patents

IBM has always been known for raking in more U.S. patents than any other company, but this year signals a landmark: not only is it IBM's 20th consecutive year of earning more patents than any other company, it also made a single-year record with 6,478 issued patents, according to the annual tally published today by IFI Claims Patent Services.

"We are proud of this new benchmark in technological and scientific creativity, which grows out of IBM's century-long commitment to research and development," IBM chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty said in a statement. "Most … Read more

Google's Motorola Mobility filed a motion today with the U.S. International Trade Commission to drop two patents from its patent infringement complaint against Microsoft.

The motion (see below) puts to rest part of the ITC patent battle between the two companies, which began in November 2010 when Motorola sued Microsoft over wireless and video coding patents used in Xbox and its smartphones. Microsoft countered that Motorola was unfairly seeking excessive royalty payments for the H.264 video patents, which are an industry essential standard and as such must be offered on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory) basis.

An … Read more

Sales injunctions against products found to infringe on patents may not always be in the public's interest and should be employed in very rare instances, the Justice Department and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recommended today.

The departments' joint policy statement echoes the position of the Federal Trade Commission, which last week ruled Google must stop blocking the use of standard essential patents by competitors. The FTC said in June that such bans on imports could cause "substantial harm" to consumers, competition, and innovation.

Companies that hold patents deemed to be industry essential are expected … Read more

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has logged a patent application from Disney that points toward a gaming console that focuses on 3D augmented reality, which may provide a hint about the company's reported gaming endeavor, the Toy Box.

The patent application describes techniques underlying a device that can capture a real scene and then augment it, such as taking a picture of a coffee mug on top of a table and then animating the cup. When the user looks at the mug through the device, it will look like a cartoon character, for example. The images included … Read more

Sony has researched and filed a patent for new technology that could be implemented to block used games.

As spotted by a NeoGAF user, patent application No. 20130007892 for an "Electronic Content Processing System" and "Use Apparatus" would associate individual game discs with matched user accounts.

Games that are discovered to be tied to another user's account could potentially be rejected. The system works, according to the document, by attaching contactless RF "tags" to each game that can be be read without a network connection.… Read more

InterDigital is on the patent warpath again.

The company, famous for holding a boatload of patents on wireless products, filed a complaint yesterday with the United States International Trade Commission against the usual round of tech players.

Citing infringement against seven of its patents, InterDigital wants the ITC to ban the U.S. import of products made by Samsung, Nokia, ZTE, and Huawei.

Specifically, InterDigital alleges that the companies in question have engaged in unfair trade practices by selling certain 3G and 4G wireless devices that violate the seven patents. Without naming any specific products, the complaint points to mobile … Read more

Research In Motion and InterDigital have extended an existing patent licensing agreement to cover 4G LTE technology.

Under the deal announced today, RIM will be able to use InterDigital's patents in its upcoming line of BlackBerry 10 products, which are set to debut later this month.

The deal comes just a few weeks after RIM settled a patent dispute with Nokia. In that case, RIM agreed to a one-time payment to Nokia and ongoing royalties for the use of its technology.

RIM is clearing the decks of any complications as it focuses on what is possibly the most important … Read more

U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh has denied Samsung's request to keep its phone and device sales data out of the public's eye.

According to Bloomberg, which obtained a copy of an order filed earlier this week, Koh decided that Samsung must file and cannot seal an exhibit detailing total units sold on certain Samsung products. The products included in that exhibit, as well as the span of time in which the sales were registered, were not disclosed in Koh's order.

Koh has been at the epicenter of Apple and Samsung's vicious patent battle in … Read more

Patent law has long protected companies from having their products' appearance copied, as we saw during this year's copyright battle between Apple and Samsung over the shapes of their smartphones and tablets. But protections for design patents grew stronger this month, thanks to a new law signed by President Barack Obama.

The Patent Law Treaties Implantation Act of 2012, as it is known, amends federal patent law to implement two 5-year-old treaties: the Patent Law Treaty and the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs. The point of the treaties was to make … Read more