Tech companies have recently ratcheted up their offensive use of intellectual property, especially in the mobile space — but not so much in social networking.

Just in case patent wars happen to be contagious, it seems worth evaluating which social networking players are best-equipped.

I wrote on Wednesday about a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is hopeful that Google may pursue some of the patents and patent applications he filed on behalf of a company he started that Google later acquired.

Also on Wednesday, on the occasion of Facebook filing to go public, two patent researchers from Envision IP posted a good summary of the distribution of social networking patents among tech companies.

Here’s a breakdown:

Facebook: Facebook told prospective investors that it has “56 issued patents and 503 filed patent applications in the United States and 33 corresponding patents and 149 filed patent applications in foreign countries relating to social networking, web technologies and infrastructure, and related technologies.”

(Here’s a list of some of the granted patents, direct from the USPTO.)

This Facebook news feed patent lists Mark Zuckerberg as the first inventor.

Facebook’s patents cover inventions created at the company, like its news feed and some privacy features, as well as some additional intellectual property it acquired.

The biggest patent acquisition deal Facebook has done was with MOL Global, for the Friendster patent portfolio of seven patents and 11 patent applications in May 2010. That cost $40 million — something insiders considered a steal, given the risk of the patents falling into someone else’s hands.

The Friendster patents cover topics like making connections on a social network, friend-of-a-friend connections through a social graph, and social media sharing.

At Facebook’s most recent internal valuation, the stock alone spent on the Friendster patent deal is now worth more than $100 million.

(Personal side note: The Friendster patents are something I’ve now written about for years. I broke the news, for Red Herring, on Friendster being awarded a patent on social networking in 2006, then reported on Facebook acquiring them at GigaOM.)

Google: Though Google hasn’t been a major social networking provider for all that long, it has 25 U.S. patents and 40 pending U.S. patent applications on the topic, by Envision IP’s count.

Google has aggressively hunted intellectual property about social networking. As I referenced earlier, it got a patent portfolio through its acquisition of the Dealmap (previously Fatdoor). That includes patents and patent applications on things like regions of influence within users of a network.

Image from the core Dodgeball patent

Last year, Google also acquired some patents from the shut-down social search engine Wowd, including one on user-driven ranking of Web pages. In an interesting twist that resulted from a three-way split of Wowd’s assets, Google currently licenses those patents to Facebook. Backstory here.

Back in 2005, Google also bought Dodgeball, the mobile social application created by Dennis Crowley, which predated Foursquare. And it turns out that because of Dodgeball, Google is assigned what looks to be a broadly worded patent on “location-based software for mobile devices” that describes messaging between two users who are in close physical proximity to each other.

The Six Degrees patent: Back in 2003, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus paid $700,000 in an auction for a seminal patent from the failed social network Six Degrees, in part to keep it away from Friendster’s control. Hoffman recently told me that he and Pincus bought the patent as individuals, and then assigned it to their companies, LinkedIn and Tribe.net.

Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM: Envision IP notes that Apple has 35 U.S. patents and 76 U.S. patent applications that seem to be about social networking and collaboration, many of them focused on mobile. Yahoo has an armory of patents on all sorts of general Web technologies, while Microsoft and IBM have about 80 patents on file sharing, messaging and infrastructure that could be used for social networks.

LinkedIn and Twitter: LinkedIn has one patent, on evaluating user reputations within a social network. Twitter doesn’t seem to have applied for a single patent (at least, not prior to 18 months ago, since that’s the period after which patent applications are published).

What are the other pockets of social networking intellectual property out there, at other companies and around the world? I’m sure I’ve missed some, so please add to this list in the comments.

Today it became clear that SOPA, at least in its current form, will never get that far. Word came from the White House today that the administration, while sympathetic to the cause of curbing online piracy, will support neither the SOPA bill nor its companion bill — known as PIPA — in the Senate.

Responding to a petition, the White House announced in a blog post today that Obama will not “support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Basically, what it comes down to is this: Piracy is bad, but approaches like SOPA are bad solutions that would potentially hurt the free-flowing, vibrant Internet we’ve all come to rely on for so many things. As the statement reads: “Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small.”

That aligns pretty closely with a statement that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made in a recent speech in The Hague, in which she said that governments must fight the theft of intellectual property, “without compromising the global network, its dynamism or our principles.”

On top of that, some of the technical proposals in the bill — meant to remedy the piracy problem — go too far in tinkering, and might perhaps mess up the basic plumbing of the Internet itself. Doing so would probably create unforseen Internet security problems, the White House argues.

Any bill that does aim to clamp down on piracy should be “narrowly targeted,” and cover only “activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws.” That’s also a pretty clear statement that the Administration sees SOPA, as currently written, to be vastly over-broad in its legislative intent.

Additionally, there are also reports that Eric Cantor — the Virginia Republican who everyone knows is the real power broker in the House of Representatives — says the SOPA bill won’t come to the House floor for a vote anytime soon, unless there are some significant changes to it.

Somehow, I find it encouraging that opposing SOPA — or at least calling for changes to it — was the issue on which Obama and Cantor, who can’t seem to agree on anything, found they had some room for common ground. Could this signify a badly needed thaw in bipartisan relations in Washington?

