#patentfun May 28 – June 2, 2024

#Patentfun is the weekly round-up of the articles that surround Google and the Android OS.

Obviously the biggie this week is the Oracle case, and there’s just so much to talk about it really… I’m no expert in being able to discuss it’s points, so I’m just leaving it out there for you to discuss.

Otherwise, there’s a slew of other articles to talk about.

Judge Posner forbids Apple to turn this month’s Motorola jury trial into a popularity contest

Wait, wait… Apple would even think of doing something to subvert the legitimacy of the court system?

Hah, having to specifically call this in (i.e. the line of “…if you admire Steve Jobs…” is particularly telling), is just ridiculous, and is telling of Apple’s true purpose in these suits.

Nokia calls Google’s EU antitrust complaint “frivolous” and a waste of time and resources

Of course someone who’s being ‘challenged’ doesn’t like to be challenged.

And I think that most of these cases tend to be really a ‘waste of time’ because they often tend to be childish attempts to quash competition (and only select competitors and not all that may be eligible to be taken to suit), rather than factual patent infringement.

Judge Alsup Rules: Oracle’s Java APIs are Not Copyrightable

Let’s hope this is the end of this.  And I’ve been reading through the ton of commentary and feedback on this ruling and what it means… There’s lots of plausible explanation merit to these arguments on either side.  What the biggest outcome of this is that we should look true overall changes to not only the patent system but how some of these are copyrighted.  IT also leaves the door open to start to say ‘these cases are a big waste of time, just make your products, be reasonable about it and make good stuff’.

Patent Troll Now Armed With Thousands of Nortel Patents

So I wasn’t so excited to hear that the sale of the Nortel patents was allowed to go to the ‘RockStar consortium’ (read:  all those who dislike Google).  But it went through.  Now each of that group has taken what they wanted (and probably did a fair amount of internal horse trading to get what they wanted from the portfolio), but left what’s left over for the group of employees (of the as I will call it, a shell corporation) to exercise their judicious will to enforce these patents – i.e. patent troll.Dafu*?

Ugh.

Apple, SimpleAir settle patent lawsuit

Not a Google related suit here, but … Apple does settle … so maybe there’s hope?  But to a troll, no less,  but against a company where the cases are pretty frivolous or vague… no, spend billions.

Google receives patent for ‘augmenting a field of view’ for Project Glass

Feels very ‘iPhone’-esque, as they’re really highlighting how their new product will be properly protected before it’s even released.