patent

Cold water on Apple's 'piping hot innovation'

Forbes is reporting on a patent filed by Apple this month that would save customers the hassle of waiting in line to order coffee at Starbucks or a burger at the nearest fast food joint. It's described as "a wireless system that would allow customers to place an order at a store using a wireless device such as a media player, a wireless personal digital assistant or a cell phone."

Cool, but you can already do that via simple text message.

Read full story at Forbes: "Apple's piping hot innovation."

Kodak settles patent suit with Matsushita

Eastman Kodak will receive royalties from Matsushita Electric Industrial through a settlement of a July patent infringement suit, according to a regulatory filing Thursday.

On December 21, Kodak settled suits with Matsushita, better known in the United States by its Panasonic brand, and with a Matsushita subsidiary, Victor Company of Japan (JVC).

Under terms of the settlements, the companies signed cross-licensing agreements granting each company access to the others' patents, Kodak said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Both settlements are "royalty-bearing to Kodak," the company said.

RIM seeks patent for angled BlackBerry keyboard

Just when you've gotten to the point where you can type on your BlackBerry upside down in the dark, they're thinking about changing the keyboard.

A patent application filed on behalf of Research in Motion was recently revealed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and it describes an "angular keyboard" where the keys are set at a 45-degree angle to the base of the unit.

Anybody who has spent hours dashing off e-mails on a BlackBerry would have to learn a whole method of text input, but the payoff might be felt in the … Read more

Appeals court rules against Google in patent suit

An appeals court has reinstated a patent lawsuit filed against Google over a toolbar feature called AutoLink that provides links to online maps or books on Amazon.com, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Wisconsin-based HyperPhrase Technologies sued Google in 2006 for patent infringement. The case was thrown out a year ago by a district court judge, but this week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the federal circuit in Washington said the lower court judge had erred in interpreting some of the patents and sent the case back.

However, the appeals court agreed with the lower court ruling … Read more

Yahoo tries to patent "smart drag and drop" (seriously)

Via Ars Technica: Yahoo filed a patent for a "smart" drag-and-drop user interface element, which consists of displaying drop targets in proximity to a drag-able selected object.

The patent is currently under public review via Peer to Patent. Here is the summary from the filing.

According to the present invention, methods and apparatus are provided for manipulating objects in a user interface. The user interface includes a first interface object operable to be selected and moved within the user interface. In response to selection and movement of the first interface object in the user interface, at least one … Read more

Alexander Graham Bell--phone thief?

A book that's due out on January 7 claims the unthinkable--Alexander Graham Bell didn't really invent the telephone by himself. In The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret, author Seth Shulman claims that corruption at the U.S. Patent Office allowed Bell to take ideas from a patent application filed by Elisha Gray. And further shenanigans allowed Bell's patent to be filed first.

Read the full story on MSNBC: "New book claims Bell stole key telephone idea."

Report: Apple working on auto-volume control for iPods

Apple is developing a volume control device for its iPods that would automatically calculate how long a person has been listening and at what volume, before gradually reducing the sound level, all in an effort to protect users' hearing, according to the London-based Daily Mail.

Citing a new patent application, the report--to which Apple declined to comment--says the "device will also calculate the amount of 'quiet time' between when the iPod is turned off and when it is restarted, allowing the volume to be increased again to a safe level."

In February 2006, a Louisiana man filed a class action suit against Apple, … Read more

iRobot rival succumbs in court battles

Established defense contractor iRobot has prevailed in courtroom battles against Robotic FX, effectively gaining an unconditional surrender from the upstart military-industrial wannabe.

Late on Friday, Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot said that two federal courts had ruled in its favor. The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts determined that Robotic FX and founder Jameel Ahed--a former iRobot employee--had misused trade secrets belonging to iRobot, while the U.S. District Court in Northern Alabama determined that Robotic FX had deliberately infringed on patents.

As if that weren't enough, a related settlement requires the disbanding of Robotic FX, with certain assets to … Read more

Amazon and Google battle over snippets and blurbs?

Nick Carr has a funny, but potentially prescient, post on two apparently competing patents that Amazon ("blurbs") and Google ("snippets") were just granted.

What happens...when Google tries to snippetize a blurb? It could be the defining epistemological debate of out time.

At least it continues to call into question the US Patent and Trademark Office's ability to grok and process the myriad patent applications it receives. I mean, surely someone should have noticed the similarity between snippets and blurbs?

Or not. :-)