intellectual property

Apple's Facetime is the latest technology stirring up legal complaints against the Mac and iPad maker in China.

A Taiwanese man who claims to hold a patent on a "voice network personal digital assistant" technology has filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that his technology is used in Facetime, says blog site MIC Gadget. The Intermediate People's Court in Zhenjiang confirmed the lawsuit and contacted Apple, but the company reportedly has not yet responded.

CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update the story if we get more information.

The Taiwanese man, known only as … Read more

Embedding a copyright-infringing video on another Web site is not illegal, a court ruled yesterday.

Judge Richard Posner ruled at the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that MyVidster, a social video bookmarking site, did not infringe the copyright of Flava Works, a porn production company, when it embedded copyright-infringing versions of Flava Works content from third-party Web sites.

The decision overturned a preliminary injunction from 2011, imposed by a lower court after Flava Works filed suit against MyVidster in 2010.

According to the Appeals Court ruling, MyVidster "doesn't touch the data stream" and therefore doesn'… Read more

Two U.S. congressmen have introduced a bill that would force so-called patent trolls to pay the legal costs of the people they sue, if the suit is unsuccessful.

The Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act was introduced on Wednesday by Democrat Peter DeFazio and Republican Jason Chaffetz. The congressmen said the move was intended to save tech startups jobs, which are often threatened by such lawsuits.

"Patent trolls don't create new technology and they don't create American jobs," DeFazio said in a statement. "They pad their pockets by buying patents on … Read more

Consumers eyeing Samsung's Galaxy Nexus will continue to find the phone available for sale.

Samsung scored a minor victory this week by continuing to escape a ban on the popular smartphone, at least for the time being. On Monday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Samsung by extending the suspension of the preliminary injunction on the Nexus.

To recount the play-by-play action, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh had given the nod to Apple in June by granting its request for the temporary ban on the Nexus based on claims that … Read more

Former Apple designer Shin Nishibori is playing hard to get at testifying in the patent showdown between Apple and Samsung.

Samsung had been counting on Nishibori to appear in court. While at Apple, he developed designs of a Sony-like iPhone, according to AllThingsD, reportedly at the behest of Apple's design guru, Jony Ive.

The maker of Android-based smartphones has been arguing that Nishibori's designs serve as evidence that Apple's iPhone was influenced by Sony. If proven to be true, those claims would help Samsung, which has been accused of copying the iPhone for its own Galaxy smartphones. … Read more

Apple and Microsoft could once again join forces to bid on a collection of patents from a beleaguered technology giant, says a new report.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the two companies -- along with Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures -- plan to band together to snatch up some or all of Kodak's patent portfolio. Initial bids for that collection of 1,100 patents are due at the beginning of next week.

The companies could face an opposing team made up of other rivals including Google, Samsung, HTC, and LG, along with San Francisco-based patent buyer and licensor … Read more

Apple is looking for Samsung to fork over $2.5 billion to settle patent infringement claims in the U.S.

That's the latest figure bandied about by Apple in the ongoing patent infringement saga between the two companies. But how did Apple cook up such a figure?

Fleshed out by Foss Patents' Florian Mueller, the amount is based on the per-unit royalties that Apple believes it is due from Samsung as part of the intellectual property rights lawsuit.

Drilling down the price tag per unit, $2.02 covers the "overscroll bounce" technology cited in the '318 patent. … Read more

The mobile version of Google's Chrome browser is the latest target of EMG Technology, a patent firm that says the tech giant is infringing on its navigation technology.

The suit (PDF), which was filed earlier this week in District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the Tyler Division, seeks damages as well as an injunction to keep Google from offering Chrome for mobile devices in the U.S.

In a statement, Elliot Gottfurcht, EMG's managing member and lead inventor restated claims made in the suit, alleging that Google's browser steps on one of its patents : … Read more

The European Parliament has voted to overwhelmingly reject the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, also known as ACTA, following an all-parliamentary vote today.

The controversial treaty is intended to harmonize anticounterfeit and copyright protection measures across all EU member states and other signing countries, including the United States.

The Parliament logged 478 votes against, and only 39 in favor. There were 146 abstentions.

The vote in the European Parliament means that the signing 22 European member states cannot ratify ACTA into their local sovereign law. However, non-EU countries will still be able to shape laws around the treaty's mandates, although ACTA'… Read more