Post 28: Silly Patents: Voice Communication Concerning a Local Entity

Continuing on with the trend of silly patents, I encountered a patent filed with the USPTO that pertains to "voice communication concerning a local entity," which in this case, deals with talking to a nearby plant that will notice you being within a certain vicinity. The plant then has a remotely connected person via telephone who can respond to you as if you were having a dialogue with the plant. The image is included below.

I really found it amusing that this patent exists and doesn't seem very useful... but on the other hand, I wouldn't say this is an obvious invention by any means, because it takes a certain amount of imagination to conjure up an invention like this.

Post 27- Silly Patents: Doggie Porthole

For our last formal week of our patent engineering blog, we decided to focus on some of the many silly or absurd patents that have been granted by the USPTO. I found a website that listed some pretty funny ones.

In particular, the one I want to focus on is the "Doggie Porthole," which is shown below. I thought it was pretty obvious of an invention, as well as useless. The invention claims that it helps dogs in helping them satisfy their curiosity as to what is on the other side of the fence, and now they can simply look through their porthole as opposed to digging under the fence and running away. Overall, found this pretty amusing that this exists.

Post 26- Google Doesn't Get Royalties It Originally Demanded from Microsoft

Hello, this week I read an article posted by Mueller of Foss Patents, and it discussed Microsoft and Google's dispute over royalties for Motorola's standard essential patents in the court of the Western District of Washington. The patents owned by Motorola were related to video and wifi capabilities and Motorola initially hoped it would get 4 billion dollars a year in royalties, which would mean that in only 3 years, Google would have made back all of their money they spent on Motorola. Instead, however, the FRAND royalty payment will be about 1.8 million dollars per year from Microsoft to Google, so to get the 12.5 billion dollars, they would need to receive the 1.8 million dollar annual royalty for the next 7,000 years! Additionally, many of those patents will expire shortly anyways, so Google won't be able to collect royalty payments as long as it would have liked. Lastly, initially it seemed as if Microsoft would have to pay Google only 1.2 million dollars, but then the royalty was increased to 1.8 million dollars, but this increase in revenue for Google is so negligable and only a fraction of what goes into the costs of patent litigation that it really is difficult to consider this a victory for Google in any way, shape, or form. BusinessInsider fittingly titled their article,  "Microsoft Slapped Google Around In Court, And It's Becoming Clear Google Overpaid For Motorola," and they appropriately sum up the current state of events for Google. 

Post 25- Microsoft Signs Licensing Agreement with ZTE

Hello, thanks for checking out my blog. Last week, I discussed how Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn, which makes 40% of the world’s consumer electronics, signed a worldwide licensing agreement with Microsoft and how that was bad news for Google.

This week I read an article from Foss Patents blog about Microsoft and ZTE just completing a licensing agreement on smartphones and tablets using Android and Chrome Operating Systems. According to Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez, "80 percent of Android smartphones sold in the U.S. and a majority of those sold worldwide are covered under agreements with Microsoft." So, this is good news for Microsoft, seeing as they are receiving royalties from so many sales. This is the 21st Android licensing agreement for Microsoft, according to Foss Patents.

This article illustrates how sometimes, licensing agreements can be more effective ways of cooperating with other companies than pursuing them with intellectual property litigation. I will expand on this in my Youtube Blog. 

Post 24- Google and Microsoft in Germany

In recent posts, I have discussed how Google has not been faring well in the smartphone patent war and talked about how their 12.5 billion dollar purchase of Motorola is becoming an increasingly more questionable move given it's been lacking in yielding success for Google. This week, the trend continues, and this time, Google suffered a big blow to Microsoft in German courts. Today, the Mannheim Regional Court announced that despite Google's biggest hopes, an injunction against Microsoft will not be enforced, and furthermore, Google actually owes Microsoft a license.

The patent in question with which Google was trying to enforce an injunction against Microsoft was the famous push notification patent that they purchased from Motorola (diagram included illustrates it). Many of our classmates in Patent Engineering have discussed how Google had success against Apple in Germany over this patent, but unfortunately for Google, they weren't able to win another one. Their Chief Litigator even flew out from Menlo Park for the case, and was predictably disappointed upon losing. Apparently, according to "ManagingIP"magazine, Microsoft has the best IP/licensing team in the world.

