Patent

One big detail that has been unclear since Attachmate's acquisition of Novell last month has been the destiny of the 882 patents that are set to be handed over to CPTN Holdings LLC--a consortium of technology companies that was organized by Microsoft.

Would Microsoft be getting all those patents, or would it have to share them with the other companies? More importantly--who are the other "technology companies" that make up the group?

While the first question remains unanswered, the second part of the equation is coming into view this morning, with blog FOSS Patents unearthing a merger filing … Read more

Nokia won't give Apple a break.

The company filed patent-infringement claims against Apple in the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands today. A total of 13 patents were included in the company's filings, bringing the total to 37 total claims against Apple.

In the U.K. High Court, Nokia charged that Apple violates four patents related to the use of a "touch user interface" and "on-device app stores," among others. The company filed a total of seven patent-infringement claims in two German district courts, charging that in addition to its use of the touch … Read more

Mozilla is outspoken in its dislike of the patent-encumbered video technology called H.264, but Microsoft, an H.264 fan, is providing a plug-in that will let Windows 7 users use it anyway.

H.264 is a codec--technology to encode and decode video--that's widely used in videocameras, Blu-ray players, online video streaming, and more. It's built into Adobe Systems' Flash Player browser plug-in, but most people don't know or need to know it's there.

When it comes to the flagship feature of built-in video support coming to the new HTML5 specification for creating Web pages, … Read more

Two of the biggest names in mobile are reportedly participating in the land grab for the patents belonging to bankrupt telcom firm Nortel.

Reuters quotes unnamed sources in a story published yesterday detailing how the auction currently underway for the intellectual property assets of the former Canadian giant is expected to draw the interest of Apple, Google, and others, including perhaps Motorola and Research In Motion.

Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2009, and has roughly 4,000 patents that are calculated to be worth more than $1 billion collectively. The rumor is that the patents have been divided … Read more

In patent documents released this week by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple reveals plans to improve voice control on its iOS devices using contextually defined commands selected by users.

Apple purchased the iOS "personal assistant" app maker Siri earlier this year, suggesting it had plans to beef up the voice control functionality in iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. The patent seems to take aspects of the Siri interface and apply them to individually selected apps on a user's device.

AppleInsider discovered the patent filing, originally filed last year and titled "Contextual Voice Commands&… Read more

Intellectual Ventures, founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, filed three patent infringement lawsuits today against nine companies in the security, memory, and chip markets.

One lawsuit names as defendants Check Point Software Technologies, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro and accuses them of infringing on four of its patents related to antivirus and Internet security, according to the lawsuit available for download here.

The second suit accuses Elpida Memory and Hynix Semiconductor, makers of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and Flash memory, of infringing between five and seven of its patents. And the final suit alleges that three … Read more

It's not that much of a surprise that Apple thinks watching 3D content with plastic glasses is dumb.

And the company that's all about sleek, cool, and simple has actually been granted a patent on a method of projecting a 3D image that can be perceived properly without glasses.

The system would work like this: each pixel would be projected onto a reflective, textured surface, which is then bounced into a viewer's left and right eye separately, producing the 3D, or stereoscopic, effect. it would sense the locations of both eyes of the each viewer, so multiple … Read more

Microsoft's patent fracas with Canadian firm I4i has been given new life, as the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the software giant's appeal.

The case, which went in favor of I4i last year, centered around Microsoft's use of XML technology within its Word software. Following I4i's victory, Microsoft was required to strip the functionality from its software as part of an injunction.

"We are gratified by the court's decision," Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation David Howard said in a statement. "It's a … Read more

The U.S. International Trade Commission is officially stepping in to investigate Apple's claim of patent infringement against Motorola.

The ITC announced yesterday that its probe will examine a complaint that Apple filed with it on October 29 against Motorola. The charges are detailed in two lawsuits by Apple against Motorola in which Apple alleges that the sale of Motorola's Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, and other smartphones and related software violate several Apple patents.

In one of the suits against Motorola, Apple cites patent No. 7,479,949, which covers methods by which touch screens detect contact … Read more