“We are pleased with the ITC’s initial determination finding Motorola violated four claims of a Microsoft patent,” Microsoft Deputy General Counsel David Howard said in a statement. “As Samsung, HTC, Acer and other companies have recognized, respecting others’ intellectual property through licensing is the right path forward.”

Tuesday’s ruling by an administrative law judge is one step in the process. The trade commission itself will now review the finding and issue a final ruling, at which time it will decide whether to ban the import of any Motorola products.

The ruling follows a separate decision on Monday by the commission that certain HTC phones infringe on an Apple patent. In that decision, a final ruling by the commission (though still subject to court appeal) ordered that HTC products using the infringing technology be banned for import, as of April. HTC has said it plans to drop the feature in dispute.

Both cases are among a growing docket of patent disputes involving much of the mobile industry. A key issue for the industry is whether Google’s freely available Android operating system infringes on patents held by Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and others.

Update: In an interview, Motorola General Counsel Scott Offer said the company is pleased with Tuesday’s ruling.

“We view it as a huge win for us,” Offer told AllThingsD. “They had, originally, nine patents in their first case. They are down to one patent, effectively.”

As to that one patent, Offer said that it relates to how mobile devices process meeting requests via email.

“We are reviewing our options on that,” he said.

Tuesday’s decision now goes before the full commission, which typically issues its ruling within two months, though that can be extended, as was the case with Apple and HTC.

For now, Offer said, Motorola wants to keep the focus on its products rather than the court battle.

“We feel we’ve got great products and we are focused on our product portfolio.”

The organization found that HTC devices infringed on two claims related to an Apple patent. However, the ban will not take effect until April, the ITC said in a ruling, giving time for carriers to make transition plans and for HTC to demonstrate ways it has avoided infringement (by working around the patent, dropping infringing features or other means).

“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has found a violation of section 337 in this investigation and has issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting importation of infringing personal data and mobile communications devices and related software,” the agency said. “The Commission has determined that exclusion of articles subject to this order shall commence on April 19, 2012.”

HTC will be able to import some refurbished products to satisfy repair claims on already sold products, but will not be able to bring new products into the country after April 19, unless the ruling is reversed or it can show its products no longer infringe the patent in question.

The ruling had been delayed several times.

HTC said in a statement that it was pleased the commission reversed a ruling that said HTC infringed on another of Apple’s patents, and that it narrowed the ruling on the patent in which it did find infringement.

“While disappointed that a finding of violation was still found on two claims of the ’647 patent, we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ’647 patent,” HTC said.

Apple didn’t comment directly on Monday’s ruling, instead merely reiterating a past statement that “we think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Here’s the ruling:

Usitc Ruling Apple Htc

Ahead of the dinner, Anderson stopped by my office to let me have a peek at his 10 predictions, and we talked them over a bit. All 10 are below, along with some comments from Anderson that emerged from our conversation.

Before diving into the predictions, Anderson tells me there is a grand theme that unifies them all: “Integrating everything.”

What does that mean? “It means a whole lot of stuff that needs to be integrated. We don’t need anything new at all. There’s so much work that needs to be done with the existing tool sets. Steve Jobs didn’t really invent anything at all. But he was great at integrating things into a product. There’s a lot more of that work to do. We have to do it in the phone world and the TV world and the health care world. We have lots of devices and lots of chips and lots of operating systems and lots of content. The bigger question is, how do human beings use it all efficiently?”

As an example, he cites the collaboration between Nuance, the speech software company, and IBM, bringing the Watson computer of “Jeopardy” fame into the area of health care. “For the first time, the idea of evidence-based medicine won’t just be in a magazine article,” Anderson says. “A doctor will be able to pick up his phone and describe four symptoms, and find out what the likely diagnosis is, what the indications are. It’s fantastic.”

So here are those 10 predictions, with additional comments from Anderson:

1. TV becomes the new center of gravity in the tech universe. All the other devices find their niches in the TV galaxy. Microsoft’s attempt to integrate Kinect into TV is a strong if qualified success. Smart phone-TV integration software becomes a new category. Pad-TV integration becomes common.

“Apple will hustle to launch the next version of Apple TV, and it will be a roaring success and be seen as Tim Cook’s first great product success. But what it really will be is Steve’s last product.”

2. 2012 will see tectonic shifts in phone markets. “Nokia will fail to come back, which is pretty clear to everyone except the people in Finland.” Samsung, Anderson says, will retain its spot as the new global leader in mobile phones by volume, and will keep this crown despite the debut of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Anderson says, Google will lose control over the Android operating system, mainly because unlicensed versions of Android will multiply in type and in installed base, especially in Asian countries. “It’s already a balkanized environment. Now Google loses control of the technology entirely. China is already running an unlicensed version of Android, and I think there will be more of that.”

Finally, the smartphone will finally emerge as the dominant category of wireless phone. “Why would you have anything else? And why would sellers of content and services want you to?” he says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in a rich country or a poor country. This stuff is cheap.”

