intellectual property

Microsoft wants China to curtail the use of pirated software at four of the country's state-run companies, according to a story out today from Bloomberg.

Microsoft has reportedly already issued complaints against China National Petroleum (CNPC), China Post Group, China Railway Construction, and TravelSky Technology, all of which are run by the Chinese government.

Redmond believes that more than 40 percent of Office and Windows Server client software used by CNPC is pirated, Bloomberg reported, citing information from "three people familiar with the situation."

A spokesman for CNPC declined to comment to Bloomberg on the allegation. A … Read more

Apple will reportedly request $3 billion in damages from Samsung for patent infringement, triple the amount initially awarded by a court.

Attorneys for Apple plan to ask U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to order Samsung to pay $3 billion after losing the recent patent suit between the two companies, reports the Korea Times. A hearing is set for Friday in which Apple will argue its case.

In seeking triple the amount in damages, Apple would likely rely on a jury decision that found Samsung guilty of "willfull infringement" on five of the six patents in question. This … Read more

Apple and Research In Motion can now intervene in Kodak's efforts to reinstate its patent case against the two tech giants, which was tossed by the U.S. International Trade Commission earlier this year.

In a court order (pdf) posted last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., said both Apple and RIM could intervene in the case, in which Kodak accused the two companies of infringing on its patents.

The decision means both companies can participate in Kodak's appeal and defend the products accused of infringement.

Kodak originally filed … Read more

Apple has eked out yet another legal victory against its Android competition.

After a five-week delay, a regional court in Munich, Germany, ruled that Apple can file for an injunction against Motorola phones and tablets following claims of patent infringement, according to Foss Patents' Florian Mueller. The patent in question deals with the so-called "rubber-banding" feature, an effect that causes a page on a mobile device to bounce back up after a user has swiped to the bottom of the screen.

Describing the technology in both a European patent and U.S. patent, Apple had accused Motorola of … Read more

Oracle is due to receive a hefty amount in legal damages from SAP, but the database giant wants more.

In early August, SAP agreed to pay Oracle $306 million following a trial that found SAP guilty of copyright infringement. The jury verdict reached in 2010 determined that Oracle should receive $1.3 billion in damages.

But last September, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton deemed that amount excessive and gave Oracle a choice of accepting $272 million in damages or requesting a new trial.

The amount ballooned to the$306 million agreed upon last month. At the time, Oracle general … Read more

A new compression technology represents a significant improvement over today's standard, a new study found. The result could help pave the way for video with at least four times the pixels of today's 1080p standard.

The new compression technology, called HEVC or H.265, is significantly better than today's prevailing standard video codec, called AVC or H.264, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland, concluded.

"The test results clearly exhibited a substantial improvement in compression performance, as compared to AVC," the researchers said. "As ultra-high definition television has recently … Read more

Apple shares are up about $14, or two percent, following the company's legal win against Samsung last Friday.

On Friday, a jury found that Samsung had infringed on several mobile device patents owned by the iPhone maker, awarding Apple more than $1 billion in damages.

This morning's jump pushed Apple's stock to a new intraday high around $676 per share. On the flip side, the stock of Android OS maker Google dipped about 1.3 percent in morning trading to around $669.

Apple's iPhone 5 will likely be another beneficiary of the legal victory, some analysts … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A decision in the multi-billion dollar trial between Apple and Samsung has been reached, and will be announced shortly.

Join our live blog as the verdict is read.

Hanging in the balance are possible sales bans on phones and tablets on both sides, as well as a damages tally that ranges from millions to billions of dollars depending on how the jury comes down.

The nine-person group heard the closing arguments from both sides on Tuesday. Apple used its time to once again paint Samsung as a copycat that threatened to undo innovation, while Samsung depicted … Read more

A federal court in Massachusetts today upheld a $675,000 damages award against Joel Tenenbaum, who was accused of illegally downloading 31 songs from a file-sharing Web site and distributing them and was sued by the main recording companies in the U.S.

U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel rejected Tenenbaum's request for a new jury trial, saying jurors had appropriately considered the evidence of Tenenbaum's actions -- downloading and distributing files for two years despite warnings -- and the harm to the plaintiffs. The penalty is at the low end of the range for willful … Read more