and Google late Tuesday has revealed that Google offered to pay a per-device royalty on Android devices. Following earlier damages discussions, Google had offered paying 0.5 percent royalties on every device for one Oracle patent until it runs out in December, and 0.15 percent on another only expiring in 2018. It also offered to pay $2.8 million in back payments from 2011 and earlier.
A new patent filing has signaled that HTC might put an even stronger emphasis on music through speakers. What was caught early by Patent Bolt would go beyond devices like the Surround and put two stereo speakers on the design. Depending on the version, it would either have the speakers on the top and bottom of the phone, facing the user, or two speakers on the back with a kickstand in between.
The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Google patent protection for technology that monitors ambient conditions, including sound, and uses the data to serve customized advertisements. The patent describes a wide range of input sensors, such as thermometers, hygrometers, and microphones.
Facebook has bought 750 patents from IBM in order to be better protected against patent infringement lawsuits, Bloomberg was told by a purported source close to the affair. The deal isn't yet public, but the patents were said to cover software and networking technologies, among others. Its purchase was almost certainly triggered by Yahoo's recent lawsuit against the social network over web patents.
Apple allegedly contacted Samsung four different times in 2010 in order to persuade the latter that it had infringed patents, according to documents filed by Apple in a California federal court. An initial meeting happened in July; a second one took place "on or about" August 4th in Korea, during which Apple made a presentation called "Samsung's Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones." In writing about the occasion, Apple says that "This presentation emphasized Samsung's copying of the iPhone and identified two of the patents-in-suit (the '002 and '381 patents), giving Samsung actual notice of at least these patents, and many more."
A newly-published Apple patent application, Touch-Based User Interface with Haptic Feedback, suggests what Apple might have in mind for future iOS devices. Under the proposed system, devices such as iPhones and iPads would use actuators to provide feedback in response to touch. Apple specifically suggests using piezoelectric actuators, which would let a device provide localized feedback, instead of simply vibrating an entire device.
TVE (Trans Video Electronics) has filed a suit in the District Court of Columbia accusing Apple of violating two of its patents related to the way Apple distributes digital video in iTunes. The two patents (US 5,991,801 and US 5,594,936), which were awarded in 1993, relate to a ‘global digital video news distribution system.’ One of the patents also relates to the delivery of an ‘on demand’ video service.
Nokia has applied for a US patent that lets a user feel who's calling. The technology can be used in a skin patch adhered to a person's arm or embedded into a tattoo. When called, the system vibrates and uses haptic feedback to indicate whether its an incoming call rather than a text message, or even to identify who is calling.
A just-published but long in the making Nokia patent filing has revealed that Nokia has been working on a slide-to-unlock patent of its own. The approach would have users slide an icon on the screen to 'uncover' app icons. By then moving to an unlock area, users would have a two-stage unlock that could launch any app accessible from the home screen.
Apple's lawyers have taken on a substantial number of Korean-American contract lawyers and reviewers, nearly 100 in all, to help the company sift through piles of untranslated Korean documents from Samsung as part of its ongoing patent disputes, reports Apple legal watcher Florian Mueller. Apple will also be allowed to conduct further depositions on Samsung witnesses regarding documents Apple says it received just days before the original depositions.
