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Keyword: patents

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  • U.S. Supreme Court tosses out Nautilus loss in patent fight

    06/02/2014 9:24:10 AM PDT · by BuckeyeTexan · 11 replies
    Reuters ^ | 06/02/2014 | Staff
    (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court decision in a patent fight over heart rate monitors, a decision that will affect other patent infringement fights.
  • As cannabis is widely legalized, China cashes in on an unprecedented boom

    01/09/2014 12:23:55 PM PST · by Lorianne · 36 replies
    Times of India/Indpendent UK ^ | 05 January 2014 | Ian Johnston
    Almost 5,000 years ago, Chinese physicians recommended a tea made from cannabis leaves to treat a wide variety of conditions including gout and malaria. Today, as the global market for marijuana experiences an unprecedented boom after being widely legalized, it is China that again appears to have set its eyes on dominating trade in the drug.
  • Gun-related U.S. patents at 35-year high

    12/03/2013 11:18:42 AM PST · by aimhigh · 4 replies
    Financial Post ^ | 12/3/2013 | Susan Decker & Caroline Chen
    Gunmakers such as Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. and Sturm Ruger & Co. are boosting firearms sales by building weapons that are more accurate and easier to use, with gun-related U.S. patents at a 35-year high. Manufacturers are competing for sales with improvements such as magazines that increase a bullet’s accuracy or are lower in cost. Of 6,077 patents issued since 1977 in the firearms class, 19% were in the past four years, with a record 370 issued last year, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Patent trolls spell trouble for America’s economy

    11/23/2013 3:15:08 PM PST · by ThethoughtsofGreg · 11 replies
    American Legislator ^ | 11-23-13 | Curt Bramble
    Our nation’s founders incorporated the concept of individual property rights — including intellectual property rights — into the Constitution because they knew that these rights spur innovation and help promote economic growth. However, patent assertion entities (PAEs), otherwise known as “patent trolls,” inhibit the innovation and economic growth that patents typically foster. Even more alarming, with the creation of government-sponsored patent trolls (GSPTs) — which are financially backed by a national government — patent trolls have gone global. Patent trolls, which can either be companies or government-sponsored organizations, are entities that buy large patent portfolios — not to use the...
  • Jury Tells Samsung to Pay Apple $290 Million

    11/21/2013 5:22:16 PM PST · by SeekAndFind · 5 replies
    New York Times ^ | 11/21/2013 | BRIAN X. CHEN
    SAN JOSE — A jury on Thursday said that Samsung Electronics would have to pay Apple $290 million more in damages for violating patents, putting an end to one chapter in the long-running patent struggle between the two tech companies. The six-woman, two-man jury calculated the damages based on 13 products that infringed Apple’s patents. They determined that two smartphones incurred the heftiest damages: Samsung’s Infuse 4G, at about $100 million, and the Droid Charge, at $60 million. While the price tag will not significantly affect either company’s pocketbooks — they are two of the most profitable companies in the...
  • Supreme Court Says Human Genes Aren’t Patentable

    06/13/2013 12:35:25 PM PDT · by JerseyanExile · 14 replies
    Wall Street Journal ^ | June 13, 2013 | Brent Kendall, Jess Bravin
    The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that human genes isolated from the body can’t be patented, a victory for doctors and patients who argued that such patents interfere with scientific research and the practice of medicine. The court was handing down one of its most significant rulings in the age of molecular medicine, deciding who may own the fundamental building blocks of life. The case involved Myriad Genetics Inc., which holds patents related to two genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, that can indicate whether a woman has a heightened risk of developing breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Justice Clarence...
  • Obama Orders Regulators to Root Out ‘Patent Trolls’

    06/05/2013 9:19:55 AM PDT · by indthkr · 28 replies
    The New York Times ^ | June 4, 2013 | EDWARD WYATT
    ... Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and who was a primary sponsor of the 2011 law, said he backs the president’s effort to suppress patent trolls. “The United States patent system is vital for our economic growth, job creation, and technological advance,” Mr. Leahy said in a statement. “Unfortunately, misuse of low-quality patents through patent trolling has tarnished the system’s image.” ...
  • Obama Orders Regulators to Root Out ‘Patent Trolls’