3. Clouds are for consumers, and for start-ups. Even as a large number of big companies move pilot projects onto external clouds, it will become clear that the real trend is for enterprise to stay away from clouds in all key areas, for reasons of both security and reliability.

“The cloud guys hate this because they want to sell to enterprises,” Anderson says. “But the security issues are becoming really intense. If you’re a CIO, it’s a terrible environment, and you’re a target, for sure, especially if you’re a company with a lot of intellectual property. I’m not implying that things like SAAS (software as a service) aren’t a big trend. But no one is going to put their valuable IP on the cloud.”

4. Security splits the tech world in two, finally getting attention from CEOs. Companies with real IP start to realize they have to “go big or go home” with their security response, and their spending on protecting their “crown jewels” rises dramatically.

5. Siri stuns the world. Siri, on Apple’s iPhone 4S, has sounded the arrival of Internet personal assistants, and the world will spend this year marveling at what Siri and its rivals can and cannot do — and what they can learn to do.

“I think we’ll see a bunch of these things,” Anderson says. “Siri will get much better. It will learn how you learn. We’ve never seen people have long-term relationships with machines before, but it will be a long-term relationship, and she will remember everything, but make good use of it. She will know you learn better by seeing than hearing, or that it takes three times to tell you something. All those things that you have to program today should be learnable. None of that has been done yet. That creates a real friendship. And I think we’re going to start seeing personal assistants not just for everyday life, but for professions like medicine or car repair. Instead of just having Siri be everything, there will be many Siris for different contexts.”

6. We enter the amazing world of Dave and HAL, as voice recognition comes of age. From hospital to car, mobile to home, Kinect to Siri, exercise to play, work to entertainment, remote control to direct action, from Microsoft to Apple, from Tellme to Nuance — the time has come for computers and humans to talk to each other. With lots of funny stories, big bloopers and amazing breakthroughs, humanity at the end of 2012 will be talking to machines in a normal voice, and it will not seem unusual, nor be the cause of unending frustration.

“The voice-recognition part is almost trivial,” Anderson says. “The important part is context-sensitive understanding. It used to be that all the researchers at Carnegie Mellon used to think that all you needed was more computing horsepower to do better at voice. It turned out that was wrong. It was right for a little while, but the real problem is context. And so, if you can build up that database where you can search it contextually for what to expect, that is where you get all the mileage.”

7. E-readers prosper, but pads continue to dominate what Anderson calls the “carry-along” market. Pads and tablets will come down in price and get closer to prices of e-readers. Meanwhile, Anderson says, Amazon’s Fire will move upmarket and evolve into a full-fledged tablet.

“If you look at the specs on the Fire, it’s a tablet, but it’s hobbled,” Anderson says. “So I think that this is part of the whole strategy: Come in and sell at a low price, and then later unveil a more complete tablet. Apple will stay ahead, though. A lot of people are asking me if Amazon will catch Apple, and the answer is no. The way it’s configured right now, there’s no way the Fire will catch up with the iPad.”

8. The consumption world explodes. Get ready for new devices, new content, new bundles, new connection techniques, new distribution channels, new aggregators, new tablets, new phones, new players, new self-published authors, new garage bands, new consumption models riding on social networks. There is nothing but high energy in the content consumer market. People are now ready to spend subscription money, and the publisher response will be huge. “It’s going to be a huge melee of stuff,” Anderson says. “We’ll invent more stuff to consume, and it will be very hard to figure out who the players are from week to week, and how they’re doing. They may not even know themselves.”

9. Governments and corporations focus on intellectual property as though it were their most prized asset. It is. This new global understanding leads to a reevaluation regarding giving critical IP away for nothing versus protecting it. The age of what Anderson calls “IP naïveté” is over, and the question of proper IP valuation is here.

What is IP naïveté? “When Jeff Immelt stood on the steps of the White House the day after he was named jobs czar, and handed the plans for GE’s most important jet-engine project to Hu Jintao in order to get the permission to be allowed to bid on maybe selling engines to China — that’s IP naïveté,” Anderson says. “Thinking that’s not going to come back and show up for sale in Houston from some Chinese company in about six months is IP naïveté.”

During 2012, he says, companies and countries will start valuing their intellectual property not for its replacement value, but for figures that are magnitudes larger. State-sponsored IP theft will shift from being considered a nuisance and more along the lines of an act of aggression.

10. Amazon gets it all. Between outdoing Wal-Mart online, to beating the booksellers and delivering groceries, and making new inroads in video streaming, Amazon will prove that one company can indeed have it all. Strong Kindle and Fire sales will only be icing on the cake.

“We requested information from both Apple and Samsung,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said today. “We have not yet received the answers. We need to look at this because IP rights can be used as a distortion of competition but we will need to look at the answers. In particular, in the IT sector, it is obvious it is not the only case. Apple and Samsung is only one case where IP rights can be used as an instrument to restrict competition.”

But with more than 20 cases in 10 countries, this fight is among the biggest out there right now, and it involves some standards-essential patents, so really it was only a matter of time before the European Commission took a look. If the EC ends up pursuing a case against either company, it could fine them up to 10 percent of their annual revenue.

