Patent smackdown: Apple teams up with Microsoft to bid against Google and Android OEMs for Kodak’s patents

The patent arms race is reaching a feeding-frenzy stage. Over the past months, we’ve witnessed a series of high profile legal spats between the technology companies that make our beloved gadgets. A quick recap of the most visible battles includes the Oracle vs Google trial, the Samsung vs Apple global conflagration, the Microsoft vs Motorola case that caused the ban of all Motorola devices in Germany, and the Apple vs HTC debacle, which affected the availability of the One X and the EVO 4G LTE in the USA.
Tech corporations are suing each other like madmen, but unfortunately, their actions mostly affect consumers. We get fewer products on the market, and the products that are available are made dumber. The war is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and the players are accruing weapons at a staggering rate.
A new stash of patents is about to be sold to the highest bidder. On Monday, the patent portfolio of Eastman Kodak, the legendary photography company, will be sold in an auction. Two major forces emerge as potential winners – on one side, Apple allied with Microsoft and patent troll aggregation firm Intellectual Ventures. On the other side, Google got together with the biggest Android OEMs – Samsung, HTC, and LG – along with a patent troll of its own, the RPX Corporation.
The two consortiums will try to win the battle over Eastman Kodak’s 1100 patents, most related to photographic technology. Kodak has a great deal of intellectual property that could prove essential for anyone manufacturing a product that incorporates a digital camera. According to WSJ, alliances are still made and broken, and the situation is still in flux.
As a reminder, it wouldn’t be the first time Google would square off with the Apple-Microsoft team – last year, Google lost the auction for Nortel’s patent trove, which eventually went to the Apple-Microsoft consortium for $4.5 billion. It’s unclear how valuable Kodak’s portfolio is, but experts seem to agree that it is far less valuable than Nortel’s stash.
We’ll keep you posted on any new developments next week.

