Patents Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Apple avoids group pooling LTE patents

by Kelly Hodgkins (Oct 5th, 2012)

Rather than fight patent lawsuits on an individual basis, 10 mobile phone carriers and electronics manufacturers are forming a patent pool to protect themselves from future litigation surrounding the use of 4G technology. Details on this patent licensing program were reported by the Wall Street ...

Apple, Google sued by mobile web pioneer

by Mike Schramm (Sep 20th, 2012)

A pioneer in the field of mobile browsing has now set its sights on Google and Apple with a brand new patent lawsuit. A company called Unwired Planet, which used to be known as OpenWave (and helped to create the original mobile browser protocol known as WAP) has filed a patent infringement ...

Apple wins preliminary sales ban on Motorola phones, tablets in Germany

by Dave Caolo (Sep 13th, 2012)

Apple was handed good news by a German court. The regional court of Munich has ruled that Motorola has infringed on a touchscreen patent held by Apple. The patent in question describes the "overscroll bounce" and "rubber band effect" that's such a recognizable aspect of the iPhone OS. The court ...

Court upholds Apple victory in Cover Flow, Spotlight, Time Machine patents

by Mike Schramm (Sep 5th, 2012)

An appeals court in Washington has upheld a recent Apple victory on a number of different patents for features in the OS X operating system, including things like Cover Flow, Spotlight search and Time Machine. A company called Mirror Worlds is trying to get a judgment that Apple infringed on ...

Apple wins patents for Apple TV nav, DVR features

by Kelly Hodgkins (Aug 15th, 2012)

Apple was recently granted a patent (no. 8,243,017) that describes a video device with an onscreen menu, a recording feature and a channel navigation system. Patently Apple hypothesizes that this patent describes a way the Apple TV could be used to display, record and control the playback of ...

Steve Jobs and the "rubber band" patent

by Mike Schramm (Aug 7th, 2012)

There's a lot of patent throwdowns going on in the tech industry lately, and it's very easy to see them as just a battle of titans, of huge corporations going up against each other for assets and portfolios of arbitrary "features." But here's a story that reminds you of the human side of all of ...

Judge denies Apple's bid to move Kodak suit to new court

by Mike Schramm (Jul 30th, 2012)

Apple has suffered another setback in its attempts to stop the bankrupt Kodak from auctioning off a series of patents. After Apple's previous attempt to stop the auction wholesale failed, the company appealed to try to move the case from bankruptcy court to a local district court, which Apple ...

Kodak/Apple patent dispute ends badly for Kodak

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jul 23rd, 2012)

Struggling US photography pioneer Kodak was dealt a major blow when the International Trade Commission ruled that its color image preview patent, No. 6,292,218, was invalid, according to the Wall Street Journal. Kodak hoped to extract money from companies that were not licensing the patent and ...

Apple granted another important mobile device patent for iOS

by Mike Schramm (Jul 18th, 2012)

Patently Apple notes that among 25 Apple patents officially published by the USPTO today, one was a whopper. US patent number 8,223,134, which covers a "Portable electronic device, method, and graphical user interface for displaying electronic lists and documents," includes 30 separate claims ...

Kodak loses ruling in patent fight with Apple

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jun 15th, 2012)

Struggling camera and film pioneer Kodak is going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. While it deals with angry creditors, the company is also juggling a legal battle with Apple over the rights to several patents in its patent portfolio. According to Bloomberg, Kodak recently was handed a setback in ...

Patently Apple theorizes what Safari 3D would be like

by Steven Sande (May 25th, 2012)

Patently Apple keeps an eye on all of the patents coming out of Cupertino, California, and they've been seeing a lot of patents for a 3D interface for Safari. This does not mean that you'll be wearing special glasses to do web browsing; instead, it describes a way in which existing Apple ...

ITC rules against Kodak, in favor of RIM and Apple

by Mel Martin (May 21st, 2012)

This is strike two against Kodak at the US International Trade Commission. CNET is reporting today that administrative Judge Thomas Pender reaffirmed a decision from last year which stated that neither Apple or RIM were infringing Kodak patents. "I hereby reaffirm on remand that no violation of ...

Why Apple's many patents in Germany get stayed

by Mike Schramm (May 11th, 2012)

Here at TUAW, we've found ourselves covering lawsuits around Apple quite a bit lately, especially in Germany, where Apple is getting sued by lots of companies, and then getting shut down by the courts. Ever wonder why so many companies sue in Germany, or why so many of Apple's arguments are ...

Company sues Apple, others over claim of patent on 3G

by Mike Schramm (May 9th, 2012)

This is one of the weirder claims in the already strange area of patent claims going on around cellphone technology lately. A company based in New Jersey named Golden Bridge Technologies has come forward saying that it owns patents on some technologies that were eventually used to create the 3G ...

Traveling exhibit to display Steve Jobs patents

by Dave Caolo (May 3rd, 2012)

Steve Jobs fans in the Washington, DC area will want to check out an exhibit of his patents. Jobs had more than three hundred patents to his name, and 312 of them will be on display at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, which is part of the Smithsonian Institute. The exhibit contains physical examples ...