Apple and Samsung’s CEOs are scheduled to meet on May 21st to discuss a possible settlement to the widely-publicized on-going legal battle, FOSS Patents reported. The two companies have been in a bitter patent war since last April that includes more than 20 cases in 10 countries. Despite the scheduled settlement talks, however, the Korean manufacturer asserted eight additional patents against the Cupertino-based company last week. Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts during the company’s earnings call that he would rather settle lawsuits than fight them in court. “I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it. We just want people to invent their own stuff,” the CEO said. “I would highly prefer to settle versus battle. But the key thing is that it’s very important that Apple not become the developer for the world.” If the two companies cannot come to an agreement, a trial is scheduled for July in the United States.

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It's been a little over a year since Cablevision launched Optimum for iPad with live streaming of all of its channels to the tablet, and now subscribers can experience the same thing on their computer with the Optimum for Laptops app. Available for Mac or PC it has a brand new interface and searchable guide, as well as the ability to manage DVR recordings and change the channel on cable boxes in the house. According to Cablevision its iOS app has been downloaded over a million times, we'll see how popular this followup is -- and if it spurs any new lawsuits from channel owners.

Continue reading Cablevision's Optimum Online live TV streaming now available on Windows and Mac

Cablevision's Optimum Online live TV streaming now available on Windows and Mac originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sometimes, you have to go all-in. Why not sue all the leading smartphone makers at once? That's what Graphics Properties Holdings is doing, channeling the ghost (and intellectual back-catalogue) of Silicon Graphics. Filing six cases against Apple, Samsung, RIM, HTC, Sony and LG, the lawsuits reference floating point calculations for rendering graphics, something that the company received patent approval for only yesterday. GPH claims that several phones, including the iPhone, Galaxy S II and BlackBerry Torch, infringe on its intellectual property. Layman legal types can sniff around the patent in question at the source below.

Apple, Samsung, HTC and Sony sued over graphics rendering patents originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After numerous mobile lawsuits from Apple, Samsung CEO Choi Gee Sung explained that the company plans to be more aggressive in securing patents that can be used to defend itself, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. During the company’s annual shareholders meeting, Sung said that due to slow industry-wide growth and strong competition, the company was bracing for a tough year. “The electronics industry will enter a low-growth period,” he said. “Reorganization of the industry will gain speed and competition among global players will intensify.” Shareholders also approved the company’s plan to spin off its LCD division on April 1st. Samsung posted record revenue last year — thanks largely to its Galaxy smartphones — and looks to enhance its competitiveness in hardware, while strengthening new businesses including medical equipment in 2012. BGR exclusively reported last month that Samsung will launch its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone later this year with a 1080p high-definition display, a ceramic case and a quad-core 1.5GHz Exynos processor.

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Apple has accused Samsung of violating a court order to produce its source code in a recent patent infringement case. The Cupertino-based company claims that the vendor has “only partially complied with” a judge’s order that required Samsung to hand over the source code for its 4G smartphones and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, Bloomberg reported on Monday. According to a recent court filing, Apple claims that Samsung has only produced the source code for one version of each of the infringing devices and withheld all other versions. “At this point in the case, it is too late for Apple to make meaningful use of any late produced source code,” Apple said in the filing. The company claims that because of Samsung’s late submission, Apple has been left with “insufficient time for Apple’s experts to analyze any new code,â€� which are due in less than two weeks. Since April, Samsung and Apple have filed more than 30 lawsuits against one another in various countries around the world.

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Apple is currently locked in dozens of lawsuits around the world with various Android vendors, but the Cupertino-based company is apparently willing to negotiate terms that would end a number of its outstanding spats. According to sources speaking with Dow Jones Newswires, Apple has proposed settlements to at least two Android smartphone vendors. Under the terms of Apple’s proposed deals, which were reportedly offered to both Samsung and Motorola, the company would collect royalties of between $5 and $15 for each Android handset sold. If this report is accurate, the move represents a sharp departure from Apple’s strategy under former CEO Steve Jobs who vowed to spend every last dollar Apple had in an effort to destroy Android. ”I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,â€� Jobs said, according to Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of the Apple co-founder. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.â€�

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A settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit targeting the iPhone 4′s antenna and reception problems, reports CNET. U.S. residents who bought the handset will be offered either $15 or a free bumper case, however the offer is only valid for those individuals who did not take advantage of Apple’s previous offer. The settlement comes from 18 separate lawsuits that were consolidated into one, all claiming that Apple was “misrepresenting and concealing material information in the marketing, advertising, sale, and servicing of its iPhone 4–particularly as it relates to the quality of the mobile phone antenna and reception and related software.” Original buyers will be notified via email before April 30th, or they can visit www.iPhone4Settlement.com, although the site is not yet live. After the notifications are sent, the claims period will last for 120 days.

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A lawyer representing Proview International on Monday announced that the Intermediate People’s Court in Huizhou, a city in southern China, ruled on Friday that distributors should stop selling iPads in China, Associated Press reports. Proview has claimed ownership of the “iPad” name in China and it says Apple is violating its trademark. “We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,” Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said earlier in response to the lawsuits. Proview is looking to prevent Apple from importing or exporting the popular tablet in China and may sue the Cupertino-based company for as much as $2 billion in the United States. At least 45 iPads had been pulled from store shelves in various Chinese cities last week, however Apple’s tablets were still being sold at numerous retail locations across the country.

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With its legal battles intensifying across the globe, Apple has appealed to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, calling for a more consistent approach to the licensing of essential patents. In a letter dated November 11th, Cupertino outlined its issues with today's licensing system, with a particular emphasis on patents licensed on a FRAND basis. According to Apple, the entire telecom industry lacks a "consistent policy" on FRAND licensing -- an issue that, not surprisingly, is especially critical to the company's ongoing court cases in Europe. Because of this inconsistency, Apple argues, patent royalty rates are often negotiated arbitrarily and in secret, resulting in abnormally high rates and, of course, plenty of lawsuits. "It is apparent that our industry suffers from a lack of consistent adherence to FRAND principles in the cellular standards arena," wrote Bruce Watrous, Apple's head of intellectual property. The company went on to suggest an alternative solution, calling for ETSI to establish "appropriate" FRAND licensing rates for companies to follow, adding that these rates should be limited to an industry-wide standard, and that companies should be barred from using industry-essential patents to force injunctions.

Apple asks European standards body for more transparency on FRAND licensing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Three patents pertaining to memory chip design that were used to successfully sue HP and Nvidia—dubbed the Barth Patents—are among Rambus' most valuable IP. Excuse me, they were among Rambus' most valuable until the US patent office invalidated them. More »

Apparently suing Samsung (again) wasn't the only pressing business for Kodak today, as it just announced it has -- as expected -- filed for Chapter 11 business reorganization in New York. You can read the details in the press release after the break, where Chairman and CEO Antonio Perez is quoted saying he hopes Kodak will "emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company". The company has obtained $950 million debtor-in-possession financing, which it claims will provide the liquidity needed to continue operations during the restructuring. As far as its recent parade of lawsuits against Samsung, Apple and HTC, Perez comments on "monetizing non-core IP assets" so we'd assume its lawyers will stay busy going forward.

Continue reading Kodak files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, expects to complete restructuring by 2013

Kodak files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, expects to complete restructuring by 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC now has the upper hand in a legal battle with German patent firm IPCom. IPCom won a lawsuit in 2009 related to UMTS technology under which it believed it had the right to ban German retailers from selling HTC smartphones. HTC, however, argued that IPCom’s case was no longer valid and ignored the injunction entirely. As a result, IPCom recently tried to take the law into its own hands by suing more than 100 retailers that continued to sell HTC phones. ”Since this deadline has passed without any of the retailers complying, IPCom has sued them for infringement of patent #100A themselves,” IPCom said, noting that it issued cease and desist letters to each retailer on December 6th asking them to stop selling HTC phones by December 20th. According to Taiwan Economic News, the German Dusseldorf court recently granted HTC an injunction that forces IPCom to stop harassing HTC’s retailers with lawsuits. The injunction should be a relief for HTC, which could have faced fines of up to €250,000 for each handset sold under the terms of the original injunction.