SOURCE:View the original article here

Read More

Apple, Samsung take patent fight to crucial California trial

1 of 2. An Apple retail store is seen in Carlsbad, California April 6, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake
By Dan Levine and Poornima Gupta
SAN FRANCISCO | Sat Jul 28, 2012 12:13am EDT
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd take their battle for mobile supremacy to court on Monday in one of the biggest-ever technology patent trials, a case with the potential to reshape a fast-evolving market they now dominate.
The tech titans will lock horns in a federal courtroom in San Jose, California, just miles from Apple's headquarters. The stakes are high, with Samsung facing potential U.S. sales bans of its Galaxy smartphones and tablet computers, and Apple in a pivotal test of its worldwide patent litigation strategy. Both sides are seeking financial damages from the other.
Samsung has rapidly overtaken Apple, creator of the iPhone and iPad, and Nokia to become the world's largest smartphone maker. Together, Apple and Samsung account for more than half of smartphone sales globally.
Apple sued Samsung last year in San Jose, claiming its smartphones and tablets slavishly copied the iPhone and iPad. The South Korean company countersued. Since then, the two have expanded their fight to courtrooms in nearly a dozen other countries.
At this trial, Apple is seeking at least $2.53 billion in damages, though U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh could triple that figure if she finds Samsung willfully infringed Apple's patents.
The dispute has reached deep into the tech sector, with companies including Microsoft Corp, IBM Corp, Nokia and Research in Motion Ltd filing court papers this week to try to keep their own patent licensing agreements from being disclosed during the trial.
A loss for Samsung could lead to permanent sales bans against products including the flagship Galaxy S III phone, said Nick Rodelli, a lawyer and adviser to institutional investors for CFRA Research in Maryland. While the S III is not at issue in the trial, if Apple prevails the company could later ask Koh to block sales of that product.
Upward of 20 percent of Samsung's global consolidated profit could be affected if it loses this case, he said.
"Samsung is a big company with operations all over the world, but this is actually a needle-mover for them on the bottom line," Rodelli said.
Apple will try to use Samsung documents to show its rival knowingly violated the iPhone maker's intellectual property rights, while Samsung argues Apple is trying to stifle competition to maintain "exorbitant" profit.
In a statement Friday, Samsung said Apple has been "free-riding" on its technology "while using excessive legal claims against our products in their attempt to limit consumer choice and discourage innovation."
An Apple spokesman reiterated the company's previous statement that it wasn't a coincidence Samsung's latest products looked a lot like the iPhone and iPad, and that Samsung blatantly copied its products.
A loss for Apple could be significant, not only if it were ordered to pay financial damages but also because of the competitive threats. That is because the Galaxy S III is a better phone than the latest iPhone 4S, said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of Destination Wealth Management.
"Apple is all about slowing Samsung down," said Yoshikami, whose fund holds Apple shares. "Apple will try to buy time until iPhone 5 launches," which is expected in October.
Apple shipped 26 million iPhones in the quarter ended in June, fewer than in the previous quarter and well below the 28 million to 29 million that Wall Street had predicted.
Samsung is estimated to have increased sales to around 50 million smartphones. That helped the South Korean giant to report a record quarterly profit of $5.9 billion on Friday.
FINANCIAL DATA COMES TO LIGHT
In the past few days, the companies have supplied some detailed financial data in court filings, such as a disclosure on Thursday that Apple's gross margins for its iPads are about half of those for the iPhones. The information was included in newly unsealed papers and was not previously known, giving Wall Street a rare glimpse into Apple's financial breakdown for specific products.
The companies had initially sought to keep many documents from public view, but Judge Koh rejected the bulk of the requests on July 17. Her order came hours after Reuters filed court papers opposing the companies' efforts to seal the documents.
The lawyers on both sides are well known: Apple is represented by law firm Morrison & Foerster, which led Oracle Corp's patent case against Google Inc earlier this year over the Android operating system. Samsung, whose products run on Android, hired lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which also represents Google and which led Yahoo Inc's short-lived patent lawsuit against Facebook this year.
A 10-member jury will hear evidence over at least four weeks, and it must reach a unanimous decision for Apple or Samsung to prevail on any of their claims.
Apple says Samsung violated four of its design patents, which cover the look and feel of its products. It also says Samsung has infringed three patents for technology such as how the phone distinguishes between scroll and multi-touch gestures.
Meanwhile, Samsung says Apple violated patents on mobile communications systems, as well as features like taking a photo on a phone and seamlessly emailing it.
In a last-ditch attempt to avoid a trial, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Samsung Vice Chairman Choi Gee-sung participated in a mediation on July 16. But a settlement prior to trial is unlikely, sources have told Reuters.
It has been tough going so far for Samsung in the case. Koh halted U.S. sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1, giving Apple a significant early win. This was followed by a pretrial ban on the Galaxy Nexus phone. Samsung has appealed both orders.
The stakes for Apple are also high due to competitive threats from other Asian phone makers such as China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, Rodelli said.
"It's arguably the most commercially and doctrinally significant U.S. patent case in the modern era," he said.
The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