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Samsung mobile head Won-Pyo Hong.

Samsung is the largest seller of Google Android handsets globally and will soon surpass Nokia as the world’s largest maker of cellphones.

And then there’s Apple, the world’s largest smartphone vendor, which is engaged with the South Korean giant in an increasingly nasty legal battle over intellectual property.

By the way, Samsung is a key vendor partner of Apple’s, too.

Obviously, these are high (and complex) stakes for Hong, who heads global product strategy for Samsung’s mobile business.

He talks about that and more in this onstage interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111111/samsungs-won-pyo-hong-on-the-mobile-phone-wars-the-full-asiad-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111024/firm-uses-crowdsourcing-to-help-big-company-clients-fight-off-patent-suits/ http://allthingsd.com/20111024/firm-uses-crowdsourcing-to-help-big-company-clients-fight-off-patent-suits/#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:00:38 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=136009 The rise in patent litigation has led to all kinds of interesting business models.

Some of the best known companies are those that have built up huge war chests of patents and then go after companies that refuse to license their technologies. In this group of “non-practicing entities” are companies like Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures; and NTP, the company that successfully sued Research In Motion.

There are other patent-collecting companies that use their patent power to help companies that are already the target of patent litigation. And, of course, there are the armies of attorneys to litigate all the various disputes.

One lesser-known approach is the one taken by Article One Partners, a firm that helps companies being targeted for attack by seeking to invalidate the patents being asserted. Article One does this by tapping a global network of contributors that search for similar ideas that predate a patent — so-called “prior art.” Article One gets a flat fee or subscription from those who seek its services, while contributors that find prior art are given a monetary reward.

While Microsoft has publicly said it is tapping Article One’s services, most of the company’s more than 100 clients prefer not to advertise their association with Article One. That said, the demand for its services is huge, according to Ray Felts, who is president of the company’s North America practice.

“We are assisting clients in the middle of just about every major litigation out there,” Felts said in a recent interview.

To expand its practice and be closer to the majority of its customers, Felts has relocated to Silicon Valley, and Article One has opened an office in Palo Alto.

Although the company’s clients tend to be in high-tech circles such as Silicon Valley, Felts said those that that ferret out prior art have come from all over the world. Some $2 million in rewards has been paid out, he said, with one person in the Southeast U.S. having taken in more than $100,000. The privately held company has been doubling its revenue year over year, Felts said, without disclosing numbers. Its backers include Marshall Phelps, the lawyer that built up the intellectual property licensing businesses at Microsoft and IBM.

Much of Article One’s work is around protecting the makers of products against suits by the nonpracticing entities, such as Lodsys. However, more and more, the company is seeing disputes from one manufacturer suing another.

“You have what we call the circular firing squad of operating companies killing each other,” Felts said.

The mobile industry in particular has seen a surge in such litigation. Of the 250 patent studies that Article One has done for clients, more than half have been in the mobile and wireless areas.

“It’s driving our growth,” Felts said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111024/firm-uses-crowdsourcing-to-help-big-company-clients-fight-off-patent-suits/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111017/htc-loses-initial-ruling-in-one-patent-case-against-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20111017/htc-loses-initial-ruling-in-one-patent-case-against-apple/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:44:45 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=133121 A United States International Trade Commission judge on Monday issued a preliminary ruling that Apple did not infringe on four patents held by HTC, with whom Cupertino is in an ongoing legal battle involving multiple cases and jurisdictions. HTC’s general counsel said in a statement that the ruling is just one step in the process, and that the company is confident it has “a strong case for the ITC appeals process.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111017/htc-loses-initial-ruling-in-one-patent-case-against-apple/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111006/intellectual-ventures-joins-the-mobile-patent-war-suing-motorola-mobility/ http://allthingsd.com/20111006/intellectual-ventures-joins-the-mobile-patent-war-suing-motorola-mobility/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:21:19 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=129685 Intellectual Ventures filed suit Thursday against Motorola Mobility, saying that the company is infringing on its patents and refuses to take a license to its technology.

The patent amassing firm, which was started by former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, said it has filed suit in Delaware federal court.

“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,” Chief Litigation Counsel Melissa Finocchio said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we have been unable to reach agreement on a license.”

Finocchio said the company’s preference is to negotiate deals rather than head to court, but Thursday’s move shows its willingness to do the latter.

“We have a responsibility to our current customers and our investors to defend our intellectual property rights against companies such as Motorola Mobility who use them without a license,” Finocchio said. “Our goal continues to be to provide companies with access to our portfolio through licensing and sales, but we will not tolerate ongoing infringement of our patents to the detriment of our current customers and our business.”

Of course, Intellectual Ventures is far from alone in filing mobile patent lawsuits. Oracle is suing Google, Apple is suing HTC and Samsung (and vice versa), Microsoft is suing Motorola and Barnes & Noble, to name just a few of the court actions under way.

Unlike those businesses, though, Intellectual Ventures doesn’t make products of its own, making it tough to countersue them for patent infringement. For more on the company, check out our coverage from 2008, when Myhrvold appeared at D6.

