news and knowledge from around the globe compiled by Global EDD Group
UK-based telecoms group BT is suing Google in the US over claims that six of its patents have been infringed.
The British company’s complaints centre on technologies at the core of Google’s Android mobile system, search site, and a wide range of other services.
BT is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction against Google’s continued use of its innovations.
via BBC News – BT sues Google over Android ‘patent infringements’.
In the ongoing global patent battle between Apple and Samsung over smartphones and tablets, a U.S. judge has denied Apple a preliminary injunction that would have temporarily prevented Samsung from selling four of its devices in the United States.
In a ruling issued late Friday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh decided that allowing Samsung’s Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, Droid Charge, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices to remain on sale would not harm Apple enough to justify the injunction. She also said such an injunction would likely benefit other gadget makers at Samsung’s expense.
In an around-the-world-in-80-lawsuits scenario, Apple has been arguing that Samsung’s products infringe its design patents and copy the iPhone and the iPad. Samsung, meanwhile, has fired back with its own patent-related claims against Apple. In addition to the U.S., the battle has touched down in Australia; the Netherlands; Germany; parts of Asia, and France and Italy; among other places.
In a statement about Friday’s ruling, reported by PCMag.com, Samsung said Koh’s decision on the preliminary injunction “confirms our long-held view that Apple’s arguments lack merit. In particular, the court has recognized that Samsung has raised substantial questions about the validity of certain Apple design patents. We are confident that we can demonstrate the distinctiveness of Samsung’s mobile devices when the case goes to trial next year. We will continue to assert our intellectual property rights and defend against Apple’s claims to ensure our continued ability to provide innovative mobile products to consumers.”
via Judge denies Apple request for U.S. ban on Samsung gadgets | Mobile – CNET News.
Potential E-Discovery Relief in Patent Infringement Litigation
Authors: Duane H. Mathiowetz, Wayne C. Matus
11/15/2011
Recognizing that e-discovery is disproportionately expensive, the Advisory Council of the Federal Circuit, made up of distinguished judges and attorneys from various regions and backgrounds but all closely involved in patent litigation, have drafted a model rule for e-discovery governance, which Chief Judge Rader of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals unveiled at the Bench Bar Conference. While this is only a proposed rule for consideration of the bench and bar, it should, Chief Judge Rader noted, “serve as a helpful starting point for district courts to enforce responsible, targeted use of e-discovery in patent cases,” particularly targeting email production and forcing the parties to focus on the gathering of material information rather than going on unlimited fishing expeditions.1
In a recent speech, Chief Judge Rader assailed the use of e-discovery as a tactical litigation weapon, and noted that the production burden of expansive e-discovery requests greatly outweighs their benefits.2 In support, he cited a study that concluded that only .0074% of documents (i.e., less than 1 in 10,000) produced in litigation make their way onto trial exhibit lists. He noted from his own experience on the Court, email even more rarely appears as relevant evidence.
via Potential E-Discovery Relief in Patent Infringement Litigation.
A Google patent lawyer says that the patent system is broken, and he accuses Microsoft of abusing the system. Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, Google’s Tim Porter pointed to Microsoft’s attacks on Linux as an example of its broader corporate strategy.
“When their products stop succeeding in the marketplace, when they get marginalized, as is happening now with Android, they use the large patent portfolio they’ve built up to get revenue from the success of other companies’ products,” he said.
Microsoft has argued that the patent royalties it seeks from Android vendors are part of the natural evolution of a new industry. Porter disagrees.
“Microsoft was our age when it got its first software patent,” he said. “I don’t think they experienced this kind of litigation in a period when they were disrupting the established order. So I don’t think it’s historically inevitable.”
Of course, the reason Microsoft didn’t have to worry about patents during its first dozen years was because the courts and the patent office didn’t allow patents on software until the 1980s. Indeed, the idea of patents on software alarmed Bill Gates, who wrote in 1991 (when Microsoft was already older than Google is now) that “the industry would be at a complete standstill” if software had been eligible for patent protection in the early days of the industry. He worried that “some large company will patent some obvious thing,” enabling the company to “take as much of our profits as they want.”
