Apple Samsung partial Win

The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that Samsung copied specific Apple design patents related to the iPhone. However, the court also threw out part of the ruling and asked a lower court to reduce the amount Samsung is to pay Apple.

This ruling partly closes the book on a 2011 legal battle that caused the two companies to wage a global patent war. The two companies have since dropped other battles except this one and another case involving what Apple contends are specific patented software features found in Galaxy phones.

TechCrunch

MS offers to cut patent fees for Samsung, LG

Microsoft (MS) has offered to cut annual patent fees for Samsung and LG Electronics, sources said Monday. "MS approached Samsung and LG Electronics to provide them with sizable discounts to the licensing fees in an attempt to sell more of its cloud computing and software products," a source said.

"MS also has a competitive Google Android patent portfolio. MS is trying to crack down on Google's dominance by promoting its software to be used in companies and consumers to leading smartphone manufacturers. MS exactly knows what its clients want and I believe this company is really smart," said another source.

In the case of Samsung, the world's biggest smartphone vendor decided to install MS's office programs such as OneDrive on its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices. Both of them are powered by the Google Android system.

Samsung said it paid about 1 trillion won to MS for patent fees in 2013. Samsung paid between $2.6 and $2.7 to MS for fees on every Samsung tablet and smartphone that are sold.

The Korea Times

Trolling for an Inventive Method for Patent Enforcement

Much of the discussion of the “patent troll” surrounds how exactly a “patent troll” is defined. Some refer to patent trolls as “non-practicing entities,” and others to “patent assertion entities.” These sound in the media like lazy, menacing, evil, money-grubbing corporate shells waiting for their crossing fee from under the bridge – and surely there are some of those. But that “patent troll” definition can also appear as an independent inventor who doesn’t make, use, or sell his invention. Maybe that inventor’s idea was stolen by another company that now makes, uses, or sells it. Before filing a lawsuit, he may set up a corporate entity to hold the asset to help protect him from personal liability or fund the litigation. Patent litigation is expensive and shouldn’t that right be afforded to everyone? Otherwise wouldn’t the Apples and the Samsungs be the only ones skating in the rocket docket of Marshall, TX? We need to think very carefully about how we define “patent troll” before we try to make it unjustly hard for so-called trolls to litigate.

Much more at Winthrop and Weinstine

Tech giants complain about US ITC misuse by trolls

 A consortium of tech giants have written to senior US politicians demanding a reform of the International Trade Commission, one of America's key federal watchdogs.

The business goliaths, represented by the ITC Working Group, claim patent trolls are unfairly using the commission to extract money from their coffers, and hamper innovation. The letter – signed by Google, Intel, Apple, Cisco, and 16 others – takes issue with Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930: this piece of law is routinely used by patent trolls.

It sounds rich hearing Intel, Apple, Cisco and others complaining – of all people – about organizations being outrageously litigious with patents. The tech world loves using patents to destroy upstarts or force them into an acquihire deal. Their beef appears to be that patent trolls don't actually make or design anything, as if they are unworthy opponents.

Full article at El Reg

Apple ramps up patent portfolio to take on Samsung

Apple has grown its US patent portfolio by 25 per cent every year for the last three years, new figures have revealed.

According to the US Patent 100, an annual ranking of the world’s biggest US patent portfolios, Apple has seen the biggest percentage increase in portfolio size over a three year period, and now owns 10,942 patents. Samsung, meanwhile, owns over 55,000 US patents – more than any other entity.

Telegraph

Apple Patents method to automatically broadcast updates

Deny that its the end of  privacy as much as they like but this is a really scary innovation by Apple who added another new patent to its ever increasing patent portfolio. Granted by the USPTO, the patent describes a software option which would analyze factors such as your time zone, battery percentage, location, phone sound profile and network signal strength to automatically determine your call availability, and then transmit your status to your friends.