Lastly, the article discussed how Microsoft has already won a US import ban and 3 German injunctions against Google's Android phones and will win a 4th one relating to Google maps. Looks like the trend is continuing with Google's bad luck in these patent disputes.

Post 23- Hon Hai To Pay Royalties to Microsoft

Hello, this week I read an article from Foss Patents blog about Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn (which manufactures about 40% of the world's consumer electronics), just signed a worldwide licensing agreement  with Microsoft and will agree to pay them royalties for infringing products using the Android and Chrome operating systems.

This is really bad news for Google, because from now on, every product produced by Foxconn or Hon Hai that has Android/Chrome operating systems will pay licensing fees to Microsoft, even though Google itself does not actually believe that they are infringing (despite the fact that Motorola lost a case with Microsoft before Google bought them). The director of IP at Hon Hai said, "we recognize and respect the importance of international efforts that seek to protect intellectual property. The licensing agreement with Microsoft represents those efforts and our continued support of international trade agreements that facilitate implementation of effective patent protection," and he illustrates such an open acceptance of international IP laws compared to Google's tactics of denying infringement. 

Interestingly enough, this is the 20th patent licensing agreement between Microsoft and Hon Hai, and moving forwards there probably will be plenty more. I wonder how this might affect Google in their ability to remain competitive in this industry.

Post 22- Apple vs. Motorola (Google) in South Florida

Hello again. Today, I'll be talking about an article from Foss Patents patents blog about Apple vs. Motorola in South Florida. Lately, things have been looking good for Apple, and this week they just got an injunction against them lifted in Germany, but the article was mostly centered on the recent 4 month delay in the claim construction process in a case between Apple and Motorola or Google.

According to Foss Patents, Apple benefits from the delay whereas Motorola really wants the litigation to end as quickly as possible. This case started in 2010 and still hasn't finished. It was scheduled to conclude in 2014, but now this delay or further ones could push back the end date even further. Once again, we see how long these cases take, and as we discussed in class, Apple, as a multi-billion dollar revenue-making company, can afford to spend a couple billion on litigation if they get such significant gains from stalling their competitors. However,  what I found interesting was that Mueller said Apple really gains from these delays and should do everything possible to continue them, as long as Google appears equally responsible for the delay.

Overall, Google's 12.5 billion dollar purchase  of Motorola, which happened largely because of Motorola's impressive IP portfolio, has yet to yield significant gains in patent litigation against competitors, especially Apple.

Post 21- Apple's Recent Success Against Samsung

Hello everybody, thanks for checking out my blog. This week, I will be writing about an article I read on Foss Patents blog entitled "Apple Defeats Samsung in California Claim Construction Battle on All Patents but One SEP." It discussed how Apple is in its second litigation case with Samsung in California and apparently is already winning in the claim construction stage of the case. According to Mueller, "Claim construction means that the court defines how certain terms appearing in the asserted claims must be properly understood." 

And so far, it's looking like Apple is really on the winning side of these disputes on all patents but one. The patents in question are U.S. Patents 5,666,502; 5,946,647; 7,761,414; and 8,014,760. These patents respectively are related to "graphical user interface using historical lists with field classes," a "system and method for performing an action on a structure  in computer-generated data" (the "data tapping" patent), an "asynchronous data synchronization amongst devices," and lastly, the "missed telephone call management for a portable multifunction device," which clearly is a powerful one. 

Samsung, on the other hand, really only succeeded with one standard essential patent, which was U.S. Patent No. 7,756,087 dealing with a "method and apparatus for performing non-scheduled transmission in a mobile communication system for supporting an enhanced uplink data channel." They tried to also assert their non-SEP's that include U.S. Patent No. 7,577,757 and U.S. Patent No. 5,579,239 which deal with "multimedia synchronization method and device" and a "remote video transmission system," the second of which they asserted against FaceTime.

Will expand more on this in my Youtube blog. 