    06/05/2013 4:02:07 AM PDT · by proxy_user · 15 replies
    New York Times ^ | June 4, 2013 | Edward Wyatt
    WASHINGTON — One company threatened to sue 8,000 coffee shops, hotels and retailers for patent infringement because they had set up Wi-Fi networks for their customers. Another claimed that hundreds of small businesses were violating its patents by attaching a document scanner to an office computer system. One claimed rights to royalties from anyone producing a podcast. Now the Obama administration is cracking down on what many call patent trolls, shell companies that exist merely for the purpose of asserting that they should be paid because they hold patents that are being infringed by some software or electronic process.
  • Court Denies Motorola the Billions It Wanted From Microsoft for Standards-Essential Patents

    04/26/2013 6:55:48 AM PDT · by SmokingJoe · 5 replies
    AllThingsD ^ | April 25, 2013 at 6:42 pm PT | Ina Fried and John Paczkowski
    A federal court in Seattle issued a ruling Thursday that could help settle the question of just how much a company can expect to reap from standards-essential patents. In the highly anticipated court ruling, U.S. District Judge James Robart determined that Google’s Motorola Mobility unit is entitled to about $1.8 million a year from Microsoft for its use of certain patents. Motorola had been seeking in excess of $4 billion in the case, which centered around patents related to the the H.264 video standard and the 802.11 wireless standard. In making its determination, the court noted that there are some...
  • Switching To Generic HIV Drugs Could Save The U.S. Billions [BO will throw AIDS patients under bus]

    01/16/2013 3:01:42 AM PST · by SoFloFreeper · 10 replies
    Medical News Today ^ | 1/16/13 | Joseph Nordqvist
    The U.S health care system could save over $1 billion dollars a year if they replace current antiretroviral drugs for HIV infection with generic versions of the medications, a risky move that could seriously affect the efficacy of HIV treatment. The implications of such a change was explored in a study published in the January 15 edition of Annals of Internal Medicine.
  • How Corruption Is Strangling U.S. Innovation

    12/09/2012 1:14:03 AM PST · by Usagi_yo · 13 replies
    Harvard Business Review ^ | 12/7/2012 | James Allworth
    If there's been one topic that has entirely dominated the post-election landscape, it's the fiscal cliff. Will taxes be raised? Which programs will be cut? Who will blink first in negotiations? For all the talk of the fiscal cliff, however, I believe the US is facing a much more serious problem, one that has simply not been talked about at all: corruption. But this isn't the overt, "bartering of government favors in return for private kickbacks" corruption. Instead, this type of corruption has actually been legalized. And it is strangling both US competitiveness, and the ability for US firms to...
  • Jury finds Apple's patents valid in Samsung trial

    08/24/2012 4:10:12 PM PDT · by Perdogg · 117 replies
    A U.S. jury on Friday said Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has infringed some of Apple Inc's patents, and that all of those patents are valid. The verdict in the high-stakes trial between the two tech giants was still being read in a federal courtroom in San Jose, California, and not all of the key legal findings had been announced.
  • Apple Wins $1 Billion as Jury Finds Samsung Violated Patents (Drudge)

    08/24/2012 4:38:43 PM PDT · by Hojczyk · 10 replies
    CNBC ^ | August 24,2012
    A U.S. jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages from Samsung Electronics, finding that the Korean company infringed on some of Apple's valid patents. As for the countersuit, the jury found Apple did not violate any of Samsung's wireless standards or feature patents. Apple shares hit an all-time high in after-hours trading. Click here for the latest after-hours quote. The jury found some Samsung phones infringed Apple design patents but said the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 did not infringe Apple design. The patents the jury found Samsung violated included those for the "bounce back," scroll, zoom and navigate features. The...
  • U.S. Patent System is Broken, Declares Judge in Android v. Apple Cases

    07/09/2012 6:28:16 AM PDT · by Ernest_at_the_Beach · 19 replies
    Daily Tech ^ | July 6, 2012 1:12 PM | Jason Mick (Blog)
    Veteran Judge Posner says "animals" like Apple are just exploiting the weapons an ineffectual gov't has created "It's a constant struggle for survival.  As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem," states Judge Richard A. Posner in a recent interview with Reuters.   As a sitting judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals who occasionally moonlights as a judge in Chicago's U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Judge Posner has watched the devolution of America's intellectual property system over the past several decades. I. Google v. Apple -- A...
  • ITC Judge recommends U.S. Ban for Xbox 360