Today, Google finds itself in exactly the predicament Gates warned about 20 years ago. The Chronicle asked Porter the obvious question: should software be patentable? Porter refused to give a straight answer “There are certainly arguments” that copyright protection is “more appropriate” for the software industry, he said. But he would only say that “the current system is broken,” and that there has been “a 10- or 15-year period when the issuance of software patents was too lax.”
via Google: Microsoft uses patents when products “stop succeeding”.
In the end it was a search that let Google down.
The company suffered a setback in its patent dispute with Oracle last week when a U.S. judge denied Google’s request to keep an internal Google email out of the case record. The email, written by a Google engineer, could suggest to a jury that Google knew it needed a license to use Sun’s — now Oracle’s — Java technology in Android.
Ironically, considering this is Google, organizer of the world’s information, the email might never have seen the light of day if the search tools used to identify documents covered by attorney-client privilege had done their job, legal experts said.
The incident also shines a light on an area of technology — electronic discovery — that’s creating big challenges for lawyers as more communication moves online. And it helps explain why Hewlett-Packard is willing to spend US$10 billion to buy Autonomy, one of the biggest providers of e-discovery software and services.
The Google incident apparently stems from a mistake by one of the top law firms it hired to fight Oracle’s lawsuit, which accuses Google of patent and copyright infringement in Android. It’s a high-stakes case that could potentially cost Google billions of dollars in damages, and force it to start charging handset makers a license fee for Android.
Like many corporate lawsuits, this one began with a discovery phase. Each party is required to identify all the emails, chat logs and other documents relevant to the case, and produce them for the opposing legal team. Because there are often millions of documents involved, they use software tools to define date ranges, search for keywords and find the material they have to produce.
Communications discussing legal advice with attorneys are protected by attorney-client privilege, meaning they don’t have to be made public. Google argued that its potentially incriminating email fell into this category.
It was written by Google engineer Tim Lindholm last August, a few weeks before Oracle filed suit against Google. At the time, Oracle had threatened to sue Google for billions of dollars, and Lindholm was instructed by Google executives to see what alternatives to Java existed for use in Android, apparently to strengthen their negotiating position.
via How Google Was Tripped up by a Bad Search | PCWorld Business Center.
Android, the mobile operating system from Google (GOOG), has been on a tear over the past two years. Its share of the smartphone market rocketed from less than 3 percent to 48 percent during that time, according to research firm Canalys. Some analysts even think Android could one day be as dominant in mobile as Microsoft (MSFT) was on desktops in the 1990s.
Yet there’s one thing that may stop, or at least slow, Android’s ascent: patent fights. Google and HTC, Motorola (MOT), and Samsung, the three largest manufacturers of Android handsets, have each been hit with lawsuits claiming their mobile software violates others’ patents. To some extent, this is normal. Silicon Valley powerhouses have long wielded their patent portfolios to extract concessions from rivals. But Google, with fewer patents of its own and lots of enemies, is in a uniquely poor position. “This is an arms race,” says Christopher Marlett, chief executive of investment bank MDB Capital Group. “Other companies have more bombs than Google—and they’re not afraid to use them.”
An abbreviated list of the ongoing litigation: Oracle (ORCL) is demanding the search giant pay $6 billion for using its Java mobile software. Apple (AAPL) has sued Taiwan-based HTC for violating its patents, and on July 15 a judge found in favor of the iPhone maker, which could result in a American import ban on certain HTC phones. In a similar suit in Australia, Samsung agreed on Aug. 1 not to import a version of its iPad-like Galaxy Tab. In a company blog post on Aug. 3, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, called these suits “a hostile, organized campaign against Android … waged through bogus patents.”