IV vs. Motorola

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111006/intellectual-ventures-joins-the-mobile-patent-war-suing-motorola-mobility/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110928/will-amazons-tablet-raise-any-patent-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20110928/will-amazons-tablet-raise-any-patent-issues/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:06:32 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=125827 While most of the attention surrounding Amazon’s about-to-be-introduced tablet is around its feature set, it will also be interesting to see if the device raises any patent issues.

Oracle, Microsoft and Apple have all sued over Android, albeit in different ways. Oracle has sued Google directly, while Microsoft and Apple have sued particular hardware makers.

Microsoft and Apple both declined to comment ahead of any product introduction by Amazon. However, Microsoft’s deal with Samsung — and its related comments — reiterate the company’s position that it believes it is owed royalty revenue on each Android device sold.

Also, Microsoft and Amazon do have a patent deal covering the existing Kindle line and Amazon’s Linux-based servers.

The devil, of course, is in the details of just how Amazon does and doesn’t use Android. And there is always the question of what deals might quietly be in place, and which relevant patents Amazon might hold that it can claim are being infringed by any potential litigant.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110928/will-amazons-tablet-raise-any-patent-issues/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110928/microsoft-signs-mega-patent-deal-with-samsung-will-get-royalties-on-every-android-device-they-sell/ http://allthingsd.com/20110928/microsoft-signs-mega-patent-deal-with-samsung-will-get-royalties-on-every-android-device-they-sell/#comments Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:30:03 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=125720 Microsoft is announcing today the biggest Android-related patent deal to date, signing a broad cross-licensing agreement with Samsung.

With the deal, Microsoft will get royalty revenue on every Android smartphone and tablet that Samsung sells. Redmond already has a deal with another major handset maker — HTC — that sells both Android and Windows Phone devices.

“Together with the license agreement signed last year with HTC, today’s agreement with Samsung means that the top two Android handset manufacturers in the United States have now acquired licenses to Microsoft’s patent portfolio,” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith and top IP lawyer Horacio Gutierrez said in a blog post. “These two companies together accounted for more than half of all Android phones sold in the U.S. over the past year.”

The pair point out that the list of licensees notably excludes the No. 3 player in the Android market in the U.S. — Motorola Mobility.

Microsoft sued Motorola, as well as Barnes & Noble, over Android-related patent claims. Meanwhile, Redmond inked licensing deals with several other companies, including Acer and ViewSonic, and several lesser-known companies.

While much of the focus around the Samsung agreement is likely to concern patents and Android, the deal also calls for the companies to continue to work together on Windows Phone.

“Microsoft and Samsung see the opportunity for dramatic growth in Windows Phones and we’re investing to make that a reality,” Windows Phone unit president Andy Lees said in a statement.

In the blog post, Smith and Gutierrez point to the deals with Samsung and HTC as a model for the industry.

“These agreements prove that licensing works,” the lawyers wrote. “They show what can be achieved when companies sit down and address intellectual property issues in a responsible manner.”

For more on Microsoft’s Samsung deal, check out AllThingsD’s interview with General Counsel Brad Smith.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110928/microsoft-signs-mega-patent-deal-with-samsung-will-get-royalties-on-every-android-device-they-sell/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110908/microsoft-adds-viewsonic-acer-to-its-do-not-sue-list/ http://allthingsd.com/20110908/microsoft-adds-viewsonic-acer-to-its-do-not-sue-list/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:34:28 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=118461 Continuing its efforts to license its patent portfolio to companies making Android devices, Microsoft said on Thursday that it has inked deals with both Viewsonic and Acer.

The Acer deal is specific to Android, while the Viewsonic deal covers both Android and Chrome-based devices, indicating that Microsoft may also have Google’s browser-based operating system in its legal crosshairs.

For those keeping score at home, Microsoft has struck Android-related deals with HTC and a number of smaller companies, while taking legal action against Motorola and Barnes & Noble.

As I’ve noted before, this pattern looks familiar to longtime Microsoft watchers, who saw the company take a similar approach with Linux, though it was more hesitant to file suit in that instance.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110908/microsoft-adds-viewsonic-acer-to-its-do-not-sue-list/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-we-paid-for-patents-we-got-from-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-we-paid-for-patents-we-got-from-google/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:27:46 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=118282 HTC told AllThingsD on Wednesday that it did pay for the patents that it recently acquired from Google and is using in its latest patent actions against Apple.

However, in answer to the million dollar (or $1, or $10,000) question, HTC won’t say how much it paid for the patents.

The Taiwanese cellphone maker acquired the patents over the past two weeks and used them on Wednesday to amend existing actions in Delaware Federal Court and before the U.S. International Trade Commission as well as to file a new patent claim in Delaware.

A Google spokesman confirmed the company transferred the patents to HTC, but declined to comment further, referring all questions to HTC.

Apple, for its part, reiterated an earlier statement that accuses HTC of being the one infringing.