Post 20- Apple vs Samsung-- Import Bans

Hello again, a few weeks ago, I posted about Samsung versus Apple disputing over a patent dealing with an "apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system,” and at that point in time, it didn't look like the court was too close to making a formal decision,  and one of the biggest issues that remained was determining the scope of an import ban, if granted for Samsung (against Apple), how many products it would injunct against, and what that would mean for Apple's infringing products.

This week, I read an update about this case between Apple and Samsung on Foss Patents, and Samsung, in addition to asserting its IP over the iPhone 4, 3Gs, and older iPads, is actually trying to extend the damages to service providers like AT&T or Verizon who service consumers with these infringing products. 

Foss Patents blog ultimately predicted that a small import ban on specific older models of Apple products will be granted, but by the time it is, it will have very little effect on Apple namely because the only infringing products are the older ones that are for the most part out of stock.

Post 19- Apple's Slide to Unlock Patent in Germany

Hello, thanks for checking out my written blog for patent engineering. Today, I'll be discussing an article from our  favorite patent blog, Foss Patents, about Apple's slide to unlock patent in Germany. According to the article, Google and Samsung have just won a big victory in Germany when this week German courts established that Apple's slide to unlock patent is too broad and that there is no infringement in Google or Samsung phones.

Similar to how the patents relating to rounded edges on smartphones or mobile devices are well known design patents, the slide to unlock patent owened by Apple reminded me again of a patent that   has very little actual effect on functionality, but fundamentally has to do with how you use/unlock the phone. Because its actual purpose does let you actuallyy use the phone, I suppose that this could potentially be considered a utiility patent as well.

Ultimately, Apple's patent will not be valid in Germany, because although they've patented the slide to unlock idea, it doesn't quite encompass every mechanism or manner of unlocking a phone and these other companies are not infringing. Of course, Apple is appealing this decision, as expected, but they most likely won't  have the best luck because of stricter, less broad patent laws in Europe, according to Mueller. 

Post 18- Google Loses Case to Microsoft

Last week, an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the ITC gave a preliminary ruling on a Google vs. Microsoft case over U.S. Patent No. 6,246,862 which is about a "sensor controlled user interface for a portable communication device." The imagine above illustrates "a perspective view of a portable communication device employing a sensor controlled user interface."

Google had originally argued that Microsoft's Xbox infringed on this patent, and at first, it was looking good for Google when in the first preliminary ruling for this case, there were in fact 4 infringements, but in June the cases was remanded to ALJ Shaw and he saw no violations.

The author of Foss Patents commented on this, saying that "Google's Motorola hasn't won anything apart from a couple of German H.264 patent rulings it never got to enforce," and he says Google will have to license their SEP portfolio to Microsoft in exchange for a mere percentage of the royalties they had originally demanded.
Article is here: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/google-loses-another-one-to-microsoft.html

Post 17- Google Pledges 10 Patents to Open Source Software

Today, I read an article from Foss Patents Blog called “Google’s promise not to assert patents against open source software: just a PR stunt.” It discussed how today, Google announced that it is pledging 10 patents to open source software. What pledging entails is promising not to assert your patents against open source software. In comparison, IBM and Sun Microsystems in 2005 pledged 500 and 1,600 patents respectively to open source software.

The author of the blog criticized Google for giving pledging so few of its patents when it has an unimaginably large intellectual property and patent portfolio. The author also commented that Google is not being transparent at all in hiding their patent portfolio size and talked about how the patents database of Google’s website doesn’t show the correct number of patents owned by Google, because many of their purchased patents haven’t been officially reissued in Google’s name, and only Google knows their true patent portfolio size. Whereas Microsoft reveals all of its patents to the public, Google keeps this information secret—perhaps they consider it a trade secret?

If this pledging of patents to open source software was supposed to be a PR stunt for Google, why didn’t they pledge more and appear more generous?

I’ll expand on this in my Youtube blog. Article is right here: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/googles-promise-not-to-assert-10.html

Post 16- Nokia Gets Injunction Against HTC

Last week, I posted about the ITC refusing to review a decision between Nokia and HTC, and how Nokia hasn't been winning many cases against HTC. Today, however, I just encountered an article on Foss Patents blog about Nokia winning a patent injunction against HTC in Germany for a power-saving technology.

