Mar 15

Dell joins dog pile, sues five LCD makers over price-fixing allegations

Posted in: lawsuit, LCD, legal, Sharp, Today's Chili, Toshiba


Looks like Dell is getting itself a membership in a club of which AT&T, Nokia, and the US Department of Justice are none too pleased to say they’re members. The company has filed suit in a San Francisco court today against four Japanese LCD makers – Sharp, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Seiko Epson – and Taiwan-based HannStar. The crime at hand? None other than the much-chronicled LCD price fixing cartel. At least two of the aforementioned companies (Sharp and Hitachi) have already come forth to admit involvement and pay fines elsewhere, and now it looks like the troubles are still coming for them and others. If only there was some way the companies could band together to increase profits and help pay for these suits… oh, wait.

Dell joins dog pile, sues five LCD makers over price-fixing allegations originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 12

Nokia asks court to dismiss part of Apple patent lawsuit

Posted in: Apple, lawsuit, legal, nokia, patent, Today's Chili

How do we know we’re years away from a final resolution to the Nokia / Apple patent lawsuit? It’s been six months since Nokia first filed its complaint, and the two parties are just now starting to argue about which specific substantive claims they’re eventually going to argue about. Let’s do a quick refresh: at the heart of the lawsuit is a conflict over Nokia’s wireless patents, some of which are almost certainly essential to how cell data and WiFi operate. As a member of the ETSI and the IEEE licensing groups which oversee GSM and WiFi, Nokia’s required to license its patents to anyone who asks on fair terms, but those terms aren’t set in stone — Nokia can negotiate separate licenses as it sees fit, and it apparently wanted Apple to cross-license its touchscreen patents as part of the deal. Apple said no, and now we’re all in court, with both sides alleging patent infringement in three different lawsuits (one of which is on hold) and Apple claiming that Nokia is also liable for breach of contract, because it promised fair licensing terms and didn’t deliver. Got all that? Right.

So that brings us to yesterday, when Nokia asked the court to dismiss all of Apple’s contract-related claims, saying that they’re simply a distraction from the real issue, which is patents, and that its license offers aren’t unfair simply because Apple doesn’t like them. In short: Apple and Nokia’s patent lawsuit is currently not really about patents at all, but about whether or not it should also be a fight about contract terms in addition to a fight about patents, and that question won’t be resolved for months. And that’s why vigilante justice is the future of America’s tarnished civilization something like 90 percent of patent cases eventually settle out of court.

P.S. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, today Reuters reported that the first trial date isn’t expected until 2012. So, yeah.

Nokia asks court to dismiss part of Apple patent lawsuit originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceBusinessWeek, Motion to Dismiss (PDF)  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 12

Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240 million in damages

Posted in: Law, lawsuit, legal, Microsoft, patent, Software, Today's Chili

And the intellectual property rollercoaster continues. Microsoft’s second appeal of that $240m judgment banning sales of Word with features infringing on i4i’s XML-related patents has been rejected, leaving the Redmond giant with a huge fine to pay atop its undoubtedly sky-high lawyer bills. The appeals court held that Microsoft was explicitly aware of i4i’s patents before implementing the relevant XML code into Word — undoubtedly because i4i had been selling an extremely popular XML plugin for years and had approached Microsoft about licensing it. Yeah, oops. Don’t worry, though, there shouldn’t be any consumer impact here: old versions of Word aren’t affected, and current versions of Word 2007 and Office 2010 don’t have the offending features. Still, Microsoft might be able to appeal yet again, depending on a panel ruling on the matter — at this rate, we’d expect it.

Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240 million in damages originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 09

Jen-Hsun Huang is ‘looking forward’ to court date with Intel, sees no reason to settle (video)

Posted in: intel, interview, Law, legal, NVIDIA, Today's Chili, video

Sometimes companies spar out their differences behind closed doors, and sometimes they have guys like Jen-Hsun Huang at their helms and the whole world gets to know how they feel and what they intend to do about it. The Tegrasaurus Rex has taken a recent interview with Fortune magazine as an opportunity to eloquently lay out his side’s case in the epic cross-licensing dispute between NVIDIA and Intel, and to let us all know that he sees “no reason” to settle with the Atom-making giant. Describing Intel’s argumentation as “completely nonsense,” NVIDIA’s fearless leader tell us that he’s eagerly anticipating the court clash scheduled for later this year. We can’t yet confirm whether or not he finished it off with a “bring your popcorn” instruction, but all his recorded words await in video form just after the break.

Continue reading Jen-Hsun Huang is ‘looking forward’ to court date with Intel, sees no reason to settle (video)

Jen-Hsun Huang is ‘looking forward’ to court date with Intel, sees no reason to settle (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 09

79 percent of adults believe web access is a ‘fundamental right’

Posted in: Law, legal, Today's Chili, web

The BBC World Service has conducted a poll of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries to answer one primary question: is internet access a fundamental human right? We can skip right past Finland and Estonia who’ve already made laws to that effect, and take a look at what the other nations thought. Mexico, Korea and Brazil lead the way here with all having greater than 90 percent agreement, while Pakistan, India and Kenya — countries with a slightly different perception of what fundamental needs are — offer the least support, though they’re all still above 50 percent in agreement. Other interesting stats include the claim by 85 percent of Japanese internet users and 81 percent in Mexico that they would not be able to “cope without the internet,” while 55 percent of Brits and most other European nations believe that the internet should be regulated by governments in at least some way. Ghana and Nigeria are most worried about fraud (ha!), while people in the Philippines see explicit content as the web’s biggest threat. Hit the source for more such pearls of wisdom and do let us know what you think in the comments below.