“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” an Apple representative said, echoing Apple’s comment when it first sued HTC back in March of last year. HTC has since filed patent suits of its own, while Apple has also added to its list of claims.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-we-paid-for-patents-we-got-from-google/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-bites-back-against-apple-suing-with-patents-it-got-from-google/ http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-bites-back-against-apple-suing-with-patents-it-got-from-google/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:54:40 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=118249 In the latest wireless patent suit to join the increasingly large pile, HTC has reportedly filed a suit against Apple, upping the ante in the already large-stakes legal battle between the two companies.

What makes this particularly interesting is that, according to Bloomberg, the patents that HTC is using to sue Apple are ones that were recently in Google’s hands. According to Bloomberg, the patents were transferred to HTC in the last two weeks.

Patent-related suits have cropped up across the wireless industry, but Android and those that use it have been among the biggest targets. Google is being sued directly by Oracle, while HTC faces legal action from Apple and Microsoft is suing Motorola and Barnes & Noble over their use of Android.

HTC and Apple’s dispute dates back to March of last year when Cupertino brought its first legal action against the Taiwanese cellphone maker. More recently, HTC has brought complaints against Apple in both federal court and before the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Apple and HTC representatives were not immediately available for comment on the latest suit.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110907/htc-bites-back-against-apple-suing-with-patents-it-got-from-google/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110819/could-hp-turn-a-profit-on-palms-patents/ http://allthingsd.com/20110819/could-hp-turn-a-profit-on-palms-patents/#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:25:46 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=111966

When Hewlett-Packard coughed up $1.2 billion for Palm last spring, the acquisition was widely viewed as a quick way for the company to capture a slice of the increasingly important mobile device market.

And while the launch of the Veer and the TouchPad proved that to be true, there was another reason as well: Palm’s intellectual property.

As former HP CEO Mark Hurd explained a few months after the acquisition: “We didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business … we bought it for the IP.”

So, now that HP is getting out of the smartphone business and trying to figure out just what to do with the mobile OS it was once so excited about, what’s going to happen to that IP that Hurd was so hot on?

That’s unclear. Current HP CEO Léo Apotheker said Thursday that the company is considering all its strategic options. But, given the current environment, selling off the Palm patent portfolio is surely at the top of the list.

Consider: Nortel’s portfolio of more than 6,000 wireless patents recently sold for $4.5 billion, and earlier this week Google ponied up $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, citing the company’s patent portfolio as a key reason for the acquisition.

With that kind of money being thrown around for wireless IP, a Palm patent sale could be an easy way for HP to “extract value from webOS,” as Apotheker said.

As a mobile computing pioneer, Palm brought a strong patent portfolio to HP (among them one that seems to describe the smartphone itself: “Integrated Handheld Computing and Telephony System and Services”).

Anthony Mazzarella, CEO of PatentVest, once said the value of Palm’s IP was “along the same order of magnitude as Apple’s.”

Indeed, when Palm and Apple were first rubbing shoulders in the smartphone space, Palm was quick to rebut Apple’s smack talking by brandishing its IP. “Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio and we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space,” the company said at the time. “If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves.”

Notably, Apple never sued Palm, despite a long-running call-and-response spat over the Pre’s iTunes syncing feature. And the company’s hesitation to take its smaller rival to court could be viewed as an acknowledgement of the potency of Palm’s patents.

That said, if Palm’s IP is truly valuable, why didn’t the company use it to squeeze licensing fees out of others when it desperately needed the money? The high costs of litigation, perhaps?

In any event, it’s certainly possible that HP could turn a profit on Palm yet, via its patents. Although it’s difficult to gauge the value of the company’s IP, it is clear that mobile patents are worth a great deal these days.

Stanford Law School Fellow Stuart Soffer estimates that the patents sold in the Nortel auction and Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility are worth between $736,000 and $750,000 apiece.

If Palm’s patents are as fundamental to the mobile space as the company once claimed, HP could fetch a good price from the companies slugging it out in the smartphone space right now.

What a sad fate for Palm, though — a little like gutting a broken-down historic house to salvage the pricey copper pipes.

Related posts

• Hewlett-Packard Says Goodbye to PCs, webOS
• HP Pulls Plug on webOS Hardware, Leaves OS Future in Doubt
• HP And webOS: But They Seemed So Happy Together!
• Liveblogging HP’s “Everything Including the Kitchen Sink” Conference Call
• HP’s Apotheker: We Struck Out with WebOS, but Maybe Someone Else Wants a Swing?
• Viral Video: Like Palm’s Creepy Naked Lady, TouchPad’s Floating Celeb Heads Get the HP Boot
• Licensing webOS May Not Be Much of an Option for HP
• Hewlett-Packard’s PC Business: What Happens Next?
• Worth More Dead Than Alive: Could HP Turn a Profit on Palm’s Patents?
• With HP’s Raising of the World’s Biggest White Flag, Will Jon Rubinstein and Todd Bradley Surrender Too?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110819/could-hp-turn-a-profit-on-palms-patents/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110817/kodak-launches-sale-of-patents/ http://allthingsd.com/20110817/kodak-launches-sale-of-patents/#comments Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:15:53 +0000 Dana Mattioli http://allthingsd.com/?p=111386 Eastman Kodak Co. has kicked off its patent sale, as the beleaguered imaging company seeks to ride the bull market for patents and capitalize on its intellectual property in the booming market for tablet computers.

