#Patentfun Nov 14 – 19

Another week has gone by and again and here’s some of the interesting stories that piqued my interest. What about you?

• Barnes & Noble reveals details about Microsoft battle against Android.  We all know that MS has gone after a plethora of Android manufacturers for licensing deals, and has won settled many of those cases.  Finally there’s one company willing to stand up to them.  B&N has taken a firm stand and is refusing to budge; as such they have lobbied to have MS investigated.  They say that the patents that the investigation has brought up are frivolous, and as such should have no merit for a suit.  Hmm… interesting.  If this even gets a slight hint of a whisper of a win, think of what it could do to all the cases that they’d previously settled?  Check the link for some of the items that MS is suggesting they own patents on; the last one is interesting — a web browsing loading status icon!!??!?

• S3 Graphics v. Apple ruling delayed.  As S3 is becoming a part of HTC, it’s a nice bold move to strike against the major litigation opponent.  The decision about how Apple is infringing on their patents has been moved back ’till next week.  We’ll see what happens on the 21st.

• Vivid sends a cease and desist letter to HTC over the name of their phone.  Kinda funny this one.  Apparently Vivid is a company that has channels of porn on the internet [they have that on the internet now?], and they didn’t take kindly to HTC naming a phone of the same.  Not sure how that one’s not going to be laughed out of court; as I thought that in these cases the products would have to be similar enough that common sense could show there to be a confusion  I had a friend once issued a C&D from a company with almost a similar name that did PR and he did photography… and that ended up going nowhere on the same basis.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Germany .  So aside from being able to circumvent the injunction by having retailers order the gTab from countries not in Germany, they re-released it with a slightly different look.  What do you think.

• Google granted pattern unlock patent.  YAY!  That was really scary when Apple won the ‘slide to unlock’ one.

• Motorola Mobility directors voted in favour of the Google purchase.  So some definitely interesting times ahead with Google essentially now ‘owning’ a manufacturing company.  Hm… what can we expect to see?  This on the same day they are sued by Schaumburg.