Patent

eBay served with $3.8 billion patent suit

A company called XPRT Ventures says transaction system PayPal knowingly incorporated XPRT's e-commerce technology, for which it had filed for U.S. patents, into its own patent applications back in 2003--and has served parent company eBay with a $3.8 billion lawsuit.

According to the suit, which was filed Tuesday in a Delaware federal district court, technology that was built into PayPal's patent had previously been shared with PayPal confidentially by representatives from XPRT and is contained in a total of six XPRT patents. eBay, the complaint alleges, incorporated those details into an April 2003 patent called "… Read more

NTP sues Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others

NTP said Friday it has filed a lawsuit against six of the world's leading cell phone makers, accusing them of infringing on its patents for delivering e-mail to handsets.

The company, which successfully sued Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphones, is targeting Apple, Google, HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft, and Motorola in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. NTP alleges that the companies are infringing eight of NTP's patents related to the delivery of e-mail over a wireless network. Each of the defendants in the case either … Read more

Microsoft tech lets batteries load in either direction

Microsoft has started licensing a technology that could come in handy for anyone who as ever tried to put new batteries in a flashlight in the middle of the night.

The company said Thursday it has a patent for designing devices so that batteries can be inserted either way, regardless of polarity. Dubbed InstaLoad, Microsoft said, the technology is now available for license to other companies.

Further, the company said it will offer the license royalty-free to companies making products for people with hearing, vision, or learning disabilities.

Battery maker Duracell and flashlight manufacturer AE Light are among the first companies to license the technology, … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1258: Plants vs. Lasers (podcast)

Look for Brian Tong's new movement on Facebook: pain-ray-free produce. But the rest of us actually think it's kind of cool that the government pain-ray has been re-tasked to warm freezing plants. Also, the Supreme Court has finally ruled in the Bilski patent case, giving us a relatively non-destructive moderate decision. ACTA is ramping up again, and we make a date to go see "The Social Network."

Subscribe:  iTunes (MP3) |  iTunes (320x180) |  iTunes (640x360) |  RSS (MP3) |  RSS (320x180) |  RSS (640x360)… Read more

Supreme Court hedges on business method patents

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

Those who hoped the Supreme Court today would finally end the scourge of so-called business method patents will have to wait a little longer.

In the closely watched case of Bilski v. Kappos, the justices on Monday agreed with a lower court and the Patent Office that a claimed system to hedge energy prices using weather projections was merely an "abstract idea" ineligible for patent protection. (See PDF of ruling.)

But the court could not agree on a general prohibition for business method patents urged by … Read more

Supreme Court sidesteps software patent issue

Anyone hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court would limit the ability to patent software will be disappointed by Monday's ruling.

The court ruled against patent applicants Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw (PDF), who in 1997 had tried to patent a process for hedging investments, a process of countering one investment risk with another.

But the majority of justices stopped far short of a broader ruling that would have curbed so-called business method patents -- and perhaps software patents as well.

"The patent application here can be rejected under our precedents on the unpatentability of abstract ideas. The … Read more

Get 'em, Boies: Salesforce countersues Microsoft

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff says Microsoft is a patent troll. Looks like it takes one to know one. On Thursday, the company answered Microsoft's charges of patent infringement with patent-infringement charges of its own.

In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, Salesforce accuses Microsoft of willfully violating five of its patents and using them in everything from Windows 7 to the Windows Live authentication system. And the company is really going for the neck here: Not only is it seeking triple monetary damages, it has hired David Boies, the former U.S. Justice Department … Read more

Apple expands patent infringement suit against HTC

After accusing HTC of infringing on 20 of its iPhone patents in March, Apple has expanded its suit.

This week Apple tacked on two more patents that it claims the Taiwanese handset manufacturer is in violation of using, according to a legal filing in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

The newly added patents both concern the same type of technology, which Apple lists as a "system for real-time adaptation to changes in display configuration."

In the original suit, Apple alleged that HTC is infringing on patents related to the iPhone's graphical user interface and the iPhone'… Read more

VirnetX gets thumbs-up in VPN patent review

In something of a postscript to the main legal action, VirnetX announced Tuesday that the two patents involved in its dispute with Microsoft have been confirmed by the U.S. Patent Office as valid.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) confirmed VirnetX's U.S. Patent No. 6,502,135 and U.S. Patent No. 7,188,180 as patentable and valid on June 16, according to VirnetX. The two patents were the subject of lawsuits filed by VirnetX against Microsoft, alleging patent infringement over the use of VPN (virtual private network) technology in Windows.

The settlement, reached … Read more