Tired of fielding lawsuits from patent trolls and scared of court injunctions like that faced by RIM which nearly shut down the company's BlackBerry service, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Verizon and Ericsson are among the companies rumored to be behind the formation of the Allied Security Trust. Ponying up …
Its pretexting heyday may be over, but HP is apparently still not adverse to a little telephone trickery, as its pending patent for Text-to-Speech Conversion with Associated Mood Tag shows. In it, HP touts the use of VoiceXML to have a fake 18-year-old salesgirl register her disgust with customers who don't respond…
Google has published a patent for a method of tracking user behavior through its downloadable toolbar software and serving ads against this information in addition to the content of a Web site. In the filing, Google's Krishna Bharat happily explains how one method Google could use to accomplish this task is through…
A patent application filed last week suggests that Apple plans to sell the company's high-margin fetish objects in 3D virtual worlds. Now your avatar can put on skinny jeans and a colorfully-printed hoodie and spend your money in an ephemeral simulacrum of the Apple retail experience — even if you live in…
We don't know what's more indicative of a total lack of taste: the fact that Rock Star Games is passing out a big foam hand in the shape of "The Shocker" to promote their new Grand Theft Auto release, or that this would cause College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen to publicly assert his very own personal patent on…
Worried about the next "episode of profound chaos" headed our way? Don't be! Your friendly International Business Machines Corporation is on the job. In 2006, IBM filed a patent for "computer usable program code" designed to optimize skills and resources during "episodes of profound chaos during hurricanes,…
Seven years after first suing over his "Buy it Now" patents, patent lawyer and MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston finally settled with eBay yesterday. The auction giant announced it purchased three MercExchange patents, ending all claims. [NYT]
Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) filed suit against Motorola on February 16, claiming Motorola overcharges for licenses to use its patented technology. RIM calls these technologies "industry standards" unworthy of patent protection. Motorola disagrees and filed its own patent-infringement suit against RIM. […
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a ruling against satellite TV company EchoStar, saying the company infringed on a DVR patent owned by TiVo. The ruling, which included an $94 million damage award and bans EchoStar from selling the product in question, says that EchoStar infringed on the…
A federal judge has sanctioned six Qualcomm attorneys for failing to produce tens of thousands of documents in the chip manufacturer's high-profile patent-infringement lawsuit with Broadcom. The six attorneys will also face further scrutiny for ethics violations from the California Bar Association. Thirteen other…
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project may be better named "No Laptop Per Child," at the rate it's going. Back in November, the Wall Street Journal essentially labeled the project a failure. Now, the group is being sued for $20 million by a Nigerian company for patent infringement. Let's hope OLPC…
On December 20, Apple filed a patent on wireless technology for ordering coffee from an iPhone or iPod. The goal, according to a copy of the patent filing obtained by Forbes, is to help customers avoid the "annoying wait in a long queue before completion of the order." Whatever. I just know I'd finally buy an iPhone…
A new book from journalist Seth Shulman argues that aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner helped one oft-acclaimed engineer profit from the stolen ideas of another. The accused? No, it's not Vonage founder Jeffrey Citron.
Is Steve jobs turning into an overprotective nanny in his old age? As Apple continues its attempt at world domination through well-designed products and heavy advertising — at one point I saw Apple ads on four TVs simultaneously at my local sports bar, thanks NFL Sunday Ticket! — it's good to know that the company…
Vonage isn't just facing service issues today. It's also been revealed that Nortel countersued the Internet telephone provider over a patent dispute. That makes four big telephone companies suing Vonage for patent infringement: AT&T, Sprint Nextel, Verizon, and now Nortel. The good news: At this rate, Vonage is…
IBM wants to embed advertising into your DVDs. An application filed with the Patent Office outlines a scheme to insert unskippable ads into your home viewing experience, presumably as a way to cash in on the rental market. You might not want to return that Internet-ready HD-DVD player you bought on Friday. [Ars…
Amazon.com will revise its 1-Click online-shopping patent and the New Zealander who forced the change is ready to celebrate. "This breaks the monopoly of shopping with one click," actor Peter Calveley told the Sydney Morning Herald. "It's exactly what I wanted. Victory, woo hoo!" Calveley, also known for making a fuss…
Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker and holder of key wireless patents, is reviled by most everyone. Mobile phone manufacturers hate being dependent on their chips and patented technologies. Nokia in particular is fighting its high licensing fees and is embroiled in several lawsuits. European regulators are…
Intel settled a patent infringement suit with Transmeta, agreeing to pay the microprocessor patent-holder $150 million upfront and $20 million a year for the next five years. [WSJ]
We were joking when we wrote about Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos' one-click patent system for taking out obvious patents. IBM — which holds more patents than anyone — just submitted an idea for "a system and methods for extracting value from a portfolio of assets, for example a patent portfolio." IBM pictures a system for…
