Can tech help Alzheimer’s sufferers?
StandardFrom CNET Magazine: Brain-training apps might one day help the millions of Americans living with Alzheimer’s.
From CNET Magazine: Brain-training apps might one day help the millions of Americans living with Alzheimer’s.
Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. have held a series of private negotiations about their patent disputes since last summer when Apple notched a victory in one case, according to legal documents and people familiar with the matter.
Apple Inc. is fighting a multi-front patent war against competing makers of mobile devices, demanding injunctions that would block sales of their products. But the company has also indicated a willingness to cut deals with competitors, according to people familiar with the matter.
The consumer-electronics company has put forth proposals to Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. to settle some pending litigation in exchange for royalty payments to license its patents, among other terms, these people said.
This is not a new tactic; Apple had some discussions with companies such as Samsung before initiating litigation, according to statements made to a court in at least one suit.
Proview Electronics Co. has taken its legal battles with Apple Inc. to a U.S. court, claiming the iPhone maker used deception in buying the iPad trademark and shouldn’t be allowed to keep it.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Superior Court of the State of California in Santa Clara County on Feb. 17 but previously unreported, claimed that Apple had committed fraud when it used a company set up by one of its law firms, called IP Application Development Ltd., to purchase the iPad trademark from Proview on Dec. 23, 2009 for 35,000 British pounds ($55,000).
What’s in a name like iPad?
Apple Inc. agreed to pay Proview International Holdings Ltd. £35,000 ($55,494 at current exchange rates) for the iPad trademark, according to a cache of documents that includes emails and a contract detailing an agreement between the two companies.
The newly unearthed documents come as Apple has been battling Proview over whether it purchased rights to the iPad name from Proview in 2009—a key issue in a dispute between the companies.
Proview defended its claims to the trademark in China, and suggested on Friday that the company could be due as much as $2 billion from Apple.
SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Inc. has asked a telecommunications standards body to set basic principles governing how member companies license their patents, an increasingly contentious topic for rivals in the smartphone industry.
In a letter to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Apple said the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.
Many mobile technology companies, such as Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., hold patents that became part of industrywide standards. Standards bodies often require the patent holders to offer to license their patents to any company on a basis known as Frand, or fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory. Questions about such commitments have arisen amid a flurry of patent suits between rivals in the mobile-device market.
Apple Inc. filed a lawsuit claiming Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. copied the look and feel of its popular iPhone smartphones and iPad tablet computers, the latest in a series of legal skirmishes that underscore the increasingly high stakes of the mobile computing market.
The lawsuit, filed on April 15, alleged that Samsung’s smartphones, including the “Galaxy S 4G,” “Epic 4G,” “Nexus S” and its “Galaxy Tab” touchscreen tablet, violate Apple’s intellectual property. The 38-page lawsuit was filed in the U.S. court’s northern California district.
“Rather than innovate and develop its own technology and a unique Samsung style for its smart phone products and computer tablets, Samsung chose to copy Apple’s technology, user interface and innovative style in these infringing products,” Apple said in the filing.
Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc. have both hired linguists to serve as experts in the tech titan’s ongoing battle over whether or not the government can grant a trademark for the term “app store.”
Microsoft on Tuesday filed its latest argument with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which included the opinions of a linguistic expert who supported the software giant’s argument that the term “app store” was generic and shouldn’t be trademarked by Apple.
“The compound noun app store means simply ‘store at which apps are offered for sale,’ which is merely a definition of the thing itself—a generic characterization,” linguist Ronald Butters wrote.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.