Hasta La Gadget!

Apple and Samsung may currently be duking it out in the court room, but a freshly-surfaced Apple presentation from 2010 shows that the iPhone maker tried to strike a licensing deal with Samsung long before the jury became involved. Apple, as many of you already know, is taking Samsung to court over allegedly copying the iPhone in its own devices, but this new presentation shows that Apple tried to resolve the dispute by offering to license its patents to Samsung. Given the fact that Apple is currently suing Samsung for $2.5 billion, it seems that negotiations didn’t go so well.

AllThingsD reports that Apple patent licensing director Boris Teksler referenced the October 2010 presentation during his testimony yesterday. The presentation shows that Apple was asking for $30 on each Samsung smartphone sold (dubbed “advanced mobile computing device” in the presentation), and $40 for each Samsung tablet. If Samsung had agreed, Apple was projecting that it could have made $250 million from the licensing deal in 2010, a figure which can hardly be considered chump change.

Apple was willing to give Samsung discounts on royalties too, seeing as how it considered Samsung a “strategic supplier.” For instance, Samsung could have enjoyed a 20% discount if it chose to cross-license its own patent portfolio to Apple. Phones using an Apple-licensed OS were good for a 40% discount, and phones that didn’t use proprietary features – Apple references the Samsung Blackjack II in its presentation, which has a physical QWERTY keyboard – would have qualified for another 20% off.

Samsung, obviously, wanted nothing to do with this licensing deal, and Teksler said in his testimony that none other than Steve Jobs and Tim Cook were driven to confront Samsung executives about the similarities between the Galaxy S and the iPhone. Hopefully Samsung made the right choice in turning down that licensing deal, because if it loses this case, it could end up owing Apple a lot more than it would have been paying in royalties. Samsung is set to begin calling its own witnesses to the stand on Monday, so keep an ear to SlashGear for more information on this high-profile trial.

Apple offered licensing deal to Samsung, wanted $30 per phone is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a company that wants to start using (or keep using) a Google OS strikes a patent licensing deal with Microsoft to avoid the legal barrage that will invariably follow if it says no. It’s Honeywell singing the tune this time, and the company has reached an agreement that will let it use Android or Chrome OS on devices like a new edition of the Dolphin 7800 rugged handheld (shown here) without perpetually looking over its shoulder. Neither side is going into the specifics, although Microsoft has steered Honeywell into using its boilerplate copy about royalties trading hands. The truce won’t help the prices of Honeywell devices; even so, it’s good news for developers and customers who’ve been part of the company’s official Android feedback program. We’re still yearning for the day when we can get root access on a Honeywell thermostat.

Continue reading Honeywell next up to get a patent license from Microsoft, goes the Android handheld route

Filed under: Handhelds, Software

Honeywell next up to get a patent license from Microsoft, goes the Android handheld route originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The One Laptop Per Child’s project just got one step closer to updating its venerable XO portable through a newly-struck licensing deal with Neonode. The XO Touch 1.75, a slight rebranding of the as yet unreleased XO 1.75 we saw last year, will use Neonode’s MultiSensing to give the laptop a multi-touch screen that’s both very responsive and eco-friendly in the same breath. Even as it samples finger input at up to 1GHz, the new OLPC system’s 300 DPI display will still use under 2W of power and remain viewable in bright sunlight — students can even wake up the new model with a gesture instead of using anything so crude as a power button. As important as these advances are to bringing touch to remote schools, we still have some questions about the release schedule and the cost. The XO 1.75 was originally due this year, but we don’t know if the Neonode pact will alter the timetable or hike the target price. We’ve reached out to the OLPC team for comment and will update if there’s new details.

Filed under: Laptops

OLPC XO Touch 1.75 to use Neonode tech, take multi-touch on world tour originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week Microsoft has made an agreement with yet another group in their IP Collaboration system in which rather than getting sued by the giant, groups agree to pay a fee for utilizing technology Microsoft has patented. The Amdocs group is the business working with Microsoft today, they being best known for their software and services for billion and customer support for telecommunications groups such as T-Mobile, Comcast, Vodafone, DirecTV, and more. This agreement covers Amdocs’ use of Linux-based servers in its data centers.

This agreement is part of a IP licensing program Microsoft has had in play since December 2003, with many signings taking place over the past year. This program gained quite a bit of attention over the past year due to the many groups which had to sign with Microsoft in a way that made it so the Windows-toting company made more cash from Android-based devices than they did with their own Windows Phone project. Of course that’s all inconsequential when it comes down to this particular agreement – but Android is, of course, Linux-based, and the devices Amdocs ends up serving in the end do often end up being Android as well.

Take that with a grain of salt and for a moment, all you patent-hating lovers out there, have a listen to what Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, Intellectual Property Group at Microsoft, has to say.

“This agreement with Amdocs adds to the more than 1,100 patent license agreements Microsoft has entered into over the last decade. Microsoft’s licensing program ensures respect for its world-class intellectual property portfolio while at the same time making available to others the result of its multi-billion dollar annual investment in research and development.” – Gutierrez

Sound alright to you? Have a peek at some other recent cases Microsoft has had on its side over the past few months in our timeline below.

[via Microsoft]

Microsoft patent program grabs Amdocs mobile billing is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Qualcomm announced that it’s shutting things down in the Mirasol screen department. The e-reader displays, which can show color and can be read in direct sunlight, were apparently too difficult to manufacture and install in tablets. More »