Investment bank Lazard Ltd. began marketing the portfolio this week, reaching out to companies that might be interested, said a person familiar with the matter. One interested company is a large, strategic buyer in the wireless industry looking to use the patents for defensive protection, said another person familiar with the matter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110817/kodak-launches-sale-of-patents/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110816/htc-calls-apple-the-copycat/ http://allthingsd.com/20110816/htc-calls-apple-the-copycat/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:55:28 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=110694 As part of its latest legal moves with Apple, Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC is bringing fresh patent claims in both Delaware federal court and before the U.S. International Trade Commission.

In this action — the latest in an ongoing dispute between the two sides — HTC alleges that a host of Apple computers and mobile devices infringe on three of HTC’s patents relating to Wi-Fi and other capabilities. Apple fired the first shot last year when it sued HTC, and the two sides have been trading charges ever since.

One of the challenging things for viewers at home is that both sides of any patent dispute almost invariably sue each other, with each side insisting it is the aggrieved party. In the global business of wireless devices, this also often means filings in jurisdictions across the globe. One needs a scorecard just to keep track of who is suing whom, let alone trying to determine who has the better case.

And, of course, the parties themselves are little help. Take, for example, these comments from HTC general counsel Grace Lei.

“This is the third case before the ITC in which Apple is infringing our intellectual property,” Lei said. “Apple needs to stop its infringement of our patented inventions in its products.”

Now, while a very inventive company in its own right, HTC is a relative newcomer, possessing far fewer patents than many of its rivals, including Apple. The company recently bulked up its position somewhat with the purchase of S3, which had recently won a preliminary ITC ruling that some of Apple’s non-iOS products infringed its patents.

But, in perhaps a truer indication of its position, HTC has said it is also open to reaching a deal with Apple.

An Apple representative did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Some hold out hope that this current period of litigation will eventually be replaced by settlements and understandings of who owes what to whom. In the meantime, it remains full employment season for intellectual property attorneys.

For those who want to read the full filing and judge for themselves, here is HTC’s latest complaint.

2011.08.16 Complaint –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110816/htc-calls-apple-the-copycat/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110816/in-latest-wireless-patent-move-htc-sues-apple-in-delaware/ http://allthingsd.com/20110816/in-latest-wireless-patent-move-htc-sues-apple-in-delaware/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:06:40 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=110512 In today’s episode of The (Wireless) People’s Court, HTC filed suit in Delaware against Apple, the latest round in their ongoing intellectual property spat.

HTC’s suit claims that a range of Apple products infringe on three of its patents, including iPods, iPhones, iPads and Macs, according to Reuters.

Neither Apple nor HTC representatives were immediately available for comment.

It’s the latest move in a continuing spat between the Taiwanese cellphone maker and Apple. Apple first sued HTC back in March of last year, accusing HTC of infringing on 20 of its patents.

The U.S. International Trade Commission last month found that HTC is infringing on two of Apple’s patents.

Though HTC is the company named on Apple’s court documents, it is clear Apple also has all of Android in its crosshairs, with many of its complaints related to the way Google’s operating system works.

HTC, being a younger company than other vendors like Samsung and Motorola, however, has had less in the patent realm to defend itself. The company recently scooped up graphics chipmaker S3 from Via, in large part to gain that company’s patent holdings. The company has also suggested it is open to some sort of deal with Apple.

And of course, in the granddaddy of patent-related acquisitions, Google announced on Monday it plans to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility.

The Apple-HTC spat is just one of many patent fights taking place in the wireless industry. Apple is also suing Samsung, while Microsoft is engaged in legal fights with Motorola and Barnes & Noble, and Oracle is suing Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110816/in-latest-wireless-patent-move-htc-sues-apple-in-delaware/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110802/apple-and-samsung-in-itc-standoff/ http://allthingsd.com/20110802/apple-and-samsung-in-itc-standoff/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:23:25 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=105477 The U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate Apple’s patent complaint against Samsung, as hostilities between the two companies continue to escalate. The ITC’s decision comes not a week after the agency said it would review Samsung’s complaint against Apple and leaves both companies at risk for a potential importation injunction if the agency finds merit in either complaint.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110802/apple-and-samsung-in-itc-standoff/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110726/htc-exec-to-apple-lets-make-a-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20110726/htc-exec-to-apple-lets-make-a-deal/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:43:05 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=102560 Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC appears to be eyeing some sort of compromise in its ongoing patent dispute with Apple.

“We have to sit down and figure it out,” CFO Winston Yung said in an interview with Bloomberg. Yung added that the company is “open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable,” and said his company has had “on and off” discussions with Apple.

Earlier this month, The U.S. International Trade Commission issued a preliminary ruling that HTC products violate two of Apple’s patents, sending shares of HTC lower.

As part of its effort to bulk up its patent might, HTC earlier this month acquired S3, a Taiwanese graphics chip maker.

