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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.
Samsung and Apple have come to an agreement in a patent dispute so protracted it's become a running joke. Following seven years of verdicts and appeals, a California judge has filed a motion stating the case has been settled, and any further claims will be dismissed. The sum of the settlement hasn't been disclosed.
Here's a new development in the patent case that absolutely will not die: a California jury has ruled in favor of Apple, and Samsung is to pay damages to the tune of $538 million for violations primarily of Apple's design patents. Apple had been seeking more than $1 billion.
With their fingerprint sensors, iris scanners, and facial recognition tech, Samsung phones feature more methods of biometric authentication than most, if not all, of their competitors. However, the Korean company is now being sued by a US-based "data security firm," PACid Technologies, for infringing on two US patents and one Korean patent with its biometric features.
As far as patent disputes go, BlackBerry vs. Nokia is a sad undercard between two fallen heavyweights whose combined market share remains part of the dismal "Other" category in most reports. Nevertheless, Round 1 of this match is going to Nokia, thanks to an arbitration court ruling that has awarded the Finnish company $137 million to resolve a contract dispute related to payments it said BlackBerry owed under a patent license contract signed in 2012.
A couple of months ago we learned that BlackBerry CEO John Chen decided a good way to arrest his company's decline was to go into patent lawsuit mode. His first victim was rival manufacturer BLU, against which BlackBerry filed two separate infringement lawsuits covering 15 different patents. One of the suits was mainly based on software while the other looked at hardware, specifically relating to phone signal transmission.
Nokia and Xiaomi, two widely known and renowned companies, announced today that they were signing a business cooperation and patent licensing agreement. It's not uncommon to see joint ventures between corporations, but these two seem like an unlikely pair at first glance.
One of the biggest hurdles you can run into when starting a company is the issue of patents. Often larger companies don't like the competition whether or not they actually have a patent on your technology. There's right and wrong, but independent of the merit of a case brought against you, it doesn't matter if you can't defend yourself. Now Google and Intertrust are launching a new service called PatentShield that provides startups with access to a patent portfolio from contributing companies like Google, giving them a means of defending patent-based attacks with their own.
AMD is a pretty big name in the technology world. The semiconductor manufacturer, which rarely pursues legal action against others (at least publicly), has filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S ITC against several other entities. It asserts that the offensive uses of those technologies negatively impacts AMD and its licensees.
After months of fighting and court battles, including filings in China and multiple other countries, it seems that Qualcomm and Meizu, the Chinese phone manufacturer, have settled their dispute over patents. According to a press release from Qualcomm, the two have come to an agreement regarding Meizu's use of technology that Qualcomm said violated its patents.
All's fair in love and war and high-stakes international B2B sales. Wait, that's not true: there's actually quite a lot of regulation on that last bit. Just ask the Korean Fair Trade Commission, which presented American chipmaking giant Qualcomm with a gigantic fine for unfair business practices on Wednesday. According to the KFTC, Qualcomm abused its dominant business position to force its manufacturing partners to pay exorbitant patent licensing fees when selling its widely-used mobile modem chips.
Google Patents might not be the most exciting of Google's search products, but it's one that's essential in realizing Google's mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. However, the world is made up of more than just a half-dozen countries, which is why Google has just announced that it's adding 11 new countries to its patent database, bringing the total to 17 patent offices around the globe.
BlackBerry's phone sales have been on the decline for years, and its switch to Android may have been too little too late. The company's first Android phone, the PRIV, has not made a significant impact on the market. BlackBerry CEO John Chen made an unusual and potentially troubling statement on the company's May earnings call. He said he was in "patent licensing mode." That means lawsuits, and one of the first targets is budget phone maker BLU.
Huawei isn't just in the smartphone and hard-to-pronounce name businesses, they're also a telecommunications giant that handles an enormous amount of business-to-business infrastructure all over the world. That means a diversified portfolio of hardware, software, and (waaait for it) technology patents. BizJournals reports that the Chinese company is bringing that portfolio to bear against T-Mobile US today, alleging that the budget-friendly cell carrier refuses to license 14 of its 4G patents.
Here's some news that seems to come right out of bizarro world: Huawei is suing Samsung for infringing its intellectual property. Chinese OEMs are known for playing fast and lose with patents and trademarks, but Huawei alleges that Samsung is ripping off its patents on LTE technology. Samsung has yet to respond, but its lawyers are surely preparing to return fire.
If you go looking for Koush's Vysor today, you won't be able to find it. Koush has announced that he had to pull the screen sharing app because of codec licensing. Despite being more or less ubiquitous, the H.264 codec isn't a free standard. Koush was contacted by MPEG-LA and told he'd need to license the decoder in Vysor for $0.20 per user. Koush opted to pull the tool from the Chrome web store instead, but he's on the hook for previous downloads.
Creative is not a name you hear as often in consumer electronics these days. The Singapore-based firm is known for making audio products, including the Zen line of media players. Creative has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that basically every maker of Android phones is infringing its Zen patents by displaying your music. It wants them all banned, but what it really wants is money.
Samsung and Apple have largely ended their ongoing patent animosity, but the earlier cases are still winding their way through the courts. In the most recent ruling, a previous $120 million judgement against Samsung was thrown out by a federal appeals court. In fact, the court found it was Apple that infringed one of Samsung's patents.
While the legal battle between Samsung and Apple has mostly winded down, there are still some legal loose ends that need to be tied up. US District Judge Lucy Koh on Monday ordered a sales ban of several Samsung phones in the US, stemming from a 2014 ruling that found Samsung did infringe on several Apple patented features. You can probably put down your pitchforks, though. The phones included in the ban are ancient and aren't even sold anymore.
Patent lawsuits are without a doubt one of the more boring topics in technology. It takes a lot of drama to make it interesting, but the case between Samsung (and Qualcomm) and NVIDIA has hit that bar. See, NVIDIA sued Samsung/Qualcomm in late 2014 for infringing three of its patents, but Samsung sued back with three of its own. Now, NVIDIA has lost its case, and Samsung won on all three counts. Burn.