patents

Alas! The terrible things they're teaching my children in schools these days, probably funded by Microsoft's OnMyWay program!

I went to visit my son's class today, and discovered that they had been submitting proposals for patents, their teachers clearly no fans of innovation.... :-)

I'd better go buy that home schooling manual.

Apple has taken a shine to using solar cells in its mobile devices.

A patent application, unearthered by MacRumors.com, describes technology to integrate solar cells into portable devices. The named inventors of the patent application are Apple employees, some of whom are iPod engineers.

Using small solar panels to charge portable devices is nothing new; there are several such products already available. Apple appears to be trying to innovate in the integration of the solar cells into a portable device.

Rather than make a separate charger, Apple engineers have sought to package solar cells right into the device in … Read more

Several years ago while still working for Novell, I considered going to work for Microsoft in Europe. (Had I waited long enough, I could have worked for Microsoft while still at Novell, but that's another story, albeit one that is paying off well for Novell.) I thought I could help the company figure out open source and navigate the thorny issues that prevent it from embracing open source.

I gave up on that quixotic quest, and in retrospect it was the right decision. Sam Ramji, Bill Hilf, and others are doing a far better job of nudging Microsoft toward open source than I would have. But the bigger reason is that Microsoft has placed an apparently insurmountable hurdle in its path to fully engaging the open-source community, and to my ability to fully support its embrace of open source:

Patents.

It's unclear to me why Microsoft refuses to back off this issue. It stands alone in its dogmatic insistence on fouling the open-source downstream.

Microsoft's solo crusade against open source through patents baffles me. It also prevents me from working for them or with them. I'm not alone in this.… Read more

A computer peripheral maker filed suit against Apple and CBS on Tuesday, claiming the companies are infringing on its trademark for the "Mighty Mouse" device.

Maryland-based Man & Machine says it was selling its chemical-resistant and waterproof mouse to hospitals a year before Apple sold its single-button mouse of the same name.

CBS owns the rights to the Mighty Mouse cartoon and licensed the use of the name to Apple. The network was named in the lawsuit because Man & Machine says it doesn't have the right to license the name. Both Man & Machine and CBS … Read more

Alcatel-Lucent scored a victory Tuesday when the U.S. International Trade Commission rebuffed a patent infringement claim filed by Microsoft.

The commission reversed an earlier ruling by an administrative law judge, who found Alcatel-Lucent had violated one of Microsoft's patents.

The commission ruled that Alcatel-Lucent did not infringe on patent No. 6,421,439 patent, which deals with technology to identify and affiliate a user in a telephone network, according to the commission's decision.

In its ruling, the commission noted Alcatel-Lucent did not infringe on three of Microsoft's claims because of the way in which the wording … Read more

With Microsoft's announcement of yet another patent cross-licensing deal this week, it would seem nearly everyone has a deal with Redmond.

The company has inked a lot of deals since it began its patent deal push a few years back, signing folks from Sun Microsystems to Novell to Samsung. So it's getting a lot less interesting to write up each one of these things. As the latest one crossed my desk earlier this week, I had an idea. Rather than write up a story on how another name got added to the list (Pentax), I'd focus on … Read more

After years of heated debate and lobbying, the Patent Reform Act of 2007, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and was scheduled for a Senate vote this session, has been taken off the Senate's calendar. It can be revived, but its momentum has effectively fizzled.

Apparently, the Senate has better things to do with its time.

At this point, I don't wish to rehash the issues of, or my viewpoint on, the Patent Reform Act. Besides, as I've said, both sides in the debate were after only their own self-interests. Such is life in a capitalist society. (I think that's a good thing.)

What does fascinate me, though, are the strange alliances the debate over patent reform created. The Coalition for Patent Fairness--a group of more than 150 high-tech and financial-services companies that included Adobe Systems, Apple, Cisco Systems, eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, News Corp., Oracle, SAP, Time Warner, and virtually all the big banks--supported and lobbied heavily for the bill. … Read more

A federal appeals court issued a split ruling on Alcatel-Lucent's patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Dell.

The U.S. Court of Appeals on Thursday issued a ruling Thursday that kicks one of Alcatel-Lucent's claims back down to the lower courts for further review. This particular allegation centers on a communications protocol (Ackerman, or 131) patent designed to allow a host computer to communicate with a "terminal device."

The appeals court, in remanding the case back to the lower courts, said the lower court erred in its construction of the term "terminal device."

The … Read more

Microsoft may not be the only one looking to develop its own Wiimote-like game controller. Apple is researching a 3D remote of its own, according to AppleInsider.

The research, reportedly outlined in a November 2006 patent filing disclosed this week, describes a device that would work similarly to the Nintendo Wii controller "in video games to position a user's character or to otherwise track the movement of the remote control in a user's environment." The remote would apparently be designed to work with Apple TV as its console.

The device would also use some of the … Read more