Hasta La Gadget!

Apple suing HTC over 20-odd patents before both the US District Court and the International Trade Commission has certainly caused some chaos this morning, but we thought we’d take a quick breath now that we have the complaints and tease out exactly what patents are at stake here. Of note, most of the patents were granted in the past year, but overall they span a range from 1995 to February 2. Yes, last month. That’s a pretty big gap, and most of the patents are pretty dry and technical — and none of them cover anything like pinch-to-zoom. In fact, you might remember #7,479,949, “Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics” — we blew apart the myth that it was Apple’s “multitouch patent” back when Cupertino was making noise about Palm. It’s impossible for us to say exactly how this case is going to play out — just like the Apple / Nokia lawsuit, it could settle tomorrow, or it could last for 10 years — but what we do know is that Apple’s going after Android as much as it’s going after HTC. Some of these patents are from 15 years ago and cover OS-level behavior, so it’s hard to see how they can relate only to HTC’s implementation of Android and not Google’s OS as a whole. Yeah, it’s wild, and while we’re not going to blow out all 20 patents to sort out what they mean — not yet, anyway — we can certainly walk through the claims. Let’s see what we’ve got.

Continue reading Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown

Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Apple’s going on the warpath, kids. Just a few months after Cupertino got into it with Nokia over phone patents, Apple’s filed suit against HTC, alleging that the company is infringing 20 patents “related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware.” Steve, you have something to say?

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Okay then. We’re pulling the complaint filing now, we’ll let you know the exact details as soon as we learn them.

Update: HTC just gave us a statement — this is apparently coming totally out of the blue for them, since Apple hasn’t even served the complaint yet.

We only learned of Apple’s actions based on your stories and Apple’s press release. We have not been served yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.

Update 2: We mean it when we say this was all just filed in the past few hours — it’s not yet in the court’s systems. We just got the PDFs and put the full list of claims from the federal lawsuit below, but remember not to take the names of the patents literally or directly, since they don’t mean much. We’ll poke each one apart and tease out what’s really at stake as we go along.

[We’ve now looked at each and every patent in both cases in-depth — check it out here.]

Update 3: We’ve just learned that Apple submitted over 700 pages of exhibits to the District Court, which is a little nuts. In addition, the ITC complaint lists a number of specific HTC handsets as exhibits, including the Nexus One, Touch Pro, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro2, Tilt II, Pure, Imagio, Dream / G1, myTouch 3G, Hero, HD2, and Droid Eris. That’s really a full range of HTC phones, running both Android and Windows Mobile, with and without Sense / TouchFLO. Interestingly, the Android sets are specifically included because they run Android, while the WinMo sets are called out specifically for including DSP chips, not anything to do with Windows Mobile.

Apple sues HTC for infringing 20 iPhone patents originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve spent all our time hearing about a DR-950, but today at CeBIT ASUS has trotted out a DR-900 as its first 9-inch ebook reader. It doesn’t appear manifestly different from what we’ve heard and seen already, with WiFi connectivity augmented with a 3G option, and a battery life rated to last a pretty radical 10,000 pages on a single charge. The interface on show clearly invites touch interaction, and we can fill in a few gaps with what we know of the DR-950, namely a 1024 x 768 resolution on a Sipix panel, 4GB of integrated storage, 3.5mm headphone jack, and support for PDF, TXT, MP3 and ePUB files. We’ll be tracking down an official price and release date shortly, as well as smudging a few fingerprints on these before the day is through.

ASUS makes DR-900 e-reader official originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 05:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How about some actual systems? While the Acer Aspire 532G netbook already popped up at MWC, NVIDIA is promising 30 more Ion netbooks, nettops and all-in-ones before the summer. To kick it off, NVIDIA confirmed that ASUS will update its Eee PC 1201PN netbook, Eee Top 2010P, and Eee Box with the new graphics solution, while Lenovo’s C200 and Acer’s Aspire Revo will also get in on the action. We got to see the Revo strut some Blu-ray playback, so hit the break for some video footage and the full PR.

Continue reading NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready

NVIDIA Ion 2 now official; Acer, ASUS and Lenovo at the ready originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rejoice: PS3s across the land are now once again playable. That’s the word according to our friends at Joystiq, who say that the clock issue affecting “fat” PS3s has been somehow resolved and games are once again working correctly. We’re not sure if this means Sony’s fixed something on the network side or if the internal clock just ran past a certain time, but at least our long nightmare is seemingly over. Hit up Joy for a quick Q/A on the whole situation, including a way to potentially save lost trophy data.

PS3 issues apparently resolved, game on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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