Posts Tagged: "samsung"

The top two spots on the list of the 100 most valuable brands are occupied this year, as last year, by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), respectively. These two companies have held their respective spots since 2013, when both were able to ouster The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO) from the leading position in the Interbrand study, which it had held since Interbrand began releasing the report in 2000. Interbrand’s top 10 global brands include a collection of Companies We Follow often here on IPWatchdog, including 4th-placed Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), 5th-placed IBM (NYSE:IBM), 7th-placed Samsung Electronics Co. (KRX:005930), 8th-placed General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) and 10th-placed Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN).

Apple v. Samsung is not over. Samsung has stated it is going to file a petition for certiorari later this year with the Supreme Court. In its petition, Samsung is likely to challenge, among other things, the Federal Circuit’s analysis of the district court’s claim construction and what these design patents truly cover. Samsung likely will also challenge the award of hundreds of millions of dollars (the total profits Samsung received on the phones found to be infringing). If the Supreme Court takes the case the Court will be presented with novel and important legal questions that may affect the damages award, both the underlying finding of liability and the proper measure of damages. Additionally, the foundation of Apple’s damages award is crumbling at the Patent Office, with one of the key design patents being rejected on multiple grounds.

Summit 6 LLC (“Summit”) sued Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Samsung Telecommunications America, LLC (collectively “Samsung”) and others alleging infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,765,482 (“the ’482 patent”), which relates to the processing of digital photos and other digital content before being transmitted over a network by client devices (e.g., cell phones). Summit’s expert testimony and the license resulting in settlement for another defendant, RIM, supported the damages verdict. The RIM license was comparable because both RIM and Samsung sell camera phones having the accused MMS functionality.

Samsung’s smart television technologies, which utilize an IP address to provide additional content to complement typical broadcast television, will get a boost from the innovation described within U.S. Patent No. 9124931, entitled Managing a TV Application for Over-The-Top TV. It discloses a method of displaying content on a television by dynamically determining whether an input source for a TV is set to a virtual input source, validating viewer account credentials, executing a TV application that enables over-the-top (OTT) TV video content delivery using an Internet connection, dynamically displaying content from a last-selected channel or service, enabling normal TV operations including changing channels and automatically the TV application enabling OTT TV video content delivery for the last-selected service when the TV is turned on. This invention enables an Internet television owner to quickly return to the OTT service application, like Netflix or Hulu, which an owner was last watching without having to wait for the app to load.

The two largest patent portfolios related to BLE technologies are owned by Irvine, CA-based fabless semiconductor company Broadcom and South Korean electronics giant Samsung. A market map view of the top innovators in the BLE space shows that not only does Broadcom have a slightly larger portfolio than Samsung, it has also dealt with far less litigation than the South Korean developer. The large collection of companies clustering in the lower-left quadrant of this market map represent companies with smaller patent portfolios and lower revenues. The dozens of companies dotting this portion of the map could be an indication that mergers and acquisitions in the IoT semiconductor chip space may be far from over this year.

In 2014, Samsung Electronics was second overall among companies receiving U.S. patents with approximately 13.5 patents every day over the course of a year. While much of Samsung’s recently acquired portfolio relates to semiconductor and memory devices, they are also a big player in wearable technologies. In fact, Samsung is the top filer of patent applications related to wearable technologies, accounting for about four percent of the 41,301 patents making up the wearables field according to a study by Lux Research of Boston, MA.

The next few months will be important ones for the coming smartwatch revolution. April 24th marks the date that the first Apple Watches will be available for retail sale in America and Apple expects to sell up to 4 million units of the product by the end of June. The arrival of the Apple Watch should be a sizable step forward in terms of state-of-the-art technologies for the smart watch, but it will be impossible to declare a victor until after Samsung has had a chance to release its next-generation digital timepiece, but it will be interesting to watch them duke it out this year.

It’s impossible to actually support the idea that patents harm smartphone innovation because there is no consumer product that has changed so much over the past decade thanks to innovation. And if patents would get in the way of anything, it would definitely get in the way of an industry which accounted for one out of every six active patents. But more smartphones are being sold than ever before and new improvements continue to be developed, from curved touchscreens to waterproof phones to dual-screen phones.

Softcard’s patents and their ability to protect Google Wallet against any potential legal challenges from Apple may be a much more important aspect of the acquisition than Softcard itself, which had struggled financially and laid off workers in the weeks leading up to Google’s purchase. There are many reasons for Softcard’s woes, including a need to rebrand the company after its original name, Isis, was co-opted by the Middle Eastern terrorist organization.

Two independent errors warrant reversal, but to be fair, the district court did not have the benefit of the Supreme Court’s decision in Teva. Now, the Federal Circuit has the opportunity to address the interplay of Teva with claim construction in design patents. This is a much needed clarification.

There have been signs that Samsung is trying to wind down its operations in its medical device businesses, but we found plenty of patent applications filed with the USPTO indicating that healthcare innovation is still very important to this corporation. A technique for the genetic analysis of human subjects to test for diagnosing certain leukemias is featured by U.S. Patent Application No. 20150038360, titled Method for Multiplex-Detecting Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Gene Using Cleavable Probe. The kit for detecting an e19a2 breakpoint of a BCR-ABL fusion gene claimed here contains five primer sets, each having a primer comprised of a specific nucleic acid. This kit provides for the early detection of chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML, including rarer varieties of the disease.

Samsung is a multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, which is comprised of a multitude of subsidiaries and affiliated businesses in electronics, ship building, construction and more. Samsung invested the 2nd-greatest amount of money into research and development of any company worldwide in 2014; it’s $13.4 billion R&D investment that year was slightly edged by Volkswagen’s $13.5 billion…

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.

As always, Samsung has been issued some very interesting patents in the field of robotic technologies, including one protecting a technology that enables a robot to assume a more natural, human-like posture. Home media experiences, including televisions capable of processing video calls and a virtual reality input system, are discussed. We also discuss some patents in the field of mobile technologies, including disaster information broadcasts and traffic information widgets for electronic devices.