SOURCE: View the original article here

Read More

Exclusive: Apple, Samsung chiefs disagree on patent values: source

 Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook and top Samsung Electronic Co Ltd executives disagreed last week on the value of each other's patents at a settlement conference ahead of a high profile U.S. trial, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Apple and Samsung, the world's largest consumer electronics corporations, are waging legal war in several countries, accusing each other of patent violations as they vie for supremacy in the fast-growing market for mobile devices.
The trial is scheduled to begin July 30 in a San Jose, Calif. federal court. Cook participated in mediation with Samsung's Vice Chairman Choi Gee-sung and mobile chief Shin Jong-Kyun last Monday in the San Francisco area to see if the two sides could resolve the dispute, several separate sources said.
All sources could not be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The executives from Apple and Samsung participated as part of the court directed mediation process, these sources said. While a settlement is always possible, it is unlikely to come ahead of the California trial, they said.
Apple on Monday declined to comment on the case. A Samsung spokesman declined to provide details on any discussions, saying "this is an ongoing legal matter."
The U.S. case, taking place a few miles away from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, is being closely-watched given the lucrative American smartphone and tablet market.
Among the major issues in dispute between Apple and Samsung is how to value so-called standard essential patents. These are patents which Samsung agreed to license to competitors on fair and reasonable terms, in exchange for having the technology be adopted as an industry standard.
Some judges are reluctant to issue injunctions over such patents.
Apple believes those patents should be valued lower due to those dynamics, one of the sources said. Additionally, Samsung believes it has a stronger patent portfolio than Apple when it comes to next-generation technology like 4G, the source said.
The mediation last week was at least the second between top executives. A previous session in May did not produce any settlements.
While both the companies are arch-rivals in the smartphone and tablet marketplace, the case is complicated by the fact that Apple is one of Samsung's largest component customers.
The trial will feature both utility and design patents. Apple utility patents in the case include those that cover how touch-screen devices discriminate between one finger on the screen, or more, and respond accordingly. Apple design patents include those that relate to the black front surface of a phone.


Source: View the original article here

Read More

Apple scores major iOS graphical user interface patent, potential weapon against Android

Filed in early 2007, U.S. Patent No. 8,223,134 was granted to Apple yesterday, among other patents awarded to the company by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. And from the looks of it, the company may have received a very important weapon that it could soon use in its “thermonuclear war” against Google’s Android.
The patent describes a “portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying electronic lists and documents,” and we could see it included in a variety of patent-based legal clashes in which Apple is either suing or being sued by an Android device maker – and the company is fighting the most important ones, Samsung, HTC and Google-Motorola.
Why is this patent so important for iOS and Android? Well, basically USPTO acknowledged Apple’s innovation when it comes to smartphones being able to display documents and other elements on the screen and allow the user to interact with them.
The iPhone was not the first smartphone to feature a touchscreen-only display, but it was the smartphone that reinvented the mobile business. Everyone making smartphones today adopted that model, and while you will argue that your favorite platform is the best, the fact remains that essentially, they’re all pretty similar. No matter what smartphone you’d buy today you’d end up with a spacious touchscreen display and a friendly user interface ready to help you browse the web, check email, run apps or perform work-related stuff. And it’s a lot easier to work on such devices than on pre-iPhone smartphones. Very few of them also offer physical keyboards, but the keyboards are not as important as they were in the pre-iPhone era. Not to mention that the companies that failed to adapt to this new smartphone fashion either faded away or may soon disappear – the lists includes Palm, RIM and Nokia, although the last two still have what it takes to come back on top.

This newly obtained patent describes a variety of user interface elements and the way users would interact with them, or better said, the patent pretty much describes the current smartphone experience that we get to take advantage of no matter what mobile platform we may temporarily favor:

Some portable communication devices (e.g., mobile telephones, sometimes called mobile phones, cell phones, cellular telephones, and the like) have resorted to adding more pushbuttons, increasing the density of push buttons, overloading the functions of pushbuttons, or using complex menu systems to allow a user to access, store and manipulate data. These conventional user interfaces often result in complicated key sequences and menu hierarchies that must be memorized by the user. […]

The above deficiencies and other problems associated with user interfaces for portable devices are reduced or eliminated by the disclosed portable multifunction device. In some embodiments, the device has a touch-sensitive display (also known as a “touch screen”) with a graphical user interface (GUI), one or more processors, memory and one or more modules, programs or sets of instructions stored in the memory for performing multiple functions. In some embodiments, the user interacts with the GUI primarily through finger contacts and gestures on the touch-sensitive display. In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors.

What will Apple do next with this ‘134 patent? We’ll just have to wait and see in what lawsuits the new patent will be used.

Source: View the original article here

Read More