Hasta La Gadget!

A series of patent infringement claims have been filed by Apple this month surrounding both the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and the Android-centric Google Now system. Two “Siri” patents have been pulled up by Apple surrounding unified search, each of them originally attached to a suit that filed against the Android Quick Search Box in devices running Android 4.0 and lower. Apple has also claimed in a similar document this week that claims against past Samsung Galaxy devices continue to hold true with the Samsung GALAXY S 4, the company asking that this device be included in a suit they’ve already got on the books.

The Samsung GALAXY S 4 is at the center of this suit, with Apple also making clear their intent to seek action against Google-made elements in the Android system such as Google Now. At the moment it appears that Apple will be calling out Samsung for implementing items like Google Now, the company having not yet pushed Google directly on the matter.

The line specifically calling out the Samsung GALAXY S 4, as located by Foss Patents, is as follows:

“Apple determined that the Galaxy S4 product practices many of the same claims already asserted by Apple, and that the Galaxy S4 practices those claims in the same way as the already-accused Samsung devices.”

This bit of text comes from the “13-05-21 Apple Motion to Amend Infringement Contentions” document which has been filed this month. Of note here is the fact that the Samsung GALAXY S 4 Google Edition is not specifically mentioned, and would therefor not be falling under this filing. It’s likely that Apple will specifically include the Google Edition once the device becomes available in stores.

It’s also worth noting that at least one of the two filings against Google’s Android Quick Search Box was overturned when filed against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus – this was done back in October of 2012, and has yet to be successfully challenged by Apple. This case is filed with Judge Koh and, because of the way this Siri-related patent was turned with the Galaxy Nexus, it’s quite possible that the Samsung GALAXY S 4 will be found innocent as well.

Apple claims Google Now infringes on Siri patents in GALAXY S 4 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple is dealing with another problem in China and this time it involves its personal assistant program, Siri. A couple of weeks back, Apple had faced criticism by the television program China’s Central Television over issues people had with the company’s warranty policy. Now Apple is now dealing with the patent infringement claims made by Shanghai’s Zhizhen Network Technology company. The company filed the claims last July.

Zhizhen says that Siri infringes on its “Xiao i Robot” software that it had patented back in 2004, a while before Siri was developed in 2007 and released on the iPhone 4S in 2011. The i Robot software does exactly the same thing as Siri, such as responding to the user’s commands. Xiao i Robot, however, is available for both iOS and Android devices. Zhizhen says that it’s currently being used by over 100 million people in China.

The two companies went to pre-trial today to discuss the issue. Apple denied Zhizhen’s claim and asked for the case to be rejected. The court, however, rejected its request. Zhizhen’s lawyer, Si Weijiang, stated that if the company wins the case, they will ask Apple to “stop manufacturing and selling products using its patent rights.” He also stated that they will probably demand compensation from Apple in the future.

Apple had similar legal issues with another company in China. The company, Proview, claimed that Apple committed fraud when it acquired its iPad trademark. Apple purchased the trademark through IP Application Development, a U.K. subsidary, but Proview stated that the subsidary didn’t have the right to sell the trademark. Through a long, complicated legal battle, Apple finally settled the lawsuit by paying Proview $60 million. We will see how this legal battle over Siri plays out when the official case takes place in July.

[via AKP]

Apple in court over Siri patent infringment claim is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Remember when a court ruled that Samsung owed just a tad over $1 billion to Apple back in August? Yeah, that was a lot of money. However, it turns out that Judge Lucy Koh has voided almost half of that award down to 598.9 million. Plus, she’s ordering up a new trial involving 14 of Samsung’s products. Why? Koh says that “the Court identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award.”

Koh is calling for a new trial to set revised damage amounts for the products affected by the “impermissible legal theory” of the judgment, which include the Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, AT&T Galaxy S II, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform.

However, Koh believes that Apple may be affected with damages for sales not included in the original case, and there’s a chance that Samsung can lower the amount it would owe to Apple. Specifics are pretty scarce at this point still, and Koh hasn’t even set a date for the retrial, either, so we’re not sure what to expect, nor what will happen.

