Hasta La Gadget!

Apple and Samsung met again during an appeal hearing on yesterday to argue over the $1 billion that was rewarded to Apple over the summer after Samsung was accused of patent infringement. Judge Lucy Koh is currently reviewing the jury’s $1.05 billion verdict against Samsung, but had some things of her own to say to the two companies bickering back and forth: “global piece.”

The judge made a plea for “global peace” between the two companies during the appeal hearing, saying that “it would be good for consumers and good for the industry.” You can clearly tell that Judge Koh is getting irritated with both companies at this point, and for understandable reasons. Neither lawyers from both sides answered any of Koh’s questions, and instead continued to put blame on either company.

However, the head lawyer for Samsung said that the company was “willing to talk,” but Apple was said to not want to back down, claiming that the $1 billion judgment from the jury was a “slap on the wrist” for Samsung. Apple also continued saying that Samsung was knowingly going as far as it could copying Apple products without getting into trouble, while Samsung accused Apple of running a smear campaign, and claimed that that company wanted to battle it out in the court instead of out in the market.

The appeal hearing yesterday involved Samsung questioning the jury on their calculations that led to just over $1 billion in damages, and they also asked to have the entire verdict dismissed and another trial opened up, but that seems not have much traction. As for Apple, they’re attempting to add over $500 million to the $1 billion verdict.

[via Engadget]

Judge wants “global peace” between Apple and Samsung is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Apple-Samsung saga continues, folks. Today, a Dutch court has now banned several Samsung Galaxy devices from selling in the Netherlands. Apple has been rewarded the ban from the court because Samsung was accused of infringing on an Apple patent relating to the navigation interface in photo galleries.

Apple and Samsung have already been through this dance once before on the same exact patent issue last year. Samsung was accused of implementing the same “bounce back” feature as iOS when scrolling through images, so Samsung replaced it with a blue flash that would appear on the edges of images. However, Samsung has refused to “sign a declaration of abstinence committing to not infringing the patent,” but Samsung claims that the issue had been fixed in the Netherlands, and that its Galaxy products used Samsung’s own technology.

The ban only applies to Galaxy products that run Android 2.2.1 and higher, and that don’t use Samsung’s proprietary photo gallery software. The court ordered Samsung to inform Apple how much net profit it made from sales of its infringing Galaxy products since June 27, 2011. From there, a different court will determine how much of that profit Samsung must give to Apple. If Samsung continues to infringe on Apple’s patent, the company will be required to pay Apple 100,000 euros ($129,000) for every day it violates the ban.

A Samsung spokesperson said that the company was disappointed with the court’s ruling, and Apple did not respond to a request for comment. In another lawsuit between the two companies in the Netherlands, the court ruled that Samsung does not infringe on a multitouch patent from Apple, and this coming January, the court is set to place their verdict in another Apple-Samsung lawsuit dealing with tablet design rights.

[via Computerworld]

Apple gets Samsung Galaxy devices banned in the Netherlands is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HP and network gateway hardware developer Nomadix have settled a patent infringement lawsuit that dates back to 2009, where Nomadix sued HP, as well as a handful of other, smaller companies, for unauthorized use of the company’s patents. Nomadix said they were seeking damages and injunctions over use of their “fundamental innovations” in mobile computing and network access technology.

Nomadix included eight of its patents in the lawsuit out of the 100 or so patents that the company currently owns. Financial terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, but according to Nomadix, the settlement includes a license to HP for certain portions of Nomadix’s patent portfolio dealing with internet access technologies.

Nomadix is best known for developing internet gateway products, and is a subsidiary of DOCOMO interTouch, which acquired Nomadix in 2008. Nomadix had filed its original patent suit against HP in 2009, and also included 10 other companies in the lawsuit — most of which are smaller companies like Wayport, iBAHN, Guest-Tek, LodgeNet, Aruba Networks, and Superclick.

