Category Archives: United States

Wyncomm Going Out With A Bang

Posted in Apple, Court Documents, Litigation, Patent, United States by

Apple Patent-Trolled Over 1996 Patent

On Friday Apple Insider posted news that Apple has been sued by a non-practising patent assertion entity Wyncomm LLC for infringing on a 1996 patent covering “side channel communications in simultaneous voice and data transmission”. The title of the article bears reference to it being related to use of Wi-Fi technology. Before taking a look at the patent in question it should be noted Wyncomm is taking action against numerous other companies as well, 6 in total (including Apple) filed on the 11th of April and one on the 12th, all in the Delaware District. Links to court filings:

Docket Text for the Cyberpower and Casio cases notes the same US Patent Number that Apple Insider reported has been deployed against Apple , US Patent No. 5,506,866. Current docket information is not available for other cases at this time but it could be assumed they are probably ‘866 related as well. Continue reading →

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Common Password Patents

Posted in Patent, United States by

Xato.net has an excellent overview of patents dealing with checking for weak passwords. As the summary notes there are multiple patents covering every single aspect of password management, authentication, recovery – anything you can think of to do with passwords. The posted list of weak/common password checking alone is startling:

Although as noted some/most of these patents may have been obtained defensively with the state of patent trolling at the moment it would not be surprising if some form of assertion with accompanying litigation eventually appears.

Sources:

Rackspace/Red Hat V. Uniloc Summary

Posted in Litigation, Patent, United States by

From Red Hat’s press release:

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) and Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE: RAX) announced today that they have won a federal court decision granting early dismissal of all claims in a lawsuit brought by the patent assertion entity Uniloc USA, Inc.

Before going into the details of the case there are three extremely relevant court decisions to be aware of: Gottschalk v. Benson (1972), Diamond v. Diehr (1981) and In re Alappat (1994). Continue reading →

Lodsys Gets Slap-Happy With Lawsuits

Posted in Litigation, Patent, United States by

According to their website the Marshall, Texas company Lodsys seeks to:

Embrace and empower invention by supporting an Innovative Economy

Apparently they do this by licencing the four patents they own to over 200 companies and launching legal action against those who don’t. As listed by Ars, this year alone they are up to dozens of lawsuits already Continue reading →

Interview With A Patent Troll

Posted in Litigation, Patent, United States by

earlier this week Arstechnica posted an excellent summary and review of the practices of MPHJ Technologies, their associated shell companies and the law companies around the USA that represent them them in their trolling.

…

In the call, the confused Mr. Smith starts out by telling Rust he can scarcely believe what is happening. “Just to reiterate, my home printer—if I scan to e-mail, it’s an option on my Hewlett-Packard printer—I do that, I owe you money?” asks Smith.

“If you said you hooked it up to the Internet, and in one button, you can scan and e-mail directly out—yes, you have violated the patent that we own,” says Rust.

That means millions of Americans owe Rust’s anonymous client money

… Continue reading →

USPTO Relents A Little On Apple’s ‘mini’

Posted in Court Documents, Trademark, United States by

The USPTO has recently given Apple a little breathing space on it’s application for trademark on it’s popular iPad Mini tablet, withdrawing previous refusals with a small caveat:

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Applicant should submit a disclaimer in the following standardized format:

No claim is made to the exclusive right to use “MINI” apart from the mark as shown

…

With many existing products bearing the Mini title including numerous that could be considered direct competitors to Apple’s smaller format tablet the the USPTO has been treading carefully around it. The mandated disclaimer however makes it pretty clear the Cupertino company does not have carte blanche trademark on the descriptive small-size moniker

Sources, Further Reading:

Macrumors.com Coverage

USPTO Office Action Letter