Items tagged with patents
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and inventor of the Apple I and Apple II, has never been one to bite his tongue, and he certainly didn't when asked what he thought about the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. In three words, "I hate it," Wozniak explains, and he also doesn't agree with Apple's $1 billion...
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Google has been granted a patent on a system for real-world object identification scanning that will allow the company to survey and tag images and videos. The abstract for patent 8,254,699 (hereafter referred to as the '699 patent) covers An object recognition system performs a number of rounds of dimensionality...
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Time will tell what kind of impact Apple's successful patent trial over Samsung will have on the rest of the Android community, but despite the swift billion dollar verdict, other Google partners aren't necessarily shaking in their boots. In fact, HTC, once a dominant force in the Android arena (much like Samsung is now), wants to make it...
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Sometimes, everybody's wrong. That seems to be a South Korean court's take on the Apple/Samsung battle, which is being fought in courts in the U.S. and abroad. Although the court doesn't buy Apple's claim that theiPhone 4 and Galaxy S are too similar for consumers to tell them apart, it has found both companies guilty of infringing on...
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When Kodak filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, the company made it clear that selling off its digital imaging patents was a key part of its strategy. The company had hoped to raise as much as $2.5 billion from selling off its war chest, which is why rumors of a partnership between Google and Apple, have the...
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The way things go in the tech industry, it seems you can't so much as release a fart without the flatulence police claiming a patent violation. It stinks, but it's the way it is, so does it really come as a surprise that a company is crying foul over Google's Nexus 7 tablet? That company is Nokia, which claims the Asus-built tablet Google...
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The ongoing patent wars are a bit ridiculous and somewhat tedious, even though one of the highest-profile tech patent cases is between giants Apple and Samsung and the stakes are high. Late Tuesday, however, things got interesting. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh (pictured), acting on a federal appeals court’s...
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is apparently fed up with the growing number of patent disputes that could lead to import bans. So much, in fact, that the FTC felt compelled to ink a five-page letter to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) outlining its concerns with the way things are currently handled...
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Patents seemingly make the world go 'round, particularly in the technology space these days. Android, iOS, Samsung, Google, AOL, Microsoft -- hardly a day goes by without someone's patent portfolio making the (positive or negative) news. Today, Microsoft and Facebook are the ones in the spotlight, announcing an...
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Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission gave Google their respective blessings to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, the two agencies said in separate announcements. Taking it one step further, the DoJ also said it would allow Apple, Microsoft, and Research In Motion (RIM) to purchase...
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Nortel Networks crashed and burned in spectacular fashion a few years ago, and ever since the company's remains have been hanging around and sniffed out by other major technology companies. Apple, Microsoft and RIM in particular have been on the hunt for the valuable Nortel patents that remain, and the United States...
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Microsoft's general counsel and deputy general counsel (Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrez) have co-written a new blog entry detailing Microsoft's latest licensing achievement. Yesterday's broad cross-licensing agreement with Compal Electronics means that Microsoft has now negotiated licensing terms with the ODMs...
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Information regarding a few patent applications recently filed by Apple has surfaced. The applications feature designs for a clip-on antenna mechanism, portable devices with multiple power interfaces, and an advanced oleophobic coating application technique. The antenna clip application can be viewed here. The...
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Phone maker HTC is taking heat from investors over its decision to purchase S3 Graphics. Citigroup cut its rating on HTC citing corporate governance concerns. There's a definite connection between the two--S3 is partly owned by HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang, a fact that raises concerns over just how necessary the deal was. Normally, HTC might have...
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VIA announced today that it's signed an agreement to sell its share in S3 Graphics to the mobile phone manufacturer HTC. S3's GPU technology (dubbed Chrome) powers VIA's various chipsets and is paired with the company's Nano processor as part of its CPU platform. Given VIA's relative sliver of market share, this might...
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Apple apparently has its legal panties in a bunch over four patents the Cupertino company is accusing HTC of violating. As outlined in court documents, the patents deal with software and technologies found in Apple's smarphones and other mobile devices, one of those being a patent for "slide to unlock" start-screen technology, The Wall Street...
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Rambus Moves To Withdraw Patents From ITC Proceedings Against NVIDIA SANTA CLARA, CA - JUNE 8, 2009 - NVIDIA today announced that Rambus has asked an administrative law judge at the International Trade Commission (ITC) to terminate the investigation of NVIDIA relating to four patents stemming from a complaint filed in November 2008. Rambus...
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It's no secret that most radio talk shows have a slight delay before a caller's audio reaches the air. The obvious reason: to make sure no "f-bombs" reach the sensitive ears of the public --- or the FCC. Well, Microsoft has been awarded a patent that might eliminate the need for that delay. The patent, 7437290, is for "Automatic censorship...
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To think that prior to 2005 there wasn't any page up / page down functionality. After all, that's when Microsoft filed a patent application for "Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments." To be exact, March 4, 2005 was the date of the application, and the patent was granted on Tuesday. And it's:A method and...
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Soft errors, they sound a little less ominous than hard errors, don't they? Actually, both are not a lot of fun for the average computer processor or memory chip. A soft error, relative to semiconductor technology, is corruption inside of the memory structure of a device where bits are flipped inadvertently....
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Apple has applied for patents on a series of single and multiple touch gestures that will undoubtedly show up in some iteration on their Mac OS X sometime in the future. Of course Apple already uses a limited number of touch commands on some of their hardware, but the series of gestures outlined in the application indicate an enormous...
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One day after a federal jury ruled Vonage had infringed on Sprint Nextel patents, an appeals court reaffirmed the March decision against Vonage with regards to Verizon patents. It's been a bad two days for them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reaffirmed an order barring Vonage from using Internet phone call technology related...
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