Posts Tagged: "Mobile"

InterDigital will end up acquiring more than 21,000 global patent assets from Technicolor, more than doubling InterDigital’s current portfolio of 19,000 patent assets. This includes more than 2,500 Technicolor patents which cover video coding technologies… As part of this transaction, Technicolor and InterDigital will also enter into a perpetual grantback licensing agreement, which will give Technicolor freedom to operate its remaining businesses and benefit from existing and future patents.

Finjan asserts four patents in the case and alleges that Bitdefender’s marketing of antivirus, cloud and sandboxing technologies infringes upon the patents-in-suit. The case has been filed in the Northern District of California… Finjan’s suit against Bitdefender alleges that Bitdefender was presented with written notice of the alleged infringement of Finjan’s patents as early as February 2015. In October 2015, Finjan alleged that it discussed the ‘844, ‘154 and ‘494 patents with Bitdefender and how those patents read on technology practiced by Bitdefender. Despite numerous in-person and telephone meetings, Finjan alleges that that Bitdefender has continued to engage in willful and deliberate infringement of Finjan’s IP.

On Tuesday, August 8th, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that it was opening up an investigation on claims that Cupertino, CA-based consumer electronics behemoth Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is infringing upon patented technologies, specifically baseband processor modems, in its mobile electronic devices. The investigation follows a Section 337 patent infringement complaint filed on July 7th with the ITC by…

Customers, myself included, are used to the customer-centric technologies experienced in other ‘digitized’ sectors like publishing or music – these have had to adapt to the digital revolution early. Customers now want that experience replicated in the FS sector. Banks, for example, are beginning to take notice, investing significant amounts of money in IT upgrades: Australia’s Commonwealth Bank invested over AUD $1.1 billion in an end-to-end IT transformation project to replace its aging core banking system and Barclays has been promoting customer-centric technologies like the mobile payments app PingIt for many years.

Priceline has battled back from the dot-com bubble bursting to become the strongest selling stock on the S&P 500 with a market cap of about $66.8 billion. A number of the patents recently issued to Priceline Group companies protect technologies that make it easier to find the travel accommodations people need to enjoy their vacations or pursue their business needs. For example, more accurate search engine results for engines that have to navigate massive datasets to return suggestions to a user is the focus of U.S. Patent No. 8972434, entitled Multi-Phase Search and Presentation for Vertical Search Websites. This patent, assigned to Kayak, discloses a computer program product storing code executable to operate a travel reservation search engine with a query interface module to receive a user search input with a constraint, a constraint evaluation module that can generate queries configured to obtain fewer search results or achieve a quicker response time, and a website query module that executes the multiple queries.

In the world of smartphones, it’s looking like paranoia is becoming much more profitable in recent years. Huge security breaches at major corporations around the world have made people everywhere much more aware of the technological risks they run in their own daily lives. We’ve already reported on the value of patent portfolios focused on mobile device security here on…

Microsoft pays a premium for R&D but its investment has paid off as the company currently holds one of the world’s strongest patent portfolios. Just recently the company decided to flex this patent muscle in a big way by filing a patent lawsuit against Kyocera; Microsoft is seeking an injunction. The company was 5th overall during 2014 in terms of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with 2,829 U.S. patents last year. That’s a slight rise from Microsoft’s 2,814 U.S. patents in 2013, which was good for a 6th place finish in that year.

In terms of innovation, it’s clear that there is an almost singular focus at Apple on research and development in its long line of mobile electronic devices. Patents issued by the USPTO in recent weeks showcase everything from wrap-around device displays to handset systems which can change modes if a user moves the phone away from his or her ear. Other patents show featured water exposure indicators for portable electronic devices and a method of determining characters that are handwritten on a touch-sensitive screen. Recently published patent applications discuss the improved use of mobile devices for emergency response, including one that details internal smoke detector circuitry for personal electronics.

We’ve discussed Samsung’s recent issues in their smartphone and other mobile electronic device divisions in previous coverage of the electronics giant, which is why it’s interesting to see the corporation continue to pursue so much innovation in those fields. Despite restructuring of the mobile division and expectations that mobile device offerings from Samsung will diminish in number, some incredible advancements in mobile tech are still being created by the company, such as the development of a mobile payment system to rival Apple Pay which will likely be released in the first half of 2015. Samsung has also released an upgraded version of the Galaxy Note 4 mobile device which is capable of download speeds approaching 300 megabytes per second. According to a study released by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Samsung is actually outperforming Apple in terms of customer satisfaction in the cellular telephones industry.

One of the Patent Examiners was surprised that I was there by myself and asked why I didn’t have an “army” of attorneys with me, as I was from Silicon Valley. I noted that not all startups are well funded like Facebook or Google. I went on to explain that well-funded startups and large companies were copying our ideas, cloning our products, selling to our customers and costing us revenue. Because of the increasing competition in NFC mobile payments, I was also having problems getting funding. I even explained how we had to downsize and put product development on hold. That was a new revelation for the patent Examiner, who was surprised.