Spotify has been available in the U.S. for two weeks now, and already finds itself involved in a patent battle. San Diego-based PacketVideo has filed a patent infringement suit against Spotify in the U.S. and Europe over its cloud-based music service.
PacketVideo filed suit in the Netherlands and San Diego district court after attempts to broker a licensing deal with Spotify were unsuccessful, PacketVideo said. “PacketVideo has a strong intellectual property portfolio, and will take any necessary action needed to protect its intellectual property and prevent the misuse of its patents,” Joel Espelien, general counsel for PacketVideo, said in a statement.
The suit covers one U.S. patent and one European patent, both of which “enables Spotify’s cloud-based music service,” PacketVideo said. Both patents were originally filed in the mid-1990s and were acquired by PacketVideo when it bought Switzerland-based SDC AG in 2007. The U.S. patent covers a “device for the distribution of music in digital form” and was issued in 1997.
via Spotify Sued for Patent Infringement | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
Apple has been awarded its long sought-after patent on the iPhone. Intellectual property experts say it’s so broad and far-reaching that the iPhone maker may be able to bully other smart phone manufacturers out of the U.S. market entirely.
Some three-and-a-half years after filing for a patent on the iPhone, Apple on Tuesday was awarded U.S. patent number 7,966,578 for “[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display.”
That’s just the beginning of the abstract for Apple’s iPhone patent, which the company filed back in December 2007. It gets quite a bit more technical in its full form, but there’s one thing patent experts consulted by PCMag agree on—Apple has been awarded an incredibly broad patent that could prove to be hugely problematic for other makers of capacitive touch-screen smartphones.
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Apple’s patent essentially gives it ownership of the capacitive multitouch interface the company pioneered with its iPhone, said one source who has been involved in intellectual property litigation on similar matters. That’s likely to produce a new round of lawsuits over the now-ubiquitous multitouch interfaces used in smartphones made by the likes of HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Research in Motion, Nokia, and others that run operating systems similar in nature to Apple’s iOS, like Google’s Android, said the source, who asked not to be named.
via Apple iPhone Patent a Huge Blow to Rival Smartphone Makers | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
House lawmakers passed a bill today to overhaul the U.S. patent system for the first time in nearly 60 years.
The House passed the America Invents Act on a 407 to 117 vote, WSJ reports. The bill would change how the U.S. grants patents and award them to the party which is “first to file” an invention instead of the “first to invent” it. The change would bring the U.S. in line with other countries, according to WSJ.
The Senate passed similar legislation in March on a 95-to-5 vote. (Click here to see LB background on the Senate vote.) The House and Senate must now negotiate a final bill before President Obama gets a crack at the legislation.
Why, you ask, do we need patent reform?
Some businesses complain that the current, “first to invent” standard results in too much litigation from individuals who claim they were first to own an idea even though they don’t have a formal patent.
“This bill is designed to help all inventors,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R, TX), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and helped author the legislation. The current system hurts inventors because it can lead to years of costly legal challenges to their patents, he said.
Some inventors and small businesses complained that switching to a “first to file” system would give large companies an advantage and hurt individual inventors, according to WSJ.
In the latest round of an ongoing patent and trademark battle, Samsung on Friday asked a federal judge to make Apple provide the Korean electronics giant with samples of its next-generation iPhone and iPad.
Samsung asked U.S. District Court Judge Koh to force Apple to give it “a sample of the final, commercial version of the next generation iPhone that Apple will release, whether that product will be known as the ‘iPhone 4S,’ ‘iPhone 5,’ or some other name,” according to a motion filed in a California federal court Friday.
The Korean company also made a similar demand for “the next generation iPad that Apple will release, whether that product will be known as the ‘iPad 3,’ ‘Third Generation iPad,’ or some other name.”
Assuming Koh agrees with Samsung, Apple would have until June 17 to hand over the iPhone and iPad samples.
via Samsung demands to see Apple’s next iPhone, iPad – Computerworld.
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