Google is part of a group of tech heavyweights going on the offensive against the threat of patent-infringement lawsuits, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site Sunday evening.
The group, which calls itself the Allied Security Trust, plans to buy up key intellectual property before it is obtained by parties that might use it against them, the newspaper reported. Joining Google in the group are Verizon Communications, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard, among others.
Each company will pay about $250,000 to join and then put about $5 million into escrow for future patent purchases, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter
The organization is the latest tactic for a tech industry that says it is under attack from "patent trolls" seeking to buy intellectual property to extract royalties from companies that rely on that technology. The Coalition for Patent Fairness, a lobbying group that represents tech companies, reports the number of patent-related lawsuits rose to nearly 2,500 through October of last year from 921 in 1990, the newspaper reported.
A sweeping patent law rewrite backed by seemingly every prominent hardware and software maker was part of that effort, but it stalled in the Senate last month. The so-called Patent Reform Act of 2007 would have curbed the ability of patent holders to obtain what the companies consider disproportionate damage awards, spurring the rise of so-called patent trolls who exist only to extort large payments out of deep-pocketed companies. Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Adobe Systems, Apple, Intel, Symantec, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, eBay, Oracle, and Red Hat were among the high-profile signatories that signed on in support of the bill.
Finally, I can call myself an inventor.
I've been inventing things for almost 20 years now, but Montalvo Systems was the first company I worked for that took intellectual property seriously. (That was no coincidence; it was also the first company I worked for where I helped develop the intellectual-property strategy.)
During my years at Montalvo, I came up with quite a few ideas and participated in brainstorming sessions that yielded more ideas. Most of these sessions were limited to Montalvo's own people, but there was one person I brought in to help us as a consultant--Don Alpert, who was the principal architect of Intel's Pentium processor and, possibly less significantly, a member of the editorial board at Microprocessor Report.
Working with three of us from Montalvo--myself and chief architects Greg Favor and Peter Song--Don took the lead in preparing a set of related patent applications describing a new way to design microprocessors.
The first patent from this set was ... Read more
Red Hat announced on Wednesday that it has reached a settlement with Firestar Software and DataTern over a patent infringement lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed two years ago in a U.S. District Court in Texas, centered on Firestar's patent for linking object-oriented software with relational databases.
Firestar, in its lawsuit, had alleged that JBoss, which Red Hat had acquired, violated its patent with the JBoss Hibernate 3.0 object-relational mapping tool for Java. Hibernate 3.0 had an open license.
Under the settlement, whose financial terms were not disclosed, all software distributed under Red Hat's brands and predecessor versions are covered, as well as Red Hat customers that use the software. The software protects derivative works, or combination products, that use covered products from the patent claim.
"Typically, when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself," Rob Tiller, Red Hat's assistant general counsel of intellectual property, said in a statement. "But that was not enough for us; we wanted broad provisions that covered our customers."
DataTern became involved in the lawsuit after Firestar assigned the patent to DataTern.
The U.S. Supreme Court handed a big victory to Quanta Computer on Monday when it held that the doctrine of patent exhaustion barred LG Electronics' claims against it.
In doing so, the Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's previous decision that patent exhaustion did not apply to method claims and extended that doctrine to licenses for products that "substantially embod[y] a patent." This case is likely to substantially change the playing field for patentees seeking to monetize their patents in a vertical industry value chain. ... Read more
Six technology titans are banding together to jointly license patents that cover WiMax in an effort to prevent costly royalty rates that might deter adoption of the wireless technology, according to a report Sunday on the Wall Street Journal 's Web site.
Cisco Systems, Intel Corp., Samsung, Sprint Nextel, Alcatel-Lucent, and Clearwire, plan Monday to announce the creation of the organization--to be called the Open Patent Alliance--the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the groups plans.
WiMax is a wireless broadband standard that has been touted as a breakthrough for cheap high-speed Internet access. Its backers claim that WiMax can transmit data up to 30 miles between broadcast towers and can blanket areas more than a mile in radius with bandwidth that exceeds current DSL and cable broadband capabilities.
Hewlett-Packard announced Sunday that it has settled its patent-infringement lawsuits against rival PC maker Acer.
The confidential settlement agreement resolves three federal court lawsuits, as well as two U.S. International Trade Commission investigations between the parties.
HP sued Taiwan-based Acer in October 2007, alleging seven patent violations. The suits covered patents regarding technologies such as read/write optical drives, power management in notebooks, digital bus arrangement, thermal management and video control.
The suits sought to stop Taiwan-based Acer from exporting its PCs to the U.S. and selling them there. As a result of the settlement agreement, each action will be dismissed as to the parties.
This blog was updated at 1:20 p.m. PDT with a statement from TiVo.
A month after an appeals court confirmed that Dish Network's DVR software had indeed violated a TiVo patent, Dish is retaliating with a lawsuit of its own.
(Credit:
Dish Network)
The Colorado-based satellite TV provider filed suit in Delaware Friday, asking the court to declare that Dish's current DVR software does not violate TiVo's '389 patent.
Dish says in the filing that it updated its software nearly two years ago in response to TiVo's patent violation suit. It wants TiVo to stop making public statements that allege that the current software on Dish's DVRs are still in violation because it's "causing uncertainty in the marketplace for DVRs," according to the court filing.
A TiVo spokesperson said the company had not yet seen the filing, and therefore could not comment.
It's a simple fact that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the "USPTO") is inundated with patent applications. Given the sheer volume of applications, patent examiners can only spend a limited amount of time examining those applications. Further, given the fact that an applicant for a patent does not have to conduct a "prior art" search before filing, it is virtually impossible for an examiner to turn up all of the prior art that is relevant to a patent application.
Unbeknownst to many patent practitioners, however, the USPTO is getting ready to wrap up a yearlong pilot project directed at giving the examiners a little help in turning up prior art.
Last year the USPTO, in conjunction with the New York Law School, launched a program titled "Peer to Patent." This pilot project enables the public to comment on and submit prior art that may be relevant to pending patent applications. The project is somewhat limited in scope as only patent applications that relate to computer architecture, software, and information security are eligible for this process and applicants must agree to submit their patent applications to this process. However, preliminary numbers reported by the organization indicate that the project may be an effective means of reviewing patent applications.
According to the "Peer to Patent" Web site, over 2,000 people have signed up to participate as reviewers of patent applications and have submitted 192 pieces of prior art on 42 patent applications.
For more information about the process, see the USPTO's description of the program here.
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:
(Credit:
CNET News.com)
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 moreA computer peripheral maker filed suit against Apple and CBS on Tuesday, claiming the companies are infringing on its trademark for the "Mighty Mouse" device.
(Credit:
Apple)
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 have trademark applications for the name and are currently dueling for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's approval.
Man & Machine is asking for monetary damages and for a court to issue an injunction to prevent Apple from selling any more of its Mighty Mouse devices.
Note: CBS has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
