24
Jul
joker-burning-money

Over at FOSSPatents, Florien Mueller has gotten his hands on a copy of a filing containing Apple's damages claim against Samsung in their much-publicized California lawsuit. The contents indicate that Apple is seeking $2 billion in unjust enrichment damages (the amount Samsung has wrongly profited infringing Apple's design patents), along with $500 million in lost profits. A smaller $25 million royalty for various technical patents like tap to zoom and overscroll bounce is included, but only in regard to a few products.

The design patents are the damages headliners because only design patents offer the option of seeking unjust enrichment as a remedy (there are various and good reasons for this).

17
Jul
gavel

According to a header from a sealed document unearthed by FOSSPatents, Google has requested to intervene in an ITC patent lawsuit between HTC and Nokia as co-defendant to the Taiwanese smartphone-maker. This is the first time Google has ever filed as an intervening 3rd-party in a patent lawsuit between one of its hardware partners and a competitor, so it may be the sign of a shift in strategy for the company.

12-07-16 ITC-847 Google motion to intervene

There's also the fact that Google has requested an antitrust investigation against Nokia in the EU, so maybe Google is just piling on the Finnish firm to makes its stance even more clear.

06
Jul
gavel

Samsung swiftly appealed the preliminary injunctions slapped on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Nexus issued by a California district court, and the presiding circuit court has issued its response.

First, the court declined to even consider lifting the sales ban (preliminary injunction) on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 - meaning that ban will stay in effect unless Samsung wins out at trial. Second, it decided that Samsung had made a plausible case for denying the preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus, and has lifted that ban temporarily, awaiting Apple's response, which is due by next week. This doesn't mean much for the moment, and might not mean much overall - Samsung probably stopped making Tab 10.1s months ago, and the Galaxy Nexus will be receiving an OTA update soon enough to avoid Apple's patent infringement allegations.

03
Jul
samsung-galaxy-nexus

According to AllThingsD, Google is working quickly to release a software patch to its Galaxy Nexus handset in order to avoid a preliminary injunction sales ban in the US. Google says the patch will be coming very soon (eg, tonight). The news came hot on the heels of Judge Koh's denial of Samsung motion to stay the ban while it appealed the injunction to the circuit court.

Google will also be assisting Samsung in its appeal of the ban, and to challenge the legitimacy of one of Apple's patents on universal search. Google is seeking to have the patent invalidated at the USPTO, as well.

29
Jun
nexus-logo
Last Updated: July 3rd, 2012

Apple asked for an injunction on US sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus back in February, and now it's gotten it. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has ruled that the Google flagship device infringes several patents, but primarily 8,086,604 (multi-source searching). This is a blow to Google just as I/O 2012 is wrapping up. This might finally bring Google head to head with Apple.

GALAXY Nexus Product Image (1)

Apple has alleged that Samsung infringed four patents, including the aforementioned multi-source search patent. The others cover functions like link actions, word suggestions, and slide to unlock. We know that some of those issues were solved in Android 4.0 with software workarounds.

22
Jun
300px-CourtGavel_thumb

After an injunction hearing earlier this week, Judge Posner has issued his final decision on whether to throw out the Motorola v. Apple case. The result? You're (both) outta here.

Judge Posner dismissed both parties' cases with prejudice earlier this evening (meaning Apple and Moto cannot refile against one another on these issues in any other federal court). Apple will, of course, appeal.

Posner's feeling on Apple's insistent demand for an injunction against Motorola's smartphone products was summed up best by the following excerpt from the decision:

And while the patents themselves (or some of them at least) may well have considerable value, after the claims constructions by Judge Crabb and myself and after my grants of partial summary judgment only a handful of the original patent claims remain in the case; infringement of that handful may not be a source of significant injury past, present, or future.

08
Jun
300px-CourtGavel

The presiding judge in the Motorola v. Apple case in Illionois, Richard Posner, has just handed down an order dismissing all claims of both parties in the case, just as it was set to go to trial on Monday. Posner's preliminary order (he'll be writing a full decision soon, which I can't wait to read) basically says neither party was able to show that the infringement of patents by the other resulted in the production of evidence that said infringement actually caused them any harm.

Posner goes even further, in fact, and declares that Apple (and Motorola's) requests for injunctive relief are simply not tenable in a case where the patents in question are such small parts of much larger products:

Because the parties believe that damages are an adequate remedy for the alleged infringements (though they failed to present evidence on damages strong enough to withstand summary judgment), and because injunctive relief would impose costs disproportionate to the harm to the patentee and the benefit of the alleged infringement to the alleged infringer and would be contrary to the public interest, I cannot find a basis for an award of injunctive relief.

06
Jun
galaxy-s-iii-pre-orders-pop-up-on-amazon-blue-and-white-models-available-for-799-and-up_thumb

Update: It should come as no surprise, but Samsung has responded to Apple's attack on the Galaxy S III, saying it will "demonstrate to the court that the Galaxy S III is innovative and distinctive."

Apple and Samsung's ongoing litigation in California federal court has become something of a three-ring circus. Back in December, the presiding judge denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against a wide variety of Samsung products. Apple has since filed for more such injunctions on newer products, and the newest is the Galaxy S III.

s3

Apple claims the devices infringes the same "data tapping" patent it has accused HTC (again today) and Motorola of infringing - which it is now extending to the core Android long-press action dialogue menu for URLs (eg, links in Gmail, browser, etc).

06
Jun
apple-rotten1_thumb

Apple has filed a new complaint with the ITC against HTC over the same data-tapping patent that caused a substantial disruption of HTC's supply line into the United States, and resulted in delayed or stifled launches for a number of phones.

After removing the multi-option dialogue that appeared upon pressing a phone number in an email or webpage from its devices, HTC proclaimed it was clear of Apple's patent on data-tapping techniques. Apple seems to think they're wrong - and is now claiming that a core Android functionality (long-press URL action prompting a multi-selection dialogue) is infringing on the patent.

31
May
google-android-oracle

We're hearing via The Verge that Judge William Alsup has just handed down his decision on the copyrightability of Oracle's 37 Java API's, asserted by Oracle as having been infringed by Google in the Android operating system. This is probably the most important issue of the entire case. While a jury decided that Google did infringe Oracle's APIs as asserted by Oracle, that decision hinged on the assumption that the APIs were in fact copyrightable in the way Oracle had insisted they were.

Alsup determined that Oracle's API's are not, in fact, copyrightable in their "sequence, structure, and organization," and the related infringement claims against Google have been dismissed.

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