The patent in question specifically had to do with increasing battery life by using less of the phone's energy when adjacent mobile connections, like a radio signal, are available. And, as mentioned above, Nokia won.

This is quite a big blow to HTC in Germany because Nokia was granted a total injunction and even a recall of infringing items that are out at retail locations. Nokia was quoted in a corporate statement saying: ""Nokia is pleased with this decision, which confirms the quality of Nokia’s patent portfolio. Nokia has also patented this power saving invention in the US, UK, France, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Japan and Hong Kong. In addition to this case in Germany, we have asserted the patent against HTC in the UK and in the US International Trade Commission, with a hearing in the US scheduled to start in two months’ time. More than 30 further Nokia patents have been asserted against HTC in other actions brought by Nokia in Germany, the US and the UK. HTC must now respect our intellectual property and compete using its own innovations."

And this quotation refers to 40 patents in suit with HTC in not just Germany, but the USA and UK as well, according to Foss Patents. I thought it was interesting how many lawsuits were going between these two competitors, and once again, it goes to show how significant intellectual property can be in getting ahead of your competitor. (article is here:http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/nokia-wins-german-patent-injunction.html)

Post 15- Samsung Calls Ericsson Patent Troll

Today, I read an article from Foss Patents blog about Samsung and Ericsson and their battle in the smartphone patent wars. Ericsson brought up two complaints against Samsung in federal court in November last year. This week, after a small delay due to Samsung receiving an extension, Samsung responded to the complaints and introduced counterclaims asserting eight of their own patents, among them are U.S. Patent No. 8,169,986 on a "Method And Apparatus For Transmitting And Receiving System Information In A Mobile Communication System" and U.S. Patent No. 8,179,780 on a "Method And Apparatus For Transmitting And Receiving Control Information To Randomize Inter-Cell Interference In A Mobile Communication System."

Additionally, Samsung said some pretty aggressive comments about Ericsson, saying:

 "Ericsson has recently jettisoned its mobile phone business and it now feels unhinged as a non-practicing entity in the mobile phone market to extort vastly unreasonable and discriminatory license fees from Samsung under threat of product exclusion resulting from a simultaneously filed complaint in the U.S. International Trade Commission ('ITC'). Ericsson's misguided actions epitomize the patent 'hold up' problem that has been the recent subject of wide discussion within standard-setting organizations and other authorities around the globe" and "Ericsson seeks to dismantle the standard-setting framework with unreasonable and discriminatory license demands from a willing licensee under threat of product exclusion."

Overall, these are pretty harsh accusations towards Ericsson, and I am curious to see if Ericsson has a response to this. I didn't realize that, after Ericsson sold its mobile phone section to Sony, it would become an NPE, but Samsung's comments accuse them of being trolls.

I look forward to seeing how these lawsuits play out.

Post 14- Samsung vs. Apple ITC Ruling Delayed

 Today, I read an article from earlier this week on Foss Patents blog about Apple and Samsung. Samsung has had a legal complaint against Apple for infringing on U.S. Patent No. 7,706,348 and the ITC has postponed the ruling to May 31 of this year. The patent in question deals with “an apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system,” and the diagram included below specifically illustrates “a block diagram of another embodiment of the TFCI decoding apparatus in the IMT 2000 system according to the present invention.”

Even though Samsung does have a basis for fighting for infringement, it is unlikely an import-ban will be issued and unfortunately for Samsung, many of its past efforts of fighting Apple have failed. 

Lastly, I found it pretty interesting that many of the alleged infringements of Apple products against Samsung are actually on the older models from Apple, like the iPhone 3, 3GS, and 4, and older iPads, but most of the newer models don’t even have this technology that is infringing on patent ‘348. I will expand on this in my Youtube Blog.

Post 13- ITC Refuses to Review Nokia vs. HTC Decision

 Today, I read an article from Foss Patents blog entitled “ITC Affirms Dismissal of One of Nine Nokia Patents-in-Suit in HTC Case.” The patent in question has to do with a “communication network terminal supporting a plurality of applications” and the diagram above “illustrates the flow of a short message from one mobile station to another.” The case involving this patent was dismissed around a month ago by an ITC judge and a couple weeks ago Nokia asked the ITC to review the judge’s decision and yesterday the ITC refused to review the order without giving any reason why.