79 percent of adults believe web access is a ‘fundamental right’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Digg  |  sourceBBC  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 08

Nokia wants patent on self-regenerating phone batteries, piezoelectrics and much magic involved

Posted in: application, legal, mobile phone, nokia, patent, patent application, PatentApplication, Today's Chili

In Nokia’s own words, what we’re looking at is a “piezoelectric kinetic energy harvester.” Working along the same principles as kinetic wristwatches have done for a long time already, Nokia’s idea is to capture the energy generated by the phone’s movements and to refashion it into beautiful, clean-as-a-whistle electric power. By allowing the heavier internal components to move on rails within the phone as part of a “force-transferring assembly,” the Espoo think tank has figured out a way to capitalize on all the small forces of acceleration and rotation that we subject our phones to on a daily basis. It would seem overly ambitious to expect this to replace the trusty old charger, but we give credit to Nokia for even thinking about it. Check out some schematics of how this would work after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Nokia wants patent on self-regenerating phone batteries, piezoelectrics and much magic involved

Nokia wants patent on self-regenerating phone batteries, piezoelectrics and much magic involved originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 07

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid

Posted in: Apple, cebit, germany, issue, kirf, legal, patent, problem, Today's Chili

Mama always said that some folks just never learn, and we reckon there’s plenty of wisdom to be had from that very statement. Year after year, German police are called in to raid select booths at CeBIT (and IFA, to be fair), and yet again we’ve seen a booth cleared out at the request of powerful lawyers from a few companies you may have heard of. Word on the street has it that Apple, Siemens and Sisvel were all kvetching over patent infringements made by an unnamed company exhibiting at last week’s show, and within an hour or so of the fuzz showing up, the whole thing was stripped and a hefty fine (€10,000) was levied. Unfortunately, the exact details of who was violating what remains clouded in mystery, but for whatever reason, we get the feeling that something extremely similar will be going down in Hannover next year. We blame KIRFers determination.

Updated: Turns out one of our editors at CeBIT saw this whole situation go down at the FirstView booth. Within minutes the entire booth was surrounded by the Polizei, and though we tried to dig further on the situation our inability to speak German caused some communication issues so we decided it best to move on to the next craptablet on the floor. We will, however, always have the shot above to remember the confusing experience.

[Thanks, TheLostSwede]

Apple, Siemens and Sisvel patent infringement leads to CeBIT booth raid originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceSemiAccurate  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 05

Rambus and NVIDIA patent dispute gets a little closer to a resolution

Posted in: legal, NVIDIA, patent, Today's Chili

Rambus and NVIDIA patent dispute gets a little closer to a resolutionWe’re just a few tech-related legal cases away from changing our name to Enpatent, and the latest to push us that little bit closer is yet another ruling in the long and drawn-out battle between Rambus and NVIDIA. If you need a refresher, way back in 2008 Rambus accused NVIDIA of illicitly using five of its patents, and most recently a judge ruled that only three of those five had been violated. Now two more patents have fallen off the legal wagon, with the US Patent and Trademark Office indicating that only one of the three remaining was a true violation, a second was rejected, and a third got a mixed ruling. So, from a start of five Rambus is down to basically one and a half, but NVIDIA is saying it isn’t done yet, planning yet another appeal. Maybe we should call ourselves Enappeal instead…

Rambus and NVIDIA patent dispute gets a little closer to a resolution originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 04

Apple / Nokia federal lawsuit put on hold pending ITC investigation

Posted in: Apple, lawsuit, legal, nokia, patent, Today's Chili

We normally wouldn’t cover something so procedural, but given the heightened interesting Apple’s patent dealings this week, we thought we’d note that Cupertino’s tiff with Nokia in the federal courts has been put on hold while both companies argue their case before the US International Trade Commission. We expected the ITC to be the primary front in this fight from the start, but now we’ll be particularly focused on the Commission’s ruling, since several of the patent claims Apple’s asserting against Nokia in this case are also being claimed against HTC. We don’t have a timeline on when the Commission will reach a decision, but we’ll keep an eye on things.

Apple / Nokia federal lawsuit put on hold pending ITC investigation originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 04

TiVo’s $200m damages award in EchoStar case affirmed, EchoStar to appeal (again)

Posted in: dvr, lawsuit, legal, patent, tivo, Today's Chili

Yes, there’s a certain other patent brouhaha in the news right now, but we’re not lying when we say these lawsuits take years to fully resolve. Take TiVo’s endless time warp patent lawsuit against EchoStar, which started in 2006 and involves just a single patent: the court of appeals just today affirmed the $200 million contempt judgment against EchoStar from September. Of course, EchoStar is going to appeal to the full appeals court — it always appeals — and if that doesn’t work we’d wager that this case will eventually be appealed to the Supreme Court for a second time. Don’t worry, everyone keep can keep recording Idol — this shouldn’t affect TiVo or DISH Network customers at all. Statements from both TiVo and EchoStar after the break.

Continue reading TiVo’s $200m damages award in EchoStar case affirmed, EchoStar to appeal (again)

TiVo’s $200m damages award in EchoStar case affirmed, EchoStar to appeal (again) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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