The retrial may not take place until appeals of the original ruling have played out, which means that it’s very likely that it will be awhile before the retrial gets under way and revised damages are announced. While we thought that the Apple vs. Samsung court battle might have been slowly coming to a close, it’s picking back up to full speed now.

[via FOSS Patents]

Judge cuts Apple’s award down to $600m in Samsung trial is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This year we got wind of a company by the name of Project Paperless, a group of “patent trolls” whose goal it was to target companies who didn’t have legal means to defend themselves with patent claims for items such as scanning and emailing PDFs. In short, this means that you, as a business, would receive a legal threat from P.P. demanding $1,000 USD per employee for their actual physical use of a scanner device in your office because they own the patent that describes the device’s use. Through the year they’ve been targeted themselves by some rather angry business owners who decided that, “no, we’re not going to freak out and pay you this absurd amount of cash, we’re going to see first if you actually have the rights to request such a sum!”

One of the companies that went to war with Project Paperless was BlueWave, a group whose founder Steven Vicinanza decided to stand up against the so-called “Project Paperless LLC.” He found first that one of the people working with Project Paperless was Steven Hill, a partner at Hill, Kertscher & Wharton, an Atlanta law firm. On the telephone with this man, Vicinanza explains, “He said, if you hook up a scanner and e-mail a PDF document—we have a patent that covers that as a process.”

Vicinanza investigated and found that the initial list of businesses that was being targeted by Project Paperless was lifted directly from the “Atlanta’s Best Workplaces” list published each year by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Speaking with the heads of the companies on that list this year, he found that the same legal threat letter he’d received was being sent to each company, one by one, under a set of “at least eight different shell companies”, each of them with six-letter names like GosNel, FasLan, and AdzPro.

U.S. patents 6,185,590, 6,771,381, 7,477,410 and 7,986,426 were and continue to be asserted against companies of all sizes, many of which have settled and paid up without question throughout the year. BlueWave went to court with Project Paperless as Vicinanza refused to pay any amount of cash to them. Vicinanza did a Prior Art search (that ended up costing him around $5,000 USD) and sent the results to the Project Paperless lawyers and filed a third-party complaint against Xerox, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Brother through his lawyer Ann Fort.

None of these scanner makers had to come to court (or even really had a chance to) because two weeks after the third-party complaint was filed, Project Paperless disappeared. The case was dropped, and no settlement was made.

The Hill, Kertscher, and Wharton law firm today is associated most with the Stop Project Paperless campaign, an anonymous effort to make the information about Project Paperless (basically everything above) public. Project Paperless has since dismantled, or so it seems, reconstructing themselves under the holding company MPHJ Technologies.

MPHJ Technologies is a mysterious company whose owners remain anonymous, and letters essentially the same as detailed above continue to be sent out by companies by the name of AccNum, AllLed, AdzPro, CalNeb, ChaPac, FanPar, FasLan, FulNer, GosNel, and HunLos. If you or your company have been targeted by one of these companies or a similar letter, please, contact legal representation rather than immediately paying a flat sum. It’s quite likely you’ll have more than enough legal ground to stand on – stay strong!

[via Ars Technica]

Project Paperless patent trolls continue fear tour with nameless subsidiaries is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It looks like Apple isn’t the only company that Samsung is after. It turns out that the Korean-based company is seeking a sales ban in the US on some of Ericsson‘s products. Samsung has filed a complaint against the Swedish company with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), requesting a US import and sales ban on Ericsson.

Ericsson actually filed a patent lawsuit against Samsung about a month ago after the two companies failed to extend the licensing agreement after years of negotiations. At the time, Ericsson claimed that Samsung refused to pay the FRAND rate that its competitors are paying for the same standard-essential patents.

This time around, Samsung is going on the offense, and is seeking a ban in the US on several products made by Ericsson after a dispute over patent fees concerning telecommunications networking equipment. Samsung says that they “have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith.” However, Samsung claims that the company has been unwilling to continue negotiations by making unreasonable claims.

Of course, Ericsson also thinks that Samsung products should be banned in the US over the same dispute that Samsung filed, saying that the Korean-based company’s products infringe on its patents. Ericsson said that an import ban is not their goal, but rather that Samsung “sign license agreements on reasonable terms.”

[via Reuters]

Samsung seeks ban on Ericsson products in US is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.