    05/24/2012 10:44:03 AM PDT · by JerseyanExile · 8 replies
    Mobile & Apps ^ | May 24, 2012
    Patent wars are getting dirtier day by day. Not only they result in loss of thousands of dollars for companies, but also result in frustration for consumers. Earlier Microsoft was successful in banning Motorola smartphones. Now Motorola is punching back with Xbox 360 ban in U.S. and the gaming console might get pulled away from shelves in upcoming few months. A judge at International Trade Commission (ITC) has issued a recommendation for import ban on Xbox 360 gaming console. The ban is limited to 4GB and 250GB edition of Xbox 360. The ban is a part of Motorola's complaint filed...
  • Could Morse Have Patented the Web?

    04/01/2012 2:34:03 PM PDT · by nickcarraway · 10 replies
    Wall Street Journal ^ | L. GORDON CROVITZ | March 25, 2012
    In 1853, the Supreme Court gave Samuel Morse some bad news. In O'Reilly v. Morse, the justices approved the inventor's patent for part of the telegraph that delivered the Morse code message "What Hath God Wrought?" but said he could not patent the idea of sending messages electronically across great distances. Ideas alone, the justices said, cannot be patented. Morse's descendants should demand a rehearing. The standards for patents are so low that simply having an idea often justifies a patent. Morse wanted a patent to cover "electro-magnetism, however developed, for marking or printing intelligible characters, signs, letters, at any...
  • Linus Torvalds rains on Microsoft’s patent parade

    03/30/2012 6:55:59 PM PDT · by Halfmanhalfamazing · 9 replies
    Slash Gear ^ | March 30th | Shane McGlaun
    Apparently, Torvalds stepped into the arena and helped convince an ITC Administrative LAW Judge named Theodore R. Essex that Microsoft’s patent in question was invalid. The same judge who determined that Motorola had violated four Microsoft patents, including one known simply as the 352 patent. That particular patent has to do with storing filenames with a lot of characters in old file systems like Windows FAT. Torvalds told the judge that Motorola had found the posting he had made about long filenames used in a compatible manner with short filenames, and that post predated the Microsoft patent by three years....
  • Sweden sparks row over who owns 'Nordic Model'

    03/14/2012 12:23:56 PM PDT · by WesternCulture · 12 replies
    www.thelocal.se ^ | 03/14/2012 | AFP/The Local
    The successful trademark registration of “Nordic Model” by Sweden’s Social Democrats has prompted a sharp reaction from the rest of the Nordic region's political establishment. The move has led other political bodies to protest the Social Democrats' move, which has put the question of who created the Nordic Model into ever sharper focus. "We may have understood if they had (trademarked) the 'Swedish Model', but when it comes to the 'Nordic Model' we have no choice but to protest," Jens-Erik Enestam, who heads the Nordic Council representing opposition parties from across the region, said in a statement Tuesday. Sweden's opposition...
  • Debian Position on Software Patents

    02/20/2012 8:07:57 AM PST · by Ernest_at_the_Beach · 6 replies · 2+ views
    The Debian Project ^ | February 19th, 2012 | The Debian Project
    Debian Position on Software Patents February 19th, 2012The Debian Project announces the availability of its patent policy for the Debian archive.The Debian Project maintains a critical stance towards software patents: we consider software patents to be a threat to Free Software and an obstacle to the Debian mission of providing an entirely Free operating system for everyone's use. We believe software patents provide no advantage in promoting software innovation and we encourage our upstream authors to object to software patents.At the same time, given the de facto possibility of patenting software-related ideas in several countries around the world, it is...
  • Up in the Air: Will America lose its dominance of the skies?

    12/21/2011 8:52:56 PM PST · by neverdem · 40 replies · 4+ views
    NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | December 19, 2011 | Michael Auslin
    Up in the AirWill America lose its dominance of the skies? There were a number of reasons last week to look up to the sky and wonder about the future of airpower. In a world in which the United States will have smaller ground and naval forces, we will likely become more dependent on land- and sea-based airpower to deter or defeat enemies. The proper employment of air assets as part of a joint force allows for nearly instantaneous response to crises, saves American lives, and can bring pinpoint devastation to an enemy’s forces and command-and-control systems. Yet along with...