The prospect of allowing patents on what amounts to human thought prompted a broad range of interest groups, including the ACLU, the Cato Institute (disclosure: I contributed to Cato’s brief in the case), and the American Medical Association, to file briefs urging the Supreme Court to invalidate the patent. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court did so in a unanimous vote.
via Supreme Court saves medical profession from diagnostic patents.
Open Invention Network® is refining the intellectual property model so that important patents are openly shared in a collaborative environment. Patents owned by Open Invention Network® are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. This enables companies to make significant corporate and capital expenditure investments in Linux — helping to fuel economic growth.
Yahoo has long worked closely with Facebook, using the social network to power sign-up and login of its email service and Flickr. Just 11 days ago, Facebook congratulated Yahoo in a blog post noting its Open Graph protocol had helped Yahoo’s news reader app gain 25 million users, including 2 million each day, and more than 500,000 referrals a day. I doubt we’ll see such courtesies between these two anytime soon.
via Yahoo Stabs Facebook In The Back, Says Pay For Its Patents Or Get Sued | TechCrunch.
It will be up to the courts whether Honeywell’s claims have merit and the company is due damages, but unfortunately the only winner in this case will be the legal teams. Nest Labs will likely spend money earmarked for R&D/marketing on a defense. Honeywell’s image is tarnished.
via Honeywell vs Nest: When The Establishment Sues Silicon Valley | TechCrunch.
Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. are engaged in a strategic war over patents in many countries across the world as they try to draw market share away from each other.
Around 2001, DataTreasury ran out of money and had to lay off most of its staff. For most startups, that would have been the end of the story. But DataTreasury had an ace in the hole: a portfolio of broad patents. One of them covered the concept of attaching a scanner (an “imaging subsystem for capturing the documents”) to a server (a “central data processing subsystem”) via a “communication network.”
It’s hard to see how anyone could build a digital check-clearing system without infringing this patent.