patents

Vonage may finally be catching a lucky break. A Supreme Court decision handed down on Monday may help save Vonage in its patent infringement appeal against Verizon.

On Tuesday, Vonage asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., to send the patent infringement case back to the lower court to be retried based on the Supreme Court's decision in the KSR International v. Teleflex case.

The court's decision, handed down on Monday, implied that the patent system has tilted too far toward protecting patents that in many cases were filed for … Read more

A federal appeals court on Tuesday granted Vonage a second reprieve in its attempts to continue to sign up customers while a patent lawsuit brought by Verizon is underway.

Just hours after hearing oral argument in the case, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit blocked a lower court's injunction that would have barred the Internet phone company from adding new customers. The appeals court had temporarily placed that injunction on hold on April 6, and Tuesday's order makes it permanent for the duration of the appeal process.

The court clerk'… Read more

There have been plenty of Zune 2.0 rumors recently--flash memory, a "watermelon" version this summer, and what-have-you. Now here's another one to add to the pile; Engadget recently pointed us to a "Zune phone" interface patent application unearthed by Mad4MobilePhones. It appears to be a sort of "tiled" setup for for "improved user interface for mobile devices such as smartphones" and "personal digital assistants." Looks like a fancy Bingo card to me.

Engadget pointed out that some of the icons appear to point to weather, music, and the … Read more

In another attempt to bolster its profitability, pioneering social-networking site Friendster said Thursday it has received its third U.S. patent in the past nine months.

Officially awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on March 6, Patent No. 7,188,153 B2 covers "System and Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network."

The San Francisco-based outfit's first patent, granted in July 2006, covers "A System, Method and Apparatus for Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks." It landed a second patent in October … Read more

Ah, cubic zirconia. How would underpaid journalists get married without it?

In August, Apple filed for a patent that would protect the use of zirconia as a casing material for a number of wireless handhelds, including a certain still-unannounced-but-geez-where-is-it product: the iPhone.

Apparently, zirconia is a good material for any small device that needs to transmit radio frequency signals--like cell phones--in that it is strong enough to protect the internal components but wireless signals can still easily pass through, according to Apple's patent filing, disclosed Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark office and spotted by numerous Apple … Read more

Everybody loves the iPod clickwheel, but apparently the iPod of the future needs more buttons. Apple has filed a patent for an iPod-like device that has a touch-sensitive bezel around the display and can toggle between several different operating states.

Check out the filing, in all its headache-inducing wordiness, on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's site. In short, Apple wants to make an iPod that you can control, in part, through some sort of touch-sensitive input on the sides of the device. For example, if you're one of the 12 people in the world still listening … Read more

Rambus beat Hynix in its patent infringement case and a court ordered Hynix to pay $306 million in damages.

The court upheld all 10 of Rambus' patent claims, said a representative for the company.

The memory designer alleged that Hynix and other large memory manufacturers infringed its patents when making DDR DRAM, the most common type of memory in PCs today. Those memory makers denied this, but have not been winning the argument in court.

Rambus is actively litigating other suits against other memory manufacturers.