latest
Google patent could make forgetting to engage airplane mode a thing of the past
Saving you a stern talking-to from the flight attendant
Modern travel often involves flights where passengers carry devices like smartphones or laptops. These devices have wireless features such as Wi-Fi or GPS that can interfere with the plane's systems. So, airlines often ask passengers to use airplane mode during flight, turning off these features.
Latest patent lawsuit to target Google takes aim at Android's power management code
Is there pocket change stuck in this Lint?
We're used to seeing patent lawsuits filed by small holding firms against tech giants go through Texas's federal courts. Whether they end up being rightful claims to royalties or a fruitless attempt at trolling, we don't often recognize the names of the plaintiffs. Not so with this new case against Google coming out of Purdue University.
Super-practical pop-out selfie camera drones are absolutely, definitely coming to a phone near you
A recent VIVO patent shows off the wildest phone design we've seen in a while
The long war of the notch has come to an end. No longer need we argue about teardrops versus hole punches, or look for half-hearted solutions like pop-up cameras or cams hidden beneath the screen. Nope, I have seen the future, and the future flies around your face like a little plastic mosquito. Say hello to Vivo's latest international patent published at WIPO (and spotted by a Danish site), the "Electronic Device." It's a phone with a little camera drone inside. I could go into more detail, but the design illustrations seem to be pretty self-explanatory: the tiny, ultra-thin drone pops out of the top of the phone on its little tray, takes off with diminutive rotors, flies around to take photos or videos, and then docks again for charging and safekeeping.
Targeted advertising is often incredibly spot-on, leading some people to believe that social networks and advertisers are using their phones' microphones to spy on them. While that's just a myth, Spotify appears to be exploring the possibilities offered from listening to its subscribers. The company filed a patent detailing how it could use microphones to determine people's "emotional state, gender, age, or accent," according to Music Business Worldwide.
LG's smartphone division is known for quirky, gimmicky devices that often don't quite live up to expectations, but the company still does have extensive patents concerning LTE and 4G communication software. The Korean conglomerate aims to protect these assets and has thus decided to file a lawsuit against TCL in Germany, alleging it's infringing three of its patents.
The S Pen has always differentiated the Note series from other flagship smartphones, and each year Samsung has made it a little bit better. With the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung enhanced the S Pen with Bluetooth connectivity and the ability to supercharge 30 minutes of power in under a minute. Today, the USPTO has granted a patent that could see the S Pen also used as a camera with an optical zoom — potentially removing the need for a camera notch (or hole-punch).
According to a report published by ZDNet today, Microsoft has just made a whole pile of its IP available in a "royalty-free and unrestricted license" by joining the Open Invention Network (OIN), a shared defensive patent pool launched to protect Linux. By pledging these patents to the group, Android OEM members of the pool should have that same royalty-free access to the relevant patents, which cover Linux and Android-related technologies.
Many of you were probably wowed by the Vivo Apex, a concept phone with way too many futuristic things on board, at MWC 2018. The Apex has extraordinarily small bezels and an in-display fingerprint sensor, but arguably its most innovative feature is its popup front-facing camera that allows it to avoid the dreaded notch. Andy Rubin has revealed that a patent for this solution was granted to Essential Products, Inc in 2017.
The Pixelbook was shown off only around two months ago, but the tech industry is constantly evolving. That seems to be the case for this motorized Pixelbook lid that was spotted in a patent. This lid would ensure that you wouldn't have to exert as much physical force to use your laptop.
The High Court of Justice of England and Wales has ruled against Huawei in its fight to avoid paying patent royalties to data software firm Unwired Planet. In an unprecedented move for a case of this kind brought in the UK, the judgment not only applies to sales of Huawei devices in the UK but also globally, which would prove vastly more costly.
Top technology companies are no strangers to patent litigation. Wherever there is money to be made there will always be opportunistic individuals and companies who will obtain patents in order to profit from licensing or litigation. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court ruled on a key change that should make it much harder for patent trolls to be successful.
If you remember back in 2014, MX Player had to take a forced step of removing support for the AC-3 codec (also known as Dolby Digital) from its app. That killed a bit of MX Player's magic: it had previously been popular as the app that could play any and every video you threw at it, no need to worry about formats and encodings, and regardless of whether or not your device's own video player could support them. After the removal, users had to download custom-built codecs and manually point the app toward them as a make-do solution to gain back AC-3 capabilities.
Samsung has a tendency to throw stuff at the wall, and see what sticks. I don't mean that in a negative way - many of their seemingly-bizarre experiments became wildly popular (see: S7 edge). A patent application submitted by Samsung shows their concept of a foldable smartphone, and it's interesting to say the least.
Microsoft is taking Android seriously, and that means more than sticking quality apps on Google Play. The tech giant is partnering with whomever it can to make its software the first you see when you power on your phone. Lenovo is the latest Android manufacturer to agree.
Meizu is using technology that violates Qualcomm's patents without the usual licensing rigmarole, and Qualcomm isn't gonna take it anymore. So it is alleged in Qualcomm's press release, announcing a complaint against the up-and-coming Chinese manufacturer in the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. Qualcomm says that Meizu has refused to negotiate "in good faith" to license particular patents, especially those related to 3G and LTE radio standards, though the precise patents in question aren't delineated.
Microsoft is about to hit it big with one of China's top smartphone manufacturers: Xiaomi. It has announced today a multi-faceted deal with the company including sales of patents, cross-licensing arrangements, and software pre-installation, expanding its OEM partnerships and its services' worldwide reach while also providing Xiaomi with the support it needed to enter more markets.
Electronics and cars are a tricky combination. While the advantages of systems like in-dash navigation and text-to-speech SMS reading are obvious, every extra gadget that travels with you while you're driving has the potential to be a dangerous distraction. Google may be looking to solve that problem, at least as it applies to wearable devices like Android Wear watches. A recent patent published by the USPTO indicates that Google has developed (or at least conceptualized) a system for detecting whether a wearable user is actively driving the vehicle or merely a passenger.
If you grew up in Lebanon like I did, you'd consider potholes an unavoidable fact of hitting the road. Any road. You start planning your driving and lanes based on the placement of potholes, until you get surprised by a new one that just sprung up out of nowhere in the last 24 hours. Sometimes you have to take the wrong side of the street to escape one, other times the pothole is so huge you can't find any way to drive around it. And your car suffers the consequences day in and day out.
If corporate patent litigation was a soap opera, it would be at once the most interesting and most snooze-inducing show on television. The latest twist comes from a three-year-old suit by Fujifilm against Motorola Mobility, which was still a Google company instead of a Lenovo one when the suit first started. Fuji alleged that Moto violated three camera patents and one wireless patent in its phones without licensing. A San Francisco court invalidated Fuji's claims on all but one of them, so Moto will have to pay for the privilege of one camera patent.