Hasta La Gadget!

Palm users looking to be a little more social may not have to wait much longer, as a new patent filing reveals that the company may be working on a Google Latitude-esque location sharing service for their devices. According to the patent, a user would be notified if another user is in the proximity of another one, and it makes mention of sharing location information to social networking sites. Additionally, it alludes to location based reminders, such as reminding you to pick up milk if you’re at or near a grocery store. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Apple filed a patent for a similar sounding location sharing service very recently. Let’s just hope this doesn’t lead to another legal spat between the two companies, because it could get pretty ugly, pretty fast… again.

Palm files patent for GPS-based location sharing service originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Nokia’s pulling all the stops in its patent fight with Apple: in addition to the already-filed lawsuit, the Finnish company has now filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission, alleging that “virtually all” of Apple’s products infringe one of seven patents covering user interfaces, cameras, antennas, and power management. Ouch. Of course, this is a pretty standard tactic as far as major patent disputes go — this is just a second front of the same war, and we’d expect Apple to lodge an ITC complaint of its own in due time. What could make this interesting is the ITC’s power to ban imports of infringing products in relatively short order, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

Nokia brings Apple patent fight to the ITC, says most Apple products infringe originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s getting closer and closer to check-writing time for Steve Ballmer, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has just upheld a decision that would see Microsoft Word and Office banned from sale starting January 11. If you’ll recall, Microsoft lost a patent infringement suit against XML specialists i4i back in May when it was found that Word’s handling of .xml, .docx, and .docm files infringed upon i4i’s patented XML handling algorithms, but the injunction against further Word sales was put on hold pending the results of this appeal. Now that Microsoft has lost once again, we’d expect either another appeal and request for the injunction to be stayed, this time to the Supreme Court, or for a settlement between these two that would end this whole mess right now. We’ll see what happens — stay tuned.

P.S.- Just to be clear on this, i4i isn’t a patent troll — it’s a 30 person database design company that shipped one of the first XML plugins for Office and was actually responsible for revamping the entire USPTO database around XML to make it compatible with Word back in 2000. What’s more, the patents involved here don’t cover XML itself, but rather the specific algorithms used to read and write custom XML — so OpenOffice users can breathe easy, as i4i has said the suite doesn’t infringe. Existing Office users should also be fine, as only future sales of Word are affected by the ruling, not any already-sold products.

Engadget: Helping you flame with accuracy.

Update: Microsoft says it’s moving quickly to prepare versions of Office 2007 and Word 2007 that don’t have the “little-used” XML features for sale by January 11, and that the Office 2010 beta “does not contain the technology covered by the injunction,” which can be read in a number of ways. It’s also considering an appeal, so we’ll see what happens next.

Microsoft loses patent appeal; Word and Office to be barred from sale starting January 11 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying, “good artists copy and great artists steal.” Good thing the quoter was Steve Jobs then, because the latest Apple patent application to go public looks very much like something Johnny Chung Lee pieced together with a Wiimote way back in 2007. Filed for in June 2008, the new patent is for a system tracking the location of the user’s head and responding to his movements in a fashion that should generate a realistic three-dimensional viewing experience sans those pesky glasses. We’ve got video of Johnny’s setup after the break, and as he himself describes it, the idea behind a “desktop VR” is to unbound imagery from the screen surface and to make your monitor or TV act like a window unto whatever is being displayed. That means Apple will need a new branding scheme should this application turn into a real product — iWindow just might be the least likely product name in the history of consumer electronics.

Continue reading Apple applies for head tracking patent, Johnny Chung Lee says ‘you’re welcome’

Apple applies for head tracking patent, Johnny Chung Lee says ‘you’re welcome’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So much for making nice. Apple just announced that it’s countersuing Nokia for infringing thirteen of its patents — slightly upping Nokia’s claim that Apple’s infringing ten. We haven’t seen the case yet, but we’ll post it up for you as soon as we find it — and as we predicted in our breakdown of Nokia’s complaint, this is shaping up to be a long and costly nightmare of a suit. Hey, do you think Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell might have a crazy lightning rod of a statement about the case for us?

“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president.

Cool, thanks. We’ll be in the corner under a Nomex blanket for the next few months.

Update: Here’s the PDF of the reply — we’re still reading all 79 pages of it, but it’s what we expected: Apple says Nokia’s patents aren’t actually essential to GSM / UMTS, denies infringing them, and says they’re invalid and / or unenforceable anyway. Apple also says Nokia wanted unreasonable license terms for the patents, including a cross-license for Apple’s various iPhone device patents as part of any deal, which Apple clearly wasn’t willing to do. That’s in stark contrast to what Nokia says it wants in its lawsuit — all it’s asked the court for is past due license fees on its patents. (Which is odd, if you think about it: Nokia wouldn’t come to terms on a license that didn’t include iPhone patents, but it’ll spend the cash on litigation for past due fees? That seems silly.) Oh, and if you’re just in this for the bitchy quotes, here you go:

As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia’s GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia’s new offerings to the already released iPhone:”[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride.” True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple’s iPhone ideas as well as Apple’s basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia’s purported standards essential patent.

We’ll let you know if we see anything else of interest, but we’d say we’re in for a long, bumpy ride here.

Apple countersues Nokia for infringing 13 patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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