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A French court on Thursday decided against issuing an injunction that would have barred Apple from selling the iPhone 4S in France, Bloomberg reports. The decision was part of a patent infringement complaint recently filed against Apple by Samsung, but Judge Marie-Christine Courboulay denied Samsung’s request. “The disproportionate character of the ban sought by Samsung against Apple is clear,” Judge Courboulay said in today’s decision, ruling that Samsung must pay Apple €100,000 for legal fees. The claim will move forward to be tried as a standard patent suit. Samsung filed a suit in October seeking to block sales of Apple’s iPhones in France and Italy, alleging that Apple’s smartphones infringe on Samsung’s protected intellectual property. “Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology,â€� Samsung said in a statement at that time. “We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation.â€� Apple and Samsung have now filed a combined total of at least 30 lawsuits against each other across 10 different countries.

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A United States judge has denied Apple’s formal request for an injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy family of smartphones and tablets. “It is not clear that an injunction on Samsung’s accused devices would prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed,” San Jose U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said. Samsung was pleased with Koh’s decision. “This ruling confirms our long-held view that Apple’s arguments lack merit,” Samsung lawyer Jason Kim said. Apple has accused Samsung of “slavishly copying” its products and could still come out as the winner in the patent infringement lawsuit. The two companies have similar cases ongoing around the world. An Australian judge recently lifted a ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia after ruling the initial injunction was “not terribly fair” to Samsung. Samsung released a tweaked Galaxy Tab 10.1N after the original model was banned in Germany, though the new model is now the target of an Apple complaint as well, and lawsuits are ongoing in Japan and France, too.Read

Australian Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett has ruled that Apple must show Samsung its contracts with Vodafone, SingTel and Telstra if it cannot reach an agreement on Samsung’s accusations that the iPhone maker contractually forces the carriers to subsidize the iPhone. Samsung has also argued that the Apple iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and iPhone 3GS infringe on its patents, and has sought to ban sales of the devices in Australia. Apple, however, has already successfully banned Samsung’s Australia-based subsidiaries from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. “We will resist any attempts by our friends to push us into a corner,” Apple lawyer Andrew Fox said. “This is quite clearly a fishing expedition.” Earlier this month, Samsung requested the iPhone 4S source code and, according to Bloomberg, Apple provided the company with 220 pages of code, but left out one file. Samsung also has ongoing lawsuits with Apple in Japan, Germany, France and the United States.

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Samsung recently asked Apple to provide it with source code for the the firmware used in its iPhone 4S, ZDNET reported on Tuesday. The South Korea-based phone maker also asked for details on Apple’s subsidy agreements with Australian carriers Vodafone, Optus and Telstra. The moves were part of an ongoing lawsuit in which Samsung has accused Apple of infringing on three of its patents. Apple believes Samsung has no need to access the information, but Samsung’s lawyer argued that there are fewer subsidies available for Samsung’s products if subsidies are given for the iPhone 4S. Additionally, the source code may be just as important in proving that Apple is infringing on patents. Read on for more.

“Based on the accompanying firmware, [an expert] can tell how the chips are working in the phones,” Samsung counsel Cynthia Cochrane explained to the court. “To form a final view on whether patent 621 is infringed, [an expert] needs to see the documents that set out the source code for that firmware.” Earlier this year Apple accused Samsung of creating “copycat” devices and successfully banned Samsung’s Australian subsidiaries from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Similar lawsuits are ongoing around the world, including in Japan, the Netherlands, France and the United States.

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Motorola Mobility will spend $31 million as it lays off 800 employees ahead of its planned acquisition by Google, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Motorola said in a regulatory filing that it would spend $27 million in employee severance and an additional $4 million closing a number of existing facilities. “Motorola Mobility continues to focus on improving its financial performance by taking actions to manage the company’s costs,” company spokeswoman Jennifer Weyrauch-Erickson told Bloomberg. Google announced its intentions to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion on August 15th. Google CEO Larry Page said the acquisition would provide Google with patents that will help the company defend its Android partners in lawsuits with Microsoft, Apple and others.

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