patents

When you are slapped with a patent lawsuit, one of the best ways to turn the tables is to have those patents invalidated. It is definitely easier and perhaps cheaper than arguing in court that you didn’t infringe on them anyway. Apple is no stranger to that tactic and is now pulling the same strategy on Qualcomm over four of the chip maker’s patents. Those same patents are, of course, the ones that Qualcomm is suing Apple for.

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Samsung's plans for the future with the Galaxy S10 are coming on quick - even before the Galaxy Note 9 is fully revealed. What we're looking at today is a set of plans for a Galaxy smartphone with the potential for more than one display. And before you say it - no, this isn't the Galaxy X with a folding screen and another screen on its back, this is a completely separate device with two displays - because why not?

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Another Amazon patent has appeared at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In the document, Amazon details a new type of drone designed specifically for its warehouses. Unlike quadcopters and similar drones consumers are familiar with, Amazon's illustrations show a unique bubble-like drone with a claw similar to the one found in crane arcade games.

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Uber has submitted an application to patent an artificial intelligence technology that identifies drunk passengers. The patent, which is dated June 7 with the US Patent and Trademark Office, is titled "Predicting User State Using Machine Learning," and it hints that such a system may be used to accommodate riders who are outside of their "normal behavior" state.

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The Apple vs Samsung patent war that started in 2011 has experienced a new twist, with a jury revising the amount Apple was awarded from its original $1 billion to about half that amount. Apple has ultimately been awarded $539 million in damages, that following around four days of jury deliberation. The ruling brings to a close seven years of legal fighting.

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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Samsung a patent for a folding smartphone, as well as a transparent display for phones. Illustrations show the phone folding horizontally across the display, resulting in a landscape arrangement for certain usage scenarios. The company also patented a different design that features a phone folding in two different places.

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Samsung has patented a smartphone design that features a "notch" similar to the one popularized by the iPhone X. The controversial design element has appeared in a growing number of smartphones, and the patent hints that a Samsung model may one day be featured among them. The patent was filed with China's SIPO patent office late last month.

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Encryption technology research firm PACid Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics for allegedly infringing upon its biometric patents. The complaint was filed in the Texas Eastern District Court on April 6. In it, PACid claims Samsung has violated three of its patent, two of them filed in the United States and the third in South Korea. All three relate to data encryption.

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Essential Phone PH-2 might well be the most excellent offbeat smartphone ever made. But only if Essential sticks to their guns. Only if Essential does not give into the trends that are ruling the smartphone community right now. And only if Essential keeps their display like it should be - super flat. What we're looking at today is a concept rendering of what the next Essential Phone might look like, ideally.

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Less than a month after going after Facebook over alleged copyright infringement, BlackBerry is back with another lawsuit, this time taking Snap to task. As with last month's lawsuit, BlackBerry has accused Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, of infringing upon some of its messaging patents, in this case half a dozen that were issued from 2012 to 2014. Two of those six patents are part of BlackBerry's legal action against Facebook.

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Samsung has patented technology for true wireless charging -- that is, charging that doesn't even require the phone to touch the charging pad. Such technology has been dreamed about for decades, once being a common element in science fiction, soon hopefully to be a reality. Per the patent, Samsung's system would make it possible to wirelessly charge a mobile device from nearly anywhere in a room, even while the owner uses it.

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Patents are everywhere, and of course not just in the US, but there are particular industries where they show up more often than not. In our not so small corner of the world, we see dozens of patents on interesting technologies and potential products. Emphasis on “potential” because most of the time, they never come to be. Sometimes not from the party that filed the patent. More often than not, patents only surface when media get whiff of them or when used in a lawsuit. Because while patents were initially conceived to foster innovation, they run the risk of suffocating that very same thing instead.

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