Interestingly enough, the author of Foss Patents doesn’t believe that the patent is standard essential, but HTC has delayed the process enough to the point where, because of the lengthy duration of litigation, Nokia won’t be able to enforce its patent against HTC any time soon. This is yet another example of how companies can use patent litigation as a weapon against competitors because they know how much it can delay the process.

Post 12- Competition Policy International's Suggestions for FRAND disuputes

I was browsing FossPatents blog and I saw one of his posts from yesterday March 5 about Competition Policy International (CPI) publishing a paper called "Standard Setting Organization's (SSOs) Can Help Solve the Standard Essential Patent (SEP) licensing problem. And, being relevant to the FTC, the FTC's Director of their Bureau of Economics coauthored with a former Chief Economist of the Antitrust division within the US DOJ as well as with the European Commission's Directorate-General. Thus, the three authors share a wealth of experience in this field and are experienced economists.

Within the recently published paper, the authors claim that their suggestions will "greatly improve efficiency in patent licensing" because of the current problem if SEP holders trying to get FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) royalties and licensing fees out of other companies. The main goals of their reforms, according to the blog post, are "less hold-up, lower litigation costs, and more innovation."

Specifically, to achieve these aforementioned goals, they have 4 main suggestions that come out of their paper. Briefly, the first has to do with FRAND commitments becoming weaker or more vague after the sale of a patent. The second aims to ""include a process that is faster and lower cost for determining a F/RAND rate, or adjudicating disputes over F/RAND, than litigation." The third has to do with switching to cash-only option versus cross licensing. Lastly, the fourth hopes to have a more formal process through which people can discuss FRAND disputes without the threat of injunction. I will expand on these points and on the blogpost in my Youtube blog.
Article is here: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/chief-economists-of-eu-commission-and.html

Post 11- ITC InterDigital Case

Today, I read an article on FossPatents blog about the company InterDigital's latest ITC case against Samsung, Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE. On March 1, 2013, the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Robert K. Rogers publically released the start date for a trial-- December 16, 2013. InterDigital is aiming to have an import ban placed on these companies that are allegedly infringing on their patents. If an import ban is indeed granted for InterDigital and if its competitiors have to cease their operations that infringed on InterDigital's patents, it will still take a very long time to happen and it becomes clear how drawn out this process is.

So, even if the import ban is granted, it will require 4 months to rule the case and then another 60 days of Presidential Review and then finally the ruling can go into effect in August 2014,  which is a very long time from now. Clearly, these cases take a long time to resolve, and the author of the blog recommended that in the meantime, they should sue for pecuniary compensation in federal court.

Lastly, another remark worth pointing out is that Nokia and Huawei claim that they are being sued over royalities and licensing fees in some countries across the world in whichc InterDigital doesn't even own the rights to the patents. I thought this brought up an interesting point-- namely, if InterDigital is suing these companies worldwide, and it knows that there is no case in some of these countries, what seperates them from being a patent troll?
article  is right here <http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/december-trial-scheduled-in.html>

Post 10- Clarification on Definition of Patent Troll

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5IlhYHdQjr0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Today, we reviewed the definition of a patent troll and Uzi Aloush, our guest lecturer, clarified that a patent troll was somebody or some company that goes after other companies seeking damages for intellectual property infringement when they have no products of their own and, most importantly, when the plaintiff knows that there has in fact been no infringement and most often they are just seeking a settlement, which the defendants would often pay to avoid the hefty costs of litigation; hence they are trolls.
I'm glad we got this clarification because before I thought the term was more broad and applied to more NPE's.

Post 9- Uzi Aloush Guest Lecture

I really enjoyed Uzi Aloush's guest lecture today and it was really interesting getting a close look at these two different patents. I hadn't really ever looked at a patent before and I had no idea there were so many claims and that each claim had multiple elements. In particular, we looked closely at Claim 1 for each patent, and we spent a lot of time examining them and getting sense out of them. It was really cool getting a close look at the structure of a patent and I'm excited that we're learning about them--we'll probably be encountering a lot more of these so today's lecture was good exposure.