The chairman of Nomadix, Charles Reed, says that the company is “pleased to conclude the litigation between [Nomadix and HP] in a manner that respects Nomadix’s patents.” Reed continued by stating that company will continue to “enforce” their patent portfolio in litigation, but he says that it’s “gratifying” to reach a settlement with HP that “recognizes the value of Nomadix’s patents.”

HP and Nomadix settle patent lawsuit is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The legal teams at Apple and HTC agreed upon a multi-year cease-fire quite recently with exceptions being made only for a collection of patents that are being revealed this week as unique in their direct ties to Google. This set of claims are being dismissed “with prejudice” as opposed to “without prejudice” as it has been with the rest of this legal adventure, and were each being used previously by HTC against Apple. Separately, four “new” patent agreements have been identified by Foss Patents as being stand-out and not especially visible to the public before they were first asserted against Nokia in separate cases – each of them stand-out because of their potential for future Apple vs Samsung or Motorola cases in the smartphone and tablet realms – watch out!

These four patents were asserted by Apple against HTC and will likely be appearing again in the future against other Android-wielding hardware makers – so says Foss. These patents cover the way a smartphone works and are each likely to be attached to the Android workings of the devices in question rather than to the manufacturer specifically, so will likely apply to non-HTC manufacturers as well as they had (up until now) attached to HTC. These patents are as follows:

EP0719487 on an “object-oriented telephony system”

EP0760131 on a “method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system”

EP0664021 on a “menu state system”

EP0769169 on a “network component system.”

Keep your eyes open for these patents in the future – they WILL be appearing again. There’s also been some stand-out items as far as Google loan patents go. There are a collection of loans out there that are owned by Google but are being loaned out to companies such as HTC. The cases that involved any patents such as these in cases between Apple and HTC have been dismissed “with prejudice” because of Google’s “buyback” right under their agreement with HTC.

Google is not involved in the Apple-HTC agreement in any way and has not been part of any sort of talks with either company regarding the legal agreements at hand to our knowledge. District of Delaware, case no. 11-785-GMS notes that, “each and every claim and counterclaim between Apple and HTC in the above captioned matter are hereby dismissed WITH PREJUDICE solely with respect to HTC and WITHOUT PREJUDICE with respect to Apple and to any other person or entity.” This means that Google patents (as mentioned above) are dismissed as well, but with prejudice rather than without.

Apple HTC case dismissals hit tiny snag at Google-owned patents is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It would appear that HTC is now set up to pay two giant companies for the rights to use their patents rather than face their legal wrath: their newest being Apple for $6-8 USD a phone. The other company HTC is into for cash-per-device is Microsoft, revealed all the way back in 2010 as an industry changing agreement for $5 USD a phone. The difference between that fee and this are small for HTC and for Apple and Microsoft in the end, but for this one fact: it does still appear that Microsoft makes more from Android-carrying device patent license fees than it does from its own Windows Phone platform – though that may change in the oncoming Windows Phone 8 season.

This information on how much HTC is likely paying Apple comes from Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu, a man with vested interests in getting analysis right around these companies getting his own information from “conversations with industry sources.” As it stands, should HTC continue to sell 30-35 million Android smartphones annually, they’ll be paying $180-$280 million annually to Apple. HTC’s total per phone payed to Microsoft and Apple will soon be between $11-$13 USD per phone – tiny or giant, however you choose to see it.

HTC’s license fees here have more of an impact on the way Apple does business than it does on how it does business simply because Apple hasn’t recently been entering into agreements like this – quite the opposite. Instead, Apple has been entering into litigation with groups such as Samsung – grabbing millions from them after arduous legal processes. Prolonged as those fights inevitably are, it may be that Apple has found a better way to do business with settlements such as these.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see other recent Apple legal matters – and see if you can tell why Apple may just want to be out of the courtroom as much as possible into the future. HTC too may be finding itself in either a really terrible place at the moment (not likely) or a great place – with both Microsoft and Apple having enough confidence in their future to make long-lasting agreements, be they negative or not.

[via Business Insider]

HTC signs up for the Apple tax: $6-8 per Android phone is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.