Marvell Semiconductor slammed with $1.17 billion in damages for patent infringement

A jury has found Marvell Semiconductor to have infringed on two of Carnegie Mellon University’s patents after a four week back-and-forth legal battle. The end result is $1,169,140,271 in damages that Marvell has been ordered to pay. If it sticks, this will prove to be the biggest patent-related verdict ever, a title currently held by Samsung, which was ordered to pay over a billion in damages earlier this year.

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Marvell was ruled to have infringed on Patent No. 6,438,180 and Patent No. 6,201,839, both of which concern a method for reducing the sound produced by a hard drive when it is crunching away at data. Marvell stated during trial that Carnegie Mellon’s patents aren’t anything special, and that a patent pre-dating the two in question detailed the same information.

The jury wasn’t convinced, however, and Marvell is now officially in the group of companies that have lost in patent cases with universities. This is especially bad news for Marvell considering that it made a tad over $900 million last year. The company, which is said to have sold over 2 billion infringing chips since 2003, has appealed the ruling.

Carnegie Mellon University was represented by K&L Gate; the firm’s chairman Peter J. Kalis offered this statement. “We take special pride in this trial victory because of the decades-long relationship between our firm and Carnegie Mellon University and our deep appreciation for CMU‘s path-breaking and leadership role in the information age.” The university followed this up by stating, “We did not undertake this suit lightly and once we undertook it we did not pursue it lightly.”

[via ars technica]


Marvell Semiconductor slammed with $1.17 billion in damages for patent infringement is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung seeks ban on Ericsson products in US

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.

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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.

Nintendo granted patent for multi-display Panorama View feature on Wii U

Dualscreen gaming with Wii U controller gets patented,

Nintendo lays claim to one of the more advanced implementations of dual-display gaming; its Panorama View Feature lets you move around the Wii U controller to see a different perspective than what’s shown on the external TV screen. The company was just granted a patent for this very technology, and the document goes into great detail about the gyrosensors used to determine the controller’s change in position. It’s a lot simpler in practice than in theory — just take a glance at the image above or peek at our hands-on demo of the concept at E3 2012 (embedded below the break).

Continue reading Nintendo granted patent for multi-display Panorama View feature on Wii U

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Source: USPTO

EU Issues Formal Objections Against Samsung For Patent Abuse

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The European Commission has delivered a “statement of objections” to Samsung’s leadership, in which it claims that Samsung was abusing its standard-essential patents in preventing Apple from making use of the same. Providing written notice is the next step in the EC’s investigation of Samsung, which began due to the Korean company’s many injunction requests and lawsuits filed in EU member states against Apple, and which isn’t going away despite Samsung having dropped all of its injunction requests in EU countries.

From here, the next step is for Samsung to formally reply to the charge from the EC, and ask for a hearing in front of regulators to defend its position. Once the Commission makes its judgement on the violations, following any defence mounted by Samsung, the gadget maker could face a fine up as much as 10 percent of its annual sales. The patents in question are related to 3G UMTS wireless communication, which Samsung had agreed to license with fair terms to its competitors in Europe.

“Intellectual property rights are an important cornerstone of the single market. However, such rights should not be misused when they are essential to implement industry standards, which bring huge benefits to businesses and consumers alike,” Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in statement released to Reuters on the subject.

This all began with the EU opening its investigation back in January. At the time, it explained that the reason for the investigation was due to Samsung’s pursuit of “injunctive relief in various Member States’ courts against competing mobile device makers based on alleged infringements of certain of its patent rights which it has declared essential to implement European mobile telephony standards.” Samsung tried to defray any potential fallout of this by dropping its requests for said “injunctive relief” earlier this week. That hasn’t stopped the formal charges, but it may help Samsung plead its case when it responds to this written request, helping it to eliminate or lessen any potential fine that might result.

Apple Patents Intelligent Call Waiting With Custom Hold Options And Celeb-Spotting Facial Recognition

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Two new patent applications published by the USPTO today describe a couple of pieces of tech that both help make mobile devices smarter, albeit in very different ways. The first is a facial recognition system that can identify people and things using vector-based “faceprints” picked up from photos, and the second is a call waiting system that can provide inbound callers with a lot more than just a repeated tone to let them know they’re still on hold.

The image recognition patent bears a lot of resemblance to Apple’s existing facial recognition systems built-in to iPhoto, which allows it to identify and tag pictures where friends and family appear after first learning what their face looks like. But the “Auto-recognition for noteworthy objects” patent isn’t about spotting your brother or wife; it’s intended to tag celebrities, landmarks and famous objects, in order to better serve up contextual links and information about those people and places.

To do this, it can either use locally stored photos, or tap into pictures kept in the cloud to search for faceprints that look like the one it gets from an original source image. Most of the patent describes these as representing actual people, but it also allows for the recognition of “iconic images.” Once a match is made, the system can group images of the same individual together. It can also add metadata to images to help improve hit rates, and even track people aging over the years. The exact reasons Apple would want to do this is unknown, but the patent does describe a system returning information and links about the subjects it identifies, including Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and iTunes Store links to related movies and music.