Post 8- One Patent Case is Enough

Professor Lavian sent us this article <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apple-samsung-judge-says-she-may-put-second-patent-case-on-hold/2013/02/15/7bc0f8b2-7730-11e2-b102-948929030e64_print.html> about Apple and Samsung's patent litigation cases. The article discussed how Apple and Samsung's current patent case may be put on hold in order to finish the appeal process for an August verdict that awarded Apple over 1.05 billion dollars. It's interesting that these two companies have multiple patent litigation suits with each other, especially given the intimacy of their supplier-buyer relationship. I wonder at what point they will be allowed to resume discussion over the case. I'll elaborate on this in my Youtube video this week.

Post 7- Apple losing smartphone war?

I just read an interesting article about Apple potentially losing the smartphone war. The article discussed Apple's lack of innovating changes made to the original iPhone that was released in 2007, citing a slightly lighter phone, bigger screen, and Siri as the most revolutionizing updates, which, according to the author, are very limited advances, and he claims that Samsung with the Galaxy S III has shot right past Apple. Among other reasons, bigger screens are an important priority for smartphone users and according to the author, the iPhone 5 doesn't quite cut it, and unless they make bigger screens, he thinks Apple will lose the smartphone war. Article is right here: http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/beerfiles/58739-apple-has-already-lost-the-smartphone-war

Post 6-Apple vs. Samsung

I read this article (http://news.msn.com/science-technology/stalemate-between-apple-samsung-in-smartphone-wars) about Apple and Samsung competing in the consumer electronics industries and it stood out to me that the article hinted that "smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate" because it still seems to me that this is a multi-billion dollar industry and the fact that Apple may not have been able to prove without a doubt that Samsung's infringements hurt Apple sales should not signify the stalemate of the smartphone patent war.

It stood out to me when we went over the different areas that someone can make patent for, including operating systems and software, semiconductors and electronics, data and speech coding, QWERTY keyboard, etc. As we learned in class, pretty much anything under the sun can be patented. I look forward to learning more about the different varieties of patents including design, plant, and utility patents.

Post 4- Vringo Suing Microsoft for IP Infringement

I just read an article about how a company called Vringo is now suing Microsoft for intellectual property infringement for 2 patents that relate to the ad placements on search results. Last year, Vringo was awarded $30 million in damages by Google, AOL, Gannett, IAC and Target, but they had originally sued for damages stacking up as high as $700 million. The CTO/President created one of the patents and it really struck me how much value he is bringing to his organization. I’ll expand more on this on my Youtube channel by the end of the week, at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrNoahHandel/

Post 3- Week 2's Lecture

I thought this week's lecture was very fascinating, particularly when we discussed recognizing different types of intellectual property and how it can vary in form, e.g. trademarks, logos, copyrights, trade secrets, etc. It was interesting learning how these patents can sometimes even be the reason for mergers and acquisitions, like with Google buying Motorola. I will expand on this in my Youtube video blog by the end of this week, at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrNoahHandel/

Post 2- Why am I taking this class?

There are many reasons this class stood out to me. First of all, although I have yet to figure out 100% what my whole-life plans are,  I could definitely see myself in the startup world collaborating with other entrepeneurs. Because of my existing interest in entrepeneurship as well as my expererience interning at Salesforce.com last summer, a class like this tought out of the Center for Entrepeneurship and Technology really stood out to me.  Secondly, as Dr. Lavian pointed out in lecture, perhaps 1% of total employees at a company have personally issued patents. I believe being in that 1% is critical to making yourself stand out as an asset to your company and I know this class will teach me a lot about the process of getting a patent.

First Post- Intro

I am Noah Handel, a junior majoring in economics, at UC Berkeley. I am also doing the concentration out of the CET in engineering for undergraduates. I was born and raised in San Francisco and I am an avid giants fan as well as food and beer enthusiast. This is the first post in my new blog for my Patent Engineering class in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. I look forward to having discussions and debates with my colleagues as the semester progresses.