Posts Tagged: "Apple Patent"

One digital assistant technology developed by Apple allowing Siri to respond to whispered voice commands is disclosed by U.S. Patent Application 20170358301, titled Digital Assistant Providing Whispered Speech… In some places, such as libraries or board meetings, the use of voice-activated digital assistants is discouraged because of the intrusion of sound, so this patent application would protect a technology that recognizes a user’s command, even when the user is whispering. The device would then respond in a similar whispered tone so as to be less distracting in quiet settings.

In terms of sheer numbers, in the CB Insights study, which curiously did not include patent giant and American research juggernaut IBM, Microsoft ranks supreme among this collection of five major tech firms. The Redmond, WA-based hardware and software developer has applied for a total of 16,840 patents over the seven years of the study. In second place is Google with 14,596 patent applications over the same time period. Although exact numbers for the other three firms weren’t publicly released by CB Insights, these two firms are followed by Apple (13,420 patent applications), Amazon (5,186) and Facebook (2,508), respectively. Collectively, these five companies have been pushing towards a total of 10,000 patent applications filed per year. This trend marks a sharp rise in patent application filing activities among the Big 5, which filed 3,565 patent applications collectively in 2009.

On Tuesday, December 6, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple which found by a unanimous 8-0 vote that a damages award for design patent infringement may be limited to revenues attributable to a component of an article of manufacture and not the entire article itself. Tuesday’s SCOTUS decision overturns a judgment reached in May 2015 at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which would have awarded nearly $400 million in damages to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) for the infringement of three design patents by mobile devices marketed by Samsung Electronics (KRX:005930).

The Supreme Court need not wait for Congress to act. This is a case of first impression in interpreting the provision. Guided by its own law on design patent infringement and legislative history, the Court can reach the common sense result provided by the provision’s wording. Design owners should be made whole, but not unjustly enriched. Awarding the infringer’s total profits regardless of the contribution of the design to the end product’s value subverts patent law’s mandate to promote technological progress.

The Court found substantial evidence to support the jury’s finding of infringement. While Samsung’s expert offered conflicting testimony, a reasonable jury could have credited Apple’s expert. Thus, there was no error in the district court’s conclusion that substantial evidence supported the jury verdict of infringement… Note that the underlying dispute in this case does not concern design patents that were also asserted against Samsung, and which are currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

Much of the court’s line of questioning at times sought answers to whether a standard could be applied in a design patent infringement case in such a way that adequately identifies the amount of profit that could be attributed to a particular aspect of a product’s design. In the words of Justice Kennedy: “Once you’ve identified the relevant article, then it seems to me necessarily what you’re doing is apportioning profits. I just don’t see how we can get away from that word.” While it may have seemed that the oral arguments went well for Samsung, that is not always, or even usually, a good gauge of how the Court will ultimately decide. Of course, time will tell.

Every once in awhile, Apple garners some attention when it files patent applications or receives patents related to its retail stores. Reports from late September in The Chicago Tribune focused on a patent application recently published by the USPTO for a retail shopping bag developed by Apple. U.S. Patent Application No. 20160264304, simply titled Bag, was filed to protect a retail paper bag formed from white paper with at least 60 percent post-consumer, or recycled, content. The paper bag also has a reinforcement insert adhered to the corners of the bag covering the bottom and a handle, 90 percent of which droops below the top edge of the bag when the handle isn’t being held. The use of the reinforcement insert increases the durability of the paper bag, allowing the paper to be constructed using a larger percentage of recycled material.

The third quarter continued Apple’s declining iPhone sales, eating into the company’s most profitable sector. iPhone revenues dropped from $31.3 billion in 2015’s third quarter down to $24 billion in the most recent quarter, a loss of 23 percent. That drop in revenues follows a sharp reduction in unit sales for the iPhone, down to 40.3 million units sold in the recent quarter from 47.5 million units sold in 2015’s third quarter… Meanwhile, Apple as so far in 2016 earned 29 U.S. smartphone patents, with these patents primarily relating to user interfaces and portable displays.

On Tuesday, June 28, Apple was granted a new patent, U.S. Patent No. 9,380,225, entitled “Systems and methods for receiving infrared data with a camera designed to detect images based on visible light.” The patent essentially discloses a method for a smartphone’s camera to receive data over infrared waves—data that could alter functionality of the phone. Since the grant of the patent there has been a viral outpouring of articles on using this technology to disable photography and video capture, particularly at live concerts and theater events. While this apparently invasive tech may be something to keep an eye on, it’s important to consider if this can be implemented tomorrow, in a future iPhone, or in an Apple device further down the road. How soon should we start to worry?

It looks like Apple is looking to edge into the mobile virtual reality market dominated by Samsung’s Gear VR with the technology outlined by U.S. Patent Application No. 20160085076, entitled Head-Mounted Display Apparatus for Retaining a Portable Electronic Device with Display. This innovation is designed to eliminate wired connections in head-mounted displays which may be cumbersome to users. Fitness tracker technologies are another area of focus for Apple’s R&D, as is evidenced by the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20160058372, titled Terrain Type Inference from Wearable with Motion Sensing. This invention is designed to provide more accurate reports of calorie expenditures during aerobic exercise, which can vary based on the type of terrain being traversed.

On Monday, March 21, 2016, the United States Supreme Court accepted certiorari in Samsung Electronics v. Apple, Inc., which relates to how much Samsung owes for infringing Apple design patents. The question accepted by the Supreme Court is: “Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer’s profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?”

In late January, however, an inter partes review (IPR) request filed with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) throws the future of one of the Apple patents involved with this case into question. IPR2016-00500, filed by Intellectual Integrity, LLC, of Frisco, TX, challenges multiple claims in Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 7864163, titled Portable Electronic Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Displaying Structured Electronic Documents. This is one of only three utility patents owned by Apple brought up in its infringement lawsuits against Samsung. This also marks the first time that an IPR has been requested to review one of Apple’s many patents.

Innovation in the automotive sector was a huge story, both for the types of technologies being developed and the companies pursuing the R&D in that field. Drones and robotics also played a role in other top patent applications which we’re profiling today. Rounding out our list of top 2015 innovations includes an emotion analysis system for financial security, wireless charging schemes, low-power communications for wearable devices and a greenhouse window that can generate electricity while improving crop yield.

On October 27th, Apple will be issued a patent for a technology that analyzes a person’s travel plans to provide them with potential points of interest, laid out within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140223448, titled Dynamic Location Search Suggestions Based on Travel Itineraries. The amended first claim of this patent application will protect a method involving detecting itinerary information stored by a first application, identifying a travel destination based on the itinerary information, communicating the travel destination to a second application, storing the travel destination in a second application which is adapted to retrieve local information based on an identified geographic location, detecting the satisfaction of a triggering threshold for providing the local information, providing the local information for the travel destination in response to user interaction with the second application and in response to the threshold for the triggering event being satisfied, communicating the travel destination to a third application that retrieves local information based on an identified geographic location, providing local information of a first type through the second application at a time prior to the time of travel and providing local information of a second type through the third application at a time prior to the time of travel but after the time at which the information of a first type is provided. This innovation enables automatic updating of device application, such as weather or clock apps, in response to the detection that a user has travel plans. The file wrapper shows that this patent application did face a final rejection in March of this year for non-obviousness in light of a technology for data synchronization among widgets and the dashboard in a virtual environment.