patent

Patent troll Acacia gets its first day in court...and loses

I failed to see this last week, but Acacia Research, the patent troll that recently went after Red Hat and Novell, got its first day in court with a Texas jury and lost. Big time. It was seeking $900 million in damages, as paidContent notes, and instead got 35 percent of its stock price chopped.

I weep for Acacia. OK. Maybe not. Looking at this stock chart, I will admit that a smile has played across my face:… Read more

Microsoft patent claim on embedded Linux?

Paul McDougall at InformationWeek may be reading too much into Microsoft's recent patent deal with Kyocera, but he does ask an interesting question. Does the agreement reveal Microsoft's patent position, at least as it relates to embedded Linux? (Or does it simply reveal that Japanese companies would rather settle with Microsoft than stand up for themselves, since they seem to be falling like flies before Microsoft's patent FUD?)

McDougall writes:

Under the deal, Microsoft gets to add patented Kyocera Mita technology to its Windows and Office products.

What does Kyocera get? The right to use patented Microsoft technology in its printers, copiers and "certain Linux-based embedded devices."… Read more

Microsoft inks another Linux-related IP license deal

Microsoft said late Tuesday that it has signed a patent-swap deal with Kyocera Mita, the latest in a string of such announcements. Like many of those arrangements, Kyocera is getting protection for its use of Linux in various products.

Microsoft is also getting the right to use Kyocera Mita's patents in products like Windows and Office. The two companies did not announce the financial terms for the deal.

Other recent deals by Microsoft include agreements with TurboLinux, Linspire, Xandros, Samsung, LG, and Fuji Xerox.

Who is the world's biggest patent troll?

In two consecutive days, The Wall Street Journal presented two different answers. The first is not surprising: Intellectual Ventures, the brainchild of ex-Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold. It's now out "to raise as much as $1 billion to help develop and patent inventions, many of them from universities in Asia." I know I will sleep so much more comfortably knowing that IVL will be out plundering Asia so that it can turn around and plunder the rest of the planet.

The second might surprise you: the University of California. The University of California may be especially pernicious because it can sue for patent infringement but has sovereign immunity:… Read more

Northeastern University sues Google over patent

Northeastern University has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, claiming the database architecture that Google uses to feed up search results has been misappropriated, according to The Boston Globe.

The lawsuit claims the technology was developed and patented by a company called Jarg in Waltham, Mass., that was co-founded by Northeastern professor Kenneth Baclawski. The patent, owned by the university and licensed to Baclawski, covers a method for sectioning database queries into different portions that are each processed by a different computer.

The lawsuit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of … Read more

Is it Microsoft + Novell or Microsoft vs. Novell?

Mary Jo Foley notes some of the highlights of Microsoft's patent/interoperability deal with Novell, following Microsoft's own press release celebrating the deal. She says something, however, that I'm not sure I agree with:

Not surprisingly, Microsoft isn?t saying much about the part of its collaboration with Novell which has generated the most publicly outcry: The patent-protection component. The press release simply states that the 30 new customers are "join(ing) the ranks of all other Microsoft and Novell customers currently benefiting from the companies? collaboration to enable interoperability and IP peace of mind in mixed environments."

Actually, this is very surprising. I've started to notice a trend in all the announcements the two companies have made over the past year: Novell stresses interoperability while Microsoft beats its drum on patent protection.

Are the two companies talking about the same deal?… Read more

Patent by numbers

Growth in the IP lawsuit sector of the economy and the resulting patent-reform movement can leave you thirsting for reliable data on which to base policy judgments and cocktail-party conversation. Initially, I thought the IEEE Spectrum's annual patent stats roundup, Keeping Score in the IP Game would handily rehydrate my chit-chat cortex. After all, the data contains glittering--although frequently unsurprising--infonuggets like:

Microsoft ranks fifth for total patents awarded in the Computer Systems and Software category (1,469), but first in IEEE's computed measure of the power conferred by those patents. The other four top players in that category … Read more

Court grants injunction against new patent rules

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from enforcing new rules that would impose some roadblocks on patent applications.

The rules, scheduled to go into effect on Thursday, were designed to encourage greater specificity in patent applications and curb subsequent patents that are related to the original, a practice called "continuation applications."

Critics of the current rules say continuation applications have been abused, and that the system is overburdened, and have generally supported the Patent Office's move. For its part, the office says the changes would help to reduce a backlog … Read more

Acer sues HP again over patents

Two of the world's largest PC makers still can't seem to get along.

Acer is suing Hewlett-Packard again for patent violations. It's an escalation of the battle over the two companies' intellectual property that began earlier this year.

Filed in a U.S. District Court in Wisconsin and with the U.S. Internaional Trade Commission Tuesday, Acer said it is countersuing HP for infringing on its patents related to servers, PCs, and peripheral devices. HP declined to comment on Acer's suit.

HP initiated the fight in March when it sued Acer over five patents involving read/… Read more