Posts Tagged: "Qualcomm"

This week, a patent battle between two American tech giants expands its scope to China, patents covering a well-known multiple sclerosis treatment were invalidated in U.S. district court and Trumpcare emerges as a possible trademarked moniker for the next incarnation of the country’s healthcare system, Disney files a patent application on evaluating human emotions while on amusement park rides, Ajit Pai holds his first open FCC meeting as Chairman and not surprisingly says he wants to reduce regulations, plus a whole lot more.

On Friday, January 20th, Cupertino, CA-based consumer tech firm Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed a lawsuit against San Diego, CA-based semiconductor giant Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) The lawsuit seeks $1 billion in damages which Apple alleges that Qualcomm is withholding from the iPhone developer in violation of an agreement between the two companies, including injunctive and other relief. The suit, which includes breach of contract claims, patent claims and antitrust claims, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California (S.D. Cal.).

On Wednesday, January 18th, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) began a probe into a Section 337 patent infringement complaint involving graphics processors and memory controllers against a collection of 17 firms, according to Reuters. These firms include some tech giants in the world of semiconductors and electronics, including Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM), Sony Corp. (NYSE:SNE), LG Electronics (KRX:066570), Lenovo Group (HKG:0992), Motorola Mobility LLC and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) The Section 337 complaint was filed on December 16th by ZiiLabs Ltd., a Bermuda subsidiary of Hong Kong’s Creative Technology Asia Limited.

Recently, we took a closer look at four of the largest trending stories playing out in the world of intellectual property and patents during 2016. Today we turn to the world of technology to see what trends have been developing in the technology sector over the past year. From an ever-widening scope of business activities being pursued by Silicon Valley’s largest firms to growing government authority over one sector of Internet services, there have been plenty of interesting stories playing out on the stage of America’s tech sector.

The fine on Qualcomm is for allegedly refusing to license standard essential patents to competing companies on fair and reasonable terms. According to the Korean authorities, Qualcomm’s actions amounted to coercion for the purpose of strengthening its monopolistic power in the patent license market and chipset market… Not surprisingly, Qualcomm vehemently disagrees with the assertions made in the press release, has pointed out that a final written decision is not generally expected after an announcement like this for another 4 to 6 months, and promises to aggressively appeal… Rosenberg explained that Qualcomm was repeatedly denied access to documents and the right question witnesses, rights that are guaranteed to U.S. companies under the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

The message is being received by patent owners around the world, including those with large U.S. patent portfolios, that China is a reasonable and fair place to resolve patent disputes… Aside from any anecdotal evidence and cultural bias theories, it is also hard to ignore the reality playing out inside the Chinese IP courts. Foreign patent holders have been having a great deal of luck in China’s IP courts, at least at the courthouse situated in Beijing… If these patent granting and litigation trends continue, we could be left with the rather mind-numbing conclusion that China, a country ruled by a communist government, has a more robust innovation protection regime than the United States, an ostensibly capitalist country that doesn’t seem to see the virtue in protecting the rights of innovators.

American semiconductor giant Qualcomm has been taking actions in recent months against a Chinese smartphone developer whose stature has been on the rise. In a press release dated October 14th, Qualcomm announced that it had filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against Meizu, a portable electronics manufacturer founded in 2003 and headquartered in the Chinese city of Zhuhai. Along with the ITC complaint, Qualcomm also filed a patent infringement action against Meizu in Germany’s Mannheim Regional Court and initiated a infringement-seizure action in France to begin collecting evidence for a potential future patent infringement action in that company.

Not only do virtual reality devices sometime present too much information to users, they do a poor job of prioritizing the space available in augmented reality (AR) environments to portray advertisements on empty real-world surfaces, for example. Qualcomm seeks to avoid this by using the technology protected by U.S. Patent No. 9317972, entitled User Interface for Augmented Reality Enabled Device. The patent discloses a method of displaying augmented reality contents which involves receiving a camera scan of an environment in view of a user, assigning surface priority and surface trackability levels for each surface in the environment, assigning content priority levels for augmented reality contents and displaying augmented reality contents on real-world surfaces based on the assigned surface priority, surface trackability and content priority levels. The system could determine whether a user was at work, home, a business meeting or a social event in order to determine the priority of augmented reality content to be displayed.

The fitness wearables market is driving millions of shipments per year in silicon and devices. By 2019, IDC predicts that the worldwide wearables market will grow to around 155.7 million units. In addition to driving revenues — the fitness wearables market alone is projected to reach nearly $30 billion US dollars in 2016 as noted. The patent licensing landscape for this market is on the verge of explosive growth, especially since many of the patents used in IoT technology are nearly 20 years old.

With the advent of enhancements in audio-video technology, Virtual-Reality (VR) has taken the world by storm. While VR has been enjoying most of the limelight, another similar technology – Augmented Reality (AR) is catching up fast. The patent landscape of VR is dominated by Sony followed by IBM, Samsung and Microsoft when it comes to total number of patented inventions. Microsoft is the leader in AR when it comes to the number of inventions filed as patents. It has 602 issued patents and published applications distributed among 151 inventions. Microsoft is followed by Samsung, Sony, LG and Qualcomm.

While the Snapdragon Wear 2100 was designed mainly for smartwatch devices, the company has more recently unveiled a new semiconductor chip product for targeted-purpose wearables. The Snapdragon Wear 1100, announced in late May, has an even smaller form factor than the Wear 2100, coming in at 79 mm2 as compared to the 100 mm2 size of Qualcomm’s flagship wearable processor. The Wear 1100 syncs with the GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo satellite constellations for highly accurate location tracking. Qualcomm suggests that the processor is well suited for devices with more targeted functionality than smartwatches, such as location trackers for the young and elderly, fitness trackers, smart headsets and other wearable accessories.

Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) of San Diego, CA, is a multinational semiconductor firm that designs and markets wireless telecommunications products. Despite weak global demand for new smartphone products, Qualcomm’s technology licensing division has made a series of deals with Chinese handset makers which should bolster flagging profits through 2016. In early April, Qualcomm announced that it had entered into a licensing…

5G is expected to generate even higher revenues from applications and services due to explosion on mobile application and services because of broadband-like speed, which are crucial for some of the emerging technologies like IoT, Wearables and Virtual/Augmented Reality. Revenues for 5G services will exceed $65 billion by 2025, according to a forecast from Juniper Research… The number of patents and key underlying technologies for 5G mobile networks will evolve significantly within next 5 years. However, early analysis shows that Qualcomm will still be the IP leader but may be not as dominant as in 4G-LTE. The device makers like Apple, Samsung, and Lenovo are also working on 5G IP development in order to minimize IP licensing costs.

Patents, for a long while, have been an integral part of business development strategy. Companies like ARM and Qualcomm, for example, have built their business around patents which constitute a major part of their revenue. And the quality of their patents, for sure, is playing a key role in it.

We along with several other attorneys represent ParkerVision, the plaintiff, which secured a $173 million infringement verdict that the courts subsequently threw out based on their own assessment of the evidence. In this case, the roles of courts and juries are front and center. The Federal Circuit has been dismissive of jury findings. As Judge Newman has observed, the Federal Circuit frequently “reweigh[s] the evidence to reach [the court’s] preferred result, rather than considering whether substantial evidence as presented at the trial supports the verdict that was reached by the jury.” Other judges and scholars have concurred in this view.