Hasta La Gadget!

Google already has a patent that would let Glass and other eyewear identify what’s in front of you. However, it just received a new patent for a method that could follow your exact gaze. The proposed system would include both forward-facing and eye-tracking cameras, correlating both to determine what’s grabbing your attention. It could gauge emotional responses to objects by watching for pupil dilation, and it could be used to charge advertisers based on how long wearers stare at a given ad. Google may also have an eyepiece upgrade to go along with its gaze detection, we’d note — the company just received a patent for a quantum dot-based eye display. There’s no evidence that Google will use either of these new inventions anytime soon, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they represent what Glass could look like a few generations from now.

Filed under: Displays, Wearables, Google

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Source: USPTO (1), (2)

Despite that billion dollar verdict, the legal battle between Samsung and Apple continues, and the most recent happening comes from the ITC. Following up on an ITC administrative law judge’s ruling late last year finding that Samsung had infringed a few of Apple’s patented designs and tech, the Commission made its final determination today and issued a limited exclusion order for some Samsung devices. In its decision, the Commission found no violations of any of Apple’s design patents, and only found that Samsung infringed a pair of patents — patent number 7,479,949 for touchscreen technology, and patent number 7,912,501 for audio jack I/O circuitry. In doing so, the Commission stated that devices with workarounds to the asserted patents that were found not to infringe by the ALJ are not subject to the exclusion order.

As a result, offending Samsung devices are scheduled to be banned from importation after a 60-day presidential review period. During those two months, the devices can still be sold, but unless Obama steps up for Samsung in the same way he did for Apple in a separate ITC case, we won’t be seeing them stateside again. While we don’t have an exact list of the affected devices, we do know that the devices at issue are older models like the Continuum, the Transform and the Galaxy S II. So, consumers won’t feel much of an impact from the ban, but we bet Apple’s legal team will have a much more enjoyable weekend as a result of this latest win.

Update: Samsung has issued a statement on the matter, which can be found after the break

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Apple, Samsung

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Source: US ITC

If you get a lot of work-related email, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the misuse of priority tags — potluck dinners are suddenly as vital as company-wide meetings. It’s with a sense of dread, then, that we learned that Microsoft has applied for a patent on prioritizing phone calls. The approach would let callers choose an urgency level that flashes alerts, sends messages and otherwise signals that a call can’t wait. It would simultaneously foil telemarketers and other cold callers by requiring a passcode or encrypted authentication. If granted, the patent could be useful for on-call workers and worried parents. That said, we won’t mind if Microsoft declines to use it; we don’t need high-priority calls to refill the office coffee pot.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

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Source: USPTO

Earlier this morning, there was an Apple patent filing that was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office which informed the world of a method of encoding hyperlinks within an audio stream, where it would then offer content creators the ability to link to other media, alongside the option to control a device’s user interface with either a song or a podcast, now how about that? Calling this particular process “audio hyperlinking”, it is capable of being contained within an audio stream.

According to Apple’s patent application, these kind of sound waves could end up as audible or outside the normal hearing range of 20Hz to 20KHz, where it will “cause an effect in the user interface” of a receiving device. What kind of practical uses could we be looking at assuming that this patent is approved and implemented in a broad sense? Well, it could very well come in handy during a podcast, as users are given links to articles which are relevant to a discussion using nothing but sound waves alone. Apart from that, the patent application also described on how such data could eventually be encoded into an audio stream, where a receiving device would read it, leaving some room for additional “links” to be introduced – whether you like it or not.

Apple Applies Patent For ‘Audio Hyperlink’ Technology original content from Ubergizmo.

Android has had the privilege of serving up frequently-used apps right on the lock screen, that way you can go straight to the app in as little taps as possible. However, if you have a pattern lock on your phone, the convenience of quick-launching apps is unavailable. However, according to a new patent from Google, […]