Sateesh's Weblog

HTC buys Zoodles for 13 million dollars

Sateesh — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:14:11 +0000

HTC Corp plans to buy Inquisitive Minds, a US maker of children’s software, for $13 million to expand its offering of applications. Inquisitive Minds, based in California, owns game app Zoodles, which is designed for children aged eight and younger. Zoodles is a kid educational software where child can play, safely browse web, watch videos and several other features where parents can monitor the child usage of data. HTC has been aggressively expanding its mobile software platform through acquisitions (Inquisitive minds and Beats Electronics) in order to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung.

Intellectual ventures sues Motorola Mobility

Sateesh — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:17:05 +0000

Intellectual Ventures sued Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) for patent infringement on Thursday (10/06/2011) with case title “Intellectual Ventures LLC v. Motorola Mobility Inc., 1:11-cv-00908-UNA, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington)”.

Intellectual Ventures was founded in 2000 by Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who has focused on creative ideas, rather than products based on those ideas. The firm has raised over $5 billion and holds a portfolio of more than 35,000 patents. The company has filed over 30 lawsuits against various companies in the last couple of years, earning it the reputation of a ‘patent troll,’ or a predatory patent-holding company.

Intellectual Ventures claims that Motorola Mobility has infringed on six patents related to transferring files among computers and technology used in an “entertainment device,” and claims at least 18 Motorola Mobility products infringe the patents in the complaint.

Intellectual Ventures claims that Motorola Mobility has directly infringed one or more claims of US7810144B2, US6557054B2, US6658464B2, US7409450B2, US7120462B2 and US6412953B1 by making, offering or selling in US and associated hardware and software devices and components included but not limited to, the Electrify, Photon 4G, XPRT, Titanium, Atrix 4G, Triumph, Rambler, Bali, i576, Quantico, Brutei680, Brutei686, Clutch i475, i412, i886, Milestone X, Theory and Lapdock for the Atrix without authority.

Intellectual Ventures says it has earned more than $2 billion in licensing fees, but its recent wave of litigation suggests investors are pressing for more.

Intellectual Ventures has successfully signed licensing agreements with many of the top handset manufacturers in the world, and has been in discussions with Motorola Mobility for some time.

Intellectual Ventures noted in its complaint that it first approached Motorola Mobility about licensing its inventions in January, roughly eight months before Google announced plans to buy the device maker.

All the six patents acquired by Intellectual Ventures are most recent (last two months).

Publication number	Date of acquisition	Title	Acquired from
US7810144B2	7/18/2011	File transfer system for direct transfer between computers	H. Space Data Services
US6557054B2	9/6/2011	Method and system for distributing updates by presenting directory of software available for user installation that is not already installed on user station	Twintech E.U. LLC
US6658464B2	9/6/2011	User station software that controls transport, storage, and presentation of content from a remote source	Twintech E.U. LLC
US7409450B2	7/18/2011	Transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) packet-centric wireless point to multi-point (PtMP) transmission system architecture	Van Drebbel Mariner LLC
US7120462B2	9/6/2011	Portable computing, communication and entertainment device with central processor carried in a detachable handset	Balustare Processing NY LLC
US6412953B1	1/26/2010	Illumination device and image projection apparatus comprising the device	Industrial Technology Research Institute

Impact on Google

This lawsuit against Motorola will certainly affect its acquisition by Google for $12.5 billion. A big rationale for Google purchasing Motorola was its vast portfolio of nearly 17,000 patents to boost the Android platform and protect Google from future litigation. Although this doesn’t affect Google directly as Motorola’s acquisition is still under review, it could prolong the time it takes for the deal to be completed.

Four of the six patent violations are software patents that Intellectual Ventures alleges relate to the Android platform, which is deployed in Motorola smartphones like Atrix, Photon 4G, and Milestone. Google could face a bigger headache if this legal battle isn’t sorted out before Motorola’s acquisition.

Patent ranking based on citations

Sateesh — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:05:31 +0000

Patents can be ranked using several parameters such as no of claims /independent claims, expiry date, legal status, citations and more. Citations is one of the best parameter to indicate the relevancy or importance of the patents. Citations includes forward citations (citing patents) and backward citations (cited patents).
Relevancy or importance of the patents is directly proportional to the number of citations.
Citations are either provided by the examiner or the inventor during office action or during grant process of the patent. Normally citations provided by examiner will be much relevant compared to the citations provided by the inventor. Similarly, forward citations will be much relevant compared to the backward citations.
Weightage of the forward citations can be twice better than the backward citations.
Ideally the patent with more citations will be more valuable.

Gmail ‘Tasks’-Now in Main Page

Sateesh — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:46:05 +0000

Gmail team announced a small Task manager called ‘Tasks’ as a lab feature last year.Tasks feature is now embedded into gmail as a permanent feature on main page.
Some features includes:
*Note the “to do list”,set the due date and write the notes for every task in the list.
*View the completed and uncompleted tasks.
*Clear the tasks
*Print the task list
*Sort the task list

Click here for complete video on new feature ‘Tasks’.

Nokia testing Indoor positioning in Helsinki

Sateesh — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:25:32 +0000

*Indoor Positioning technology is to determine the location or position of the user with in a closed space(airports, malls, buildings etc) without the use of Satellite location systems such as GPS.
*Nokia has its Research center in Helsinki where it has been working on WLAN based Indoor Positioning system.
*Recently they have launched a trail at Kamppi shopping center in Helsinki.
[http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/01/indoor_positioning_nrc_helsinki.htm For more details]

US losing dominance in patent filing

Sateesh — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:32:52 +0000

*IFI Patent Intelligence Analysis of 2008’s Top U.S.-Patent Recipients Suggests America May be Losing Dominance
*Companies Outside the U.S. Tip Scales to 51 Percent Share of New Patents
*Total Patent Grants Up Slightly Over Last Year with IBM Setting an All-Time High;Broadcom, Cisco, Fujifilm, Hon Hai, LG Phillips LCD, Microsoft, and Samsung Also Post Greatest Gains in the Top 35, All Up By More Than 20 Percent
More details

2008 Top Patent Firms

Sateesh — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:43:07 +0000

Top Patent firms are listed below:
List from IP Today.com

Top 10 Technologies List for Next decade

Sateesh — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:32:12 +0000

Cutler’s predictions:
1. New classes of portable devices with ten times more battery life
2. Low-cost silicon photonics for faster, more reliable data transmission
3. New heights of realism in visual computing
4. Realistic computer generated images
5. Malware will become a thing of the past
6. Personal internet devices will be truly personal
7. Interactive computing devices make ‘composable computing’ a reality
8. Next-generation TV will not be about pixels
9. Seamlessly connected 3-D worlds
10. A spectrum revolution is looming

For More Details

Message Scheduling in Mobile

Sateesh — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:27:42 +0000

I have searched on Mobile Scheduling in Mobile and there are very few patents in this field. US6505052, WO2004025974 are two among them.So, there is a lot of scope in finding novel things in this field.

Scheduled Mobile messaging-Is this Novel?

Sateesh — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:37:05 +0000

Normally we do messaging through our mobiles. Some times we keep remainders to wish our friend on his birthday or need to send message at particular time.
I got a idea why cant the mobile has a feature of Scheduled Mobile messaging?