The Apple-HTC spat is just one of the many patent disputes gripping the cellphone industry right now. Microsoft and Motorola are embroiled in their own Android-related patent dispute, while Oracle is suing Google. Nokia and Apple recently settled their disagreements, while Apple and Samsung remain in an ever-escalating patent battle.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110726/htc-exec-to-apple-lets-make-a-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110711/w3c-apple-widget-patent/ http://allthingsd.com/20110711/w3c-apple-widget-patent/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:18:30 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=96105 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is taking Apple to the mat over its refusal to allow some of its intellectual property to be included in the W3C’s widget standard.

Over the weekend, the group issued a call for prior art invalidating two Apple patents — #7,743,336, which describes a widget security system, and application #20070101146, which covers “safe distribution and use of content.”

The W3C had hoped Apple would grant it a royalty-free license for that IP so it could be included in its Widget Access Request Policy specification for Web apps, but evidently Cupertino is reticent to do so. This is problematic for the W3C, because the Apple patents at issue here are essential to that specification. According to W3C rules, standards must be royalty-free and unencumbered by patents.

In other words, it can’t adopt the Widget Access Request Policy specification unless Apple gives up some of its rights to those patents. And at this point, the company has no plans to do so. It’s not entirely clear why, but presumably Apple feels they’ll come in handy at some point in the future, perhaps in litigating some current or future lawsuits.

So the W3C really has no other recourse than to attempt to invalidate Apple’s IP or give up on the standard entirely. Said intellectual property activist Florian Mueller, “In this case, the W3C hopes to do away with Apple’s relevant patent and patent application. It’s an unpleasant situation for the W3C to have to confront one of its members, especially such a large and powerful one, but sometimes this can’t be avoided.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110711/w3c-apple-widget-patent/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110708/microsofts-android-related-patent-moves-have-a-familiar-ring/ http://allthingsd.com/20110708/microsofts-android-related-patent-moves-have-a-familiar-ring/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:00:29 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=95058 Getting a sense of déjà vu watching Microsoft’s legal strategy with regard to Android? You have good reason to feel like you’re watching history repeat itself.

Microsoft’s playbook is nearly identical to the one the company used several years back in trying to convince those making Linux-related products to license Microsoft-owned patents. Redmond claimed that Linux was filled with technologies that infringed on Microsoft’s intellectual property

The Linux battle really heated up around 2006, when the company made a landmark deal with Novell in 2006. That was followed by veiled threats of legal action and a slew of licensing deals struck with companies ranging from software makers Turbolinux and Xandros to hardware makers Kyocera Mita and Fuji Xerox.

With Android, Microsoft announced a deal last April whereby HTC would pay Microsoft for every Android device it sells. Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith said the HTC deal was designed to send a message to the industry that the company is serious about its Android claims.

“By entering into an agreement with HTC, we effectively signaled we are open for business when it comes to licensing,” Smith said at a dinner with reporters last year.

This past week, Microsoft announced four deals with smaller Android device makers Onkyo, Wistron, Velocity Micro and General Dynamics Itronix.

There are some differences between the current approach with Android and the one Microsoft took vis-à-vis Linux. With Linux, Microsoft generally avoided going the litigation route. It wasn’t until years after it started licensing Linux that it filed its first suit involving Linux-related claims — a suit against GPS maker TomTom that was quickly settled.

In the current situation, Microsoft has gone to court early. Not long after it reached the settlement with HTC, Microsoft announced a suit against Motorola. More recently, the company has sued Barnes & Noble, alleging the bookseller’s Android-based Nook products infringe on Microsoft’s intellectual property.

Also, with Linux, Microsoft was largely alone in seeking patent dollars, save for the SCO Group and its effort to take on IBM. On the mobile side, the patent game is much less clear, with Nokia and Apple also looking to enforce their patent rights on various players — including one another. Apple and Nokia settled their patent spat earlier this year, while Apple has its ongoing suit against HTC and Nokia has also said it sees an opportunity to boost its licensing revenue. Meanwhile, Oracle has sued Google directly over Android.

In a clear sign of how high the stakes are, Microsoft, along with a consortium of other companies including Apple, Research In Motion and Sony, agreed to pay $4.5 billion to buy 6,000 patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks, thereby keeping them out of the hands of rivals, including Google.

The upside this time around could be even bigger for Microsoft. On the desktop, the company clearly makes far more from selling Windows than it does when a Linux device is shipped by someone who has taken a license to Microsoft’s patents.

Depending on how Microsoft does on the legal front, and if it is able to get Windows Phone to take off, Microsoft could end up making more from licensing than from selling its own software, not that it wouldn’t rather have customers than licensees.

One analyst suggests that Microsoft is getting around $5 per Android device from HTC, and Redmond is said to be seeking double-digit royalties from other Android makers. Recent reports in Korea, for example, suggest Microsoft wants $15 per device from Samsung, though the same reports suggest the company might take less per Android device if Samsung is willing to commit to a solid Windows Phone road map.

Microsoft declined to comment on the terms of its deal with HTC or on the royalty amounts it is seeking from others. However, if you are making an Android product, my guess is you have already heard from their lawyers.

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