Full Article at technewstoday.com

Mobilisation against the return of software patents in Europe

In the next few days, the legal affairs (JURI) Committee of the European Parliament will discuss on the next actions regarding the project for a unitary patent. Behind what looks like a technical text lies a crucial issue: who decides on what is patentable and what is not.

As software patents are coming back in international news with the Apple/Samsung case, we need to ensure that such aberrations cannot happen in Europe. April calls for a general mobilisation to contact all MEPs, so that the European Parliament finally tackles the issue of the software patentability.

Source  April.org

Blame a dysfunctional patent system for Apple vs. Samsung verdict

 Whether you think that Apple is already too big for its britches or that Samsung deserved to get slammed for $1 billion by a Silicon Valley jury last week for infringing on the iPhone design, there's no doubt where the blame for this corporate firefight lies. The guilty party is the U.S. Patent Office.

Actually, that's a bit unfair. The Patent and Trademark Office, as it's formally known, is understaffed and underfunded and not especially up to the task of judging increasingly complex patent applications. But the real problem is in the law, which utterly has failed to keep up with realities of technology and the marketplace.

Source L A Times

Google says "Patent Wars Not Helpful to Anyone"

At an Aspen conference in Mountain View, Calif., Pablo Chavez, Google’s public policy director, referred to the patent wars, saying that they are not helpful to the marketplace or to innovation. He further said that patent wars are not helpful to the consumers at all.

However, there are many who see this statement as a reaction to the social search giant’s ongoing legal battles with Oracle, which Google won at trial, and Apple, which is still pending. Software patents are getting too controversial in technology circles, where most of the companies are taking its rivals to courts for infringing each other patents.

Source Tech Thirsty

And this is why Apple doesn't want to settle Android patent lawsuits | ZDNet

Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore believes that a settlement would give Apple some $10 in revenue for each Android device sold, equating to some $35 to Apple’s share price. However, if Apple was able to capture 25% of Android future growth through halting distribution and forcing feature removal, that could be worth some $300 per extra handset sold, or a whopping $261 on top of Apple’s already buoyant share price.

Read more at ZDNet

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet

Apple gets U.S. ban on HTC Android phones sales... for now | ZDNet: This particular junk patent covers clicking a phone number on a phone list and your smartphone automatically dialing that number!

More details on Novell's software patents sale

Novell have filed this proxy statement with the US Securities and exchange commission, included in it are some details of the patent sale to CPTN (Microsoft, Apple, EMC Corporation and Oracle).

The issued patents and patent applications to be sold to CPTN pursuant to the Patent Purchase Agreement relate primarily to enterprise-level computer systems management software, enterprise-level file management and collaboration software in addition to patents relevant to our identity and security management business, although it is possible that certain of such issued patents and patent applications read on a range of different software products. Approximately 43% of these are US issued patents; approximately 30% are US patent applications; approximately 22% are foreign issued patents, and approximately 5% are foreign patent applications.

Historically, the issued patents and patent applications included in the patent sale have been used to facilitate and protect our current and planned business activities, and to reduce the risk of potential infringement claims against us. We do not currently license any of these issued patents and patent applications on a royalty-bearing basis, but the patents are subject to specific non-royalty bearing licenses granted by Novell during the period of its ownership of the patents.

There is a lot more detail in the filing surrounding the sale but precious little detail on the sold patents.

India Reverses Software Patent Rules

The Financial Express reports that since the Indian patent office has reversed its earlier ruling that embeded software could be patented. Patents issued under the old rules may be cancelled and the article points out that "Legal experts point out that software-related patents already granted could be successfully challenged in courts, given the clarification of the law in the recent amendment." The patents that were issued were largely to foreign companies including LG, Nokia, Siemens, Philips and Samsung, and were seen as harmful to the fledgling local industry. There's obvious parallels here to the effect that allowing software patents would have on the New Zealand industry. Let's hope parliment acquires a clue sometime in the near future.