This could be a building block for a visual search engine, perhaps intended as a complement or addition to Siri. If Apple is intent on building a more robust and complete virtual personal assistant over time, after all, it’ll need eyes as well as ears to really get the job done.

The second patent seems like something we could see implemented quite soon, and actually builds on Apple’s introduction of new features for dealing with inbound calls, including responding via a pre-written text message, introduced in iOS 6. This time, the system would add a number of similar options to calls that come in while you’re already on the phone, providing a way to put callers on hold and give them an auto-response explaining your current situation. It would essentially be like having your own virtual office line on your device, complete with the ability to see how long you’ve had someone on hold and an option to send to voicemail should a hold go on too long.

Users would be able to set up custom responses to send out for their inbound callers to hear, from which they could select depending on their situation. Or they could ask a caller to speak a message, which the iPhone would translate using a text-to-speech engine in order to delivery a text message for the person receiving the call. Users could then text a return response, or select from one of their pre-recorded custom messages. A user could even enter an estimated hold time to let their caller know how long they might be waiting.

An automated response feature could also use sensor cues from an iPhone’s accelerometer or GPS, as well as Calendar and Contact data to predetermine what message should be played in response to an incoming call. It could determine if you’re driving, for instance, or recognize that someone is calling in who you were supposed to have a conference call with, and deliver a response tailored to each situation.

Both patents, as with a lot of recent Apple filings, are about making the smartphone smarter: a device that can recognize and process data on its own, and then offer up better, more immediately useful action options for a user is better than a device that is content to wait for user input on all decisions, at least according to Apple’s recent trajectory with software and services. As always, it’s worth noting that patent applications are seldom roadmaps of what will ship, but looking at them as a whole should prove a good indicator of where Apple is focusing for R&D.

Google, Facebook, and Others Are Begging The Courts To Smack Down Absurdly Vague Patents

Patent litigation is all over the place these days, and regardless of who’s in the right or wrong in any specific case, it’s eating up a whole bunch of resources. That’s why Facebook, Google, and a number of other companies have rallied together with an amicus brief kindly asking the U.S. State Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to quit honoring crazy-vague patents. More »

Apple and Google Are Reportedly Joining Forces To Buy $500 Million of Kodak Patents

It’s not often that you hear that Apple and Google—both fighting for utter smartphone dominance—have teamed up on anything, but reports from Bloomberg say it’s the case. And they’re both going in on a half a billion dollars worth of Kodak patents. More »

Apple’s Flagship Multi-Touch Patent Has Been Tentatively Invalidated

Apple has quite a few patents. Steve Jobs alone had 313 patents to his name. There’s one key one however, the ‘949 multi-touch patent, sometimes known as the Steve Jobs patent, and the USPTO just tentatively rejected all 20 of its claims. More »

Apple and Google reportedly join forces to buy Kodak patents

Apple and Google have a cordial relationship peppered with bouts of sparring and relentless competing for the world’s mobile users. Now the two companies have formed an unlikely – although not surprising – joint effort to acquire Eastman Kodak’s 1,100 patents, according to unnamed sources familiar with the issue. The patents will cost upwards of $500 million, with both companies having already tried acquiring them for lesser amounts independently.

Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy back in January of this year, showing $5.1 billion in assets and $6.5 billion in debt. That debt includes a rather hefty $950 million Citigroup loan, which Kodak will pay off in part with the money it makes from the patent sales. If all goes as planned, Kodak anticipates being out of bankruptcy by June 2013.

It is not uncommon for companies to form a group and jointly bid on patents. Before joining up, Apple and Google both led their own groups in pursuit of the patents. Apple was joined by the likes of Microsoft and Intellectual Venture Management LLC, while Google was joined by manufacturers of Android smartphones and the RPX Corporation. The offers for the patents fell between $150 million and $250 million.

Recent examples of companies jointly acquiring patents includes 2011′s band of Apple, RIM, EMC, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, and Sony shelling out $4.5 billion for 6,000 Nortel Networks patents and patent applications. Google did not offer a comment when questioned about the matter, saying only that it doesn’t comment on rumors. Likewise, Apple has remained silent amidst the speculation.

[via Bloomberg]


Apple and Google reportedly join forces to buy Kodak patents is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Bloomberg: Apple and Google teaming up on $500 million-plus bid for Kodak patents

Bloomberg Apple and Google teaming up on $500 millionplus bid for Kodak patents

After Kodak’s auction to offload 1,100 of its digital imaging patents was green-lit this summer, it looked like Apple and Google were ready to do battle for the goods. Now, however, Bloomberg cites a pair of sources who claim that the two titans have ended their face-off and are combining their efforts in a $500 million-plus bid for the patents. All three parties are staying quiet for now, but the move would certainly not be out of form for technology giants when it comes to lucrative, and potentially volatile, patents. Helping Kodak recover from bankruptcy with more cash in its coffers is nice enough, but avoiding a courtroom feud on digital photos is what sweetens the pot all around.

[Image credit: Viktor Nagornyy, Flickr]

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Source: Bloomberg