Jury finds Samsung infringed some Apple patents, must pay $120M in damages

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just $119.65 million for Samsung's infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages for what it alleged was massive infringement of five of its patents by nine models of Samsung smartphones and a single model of tablet computer.

But Apple's arguments don't appear to have convinced the jury.

It was only for U.S. Patent 5,946,647, which covers quick links that add contextual menus to items like phone numbers and email addresses, that it found all Samsung products infringed. None of the Samsung devices was found to have infringed Apple's patents on background synchronization of app data and on universal search that pulls in results from the phone and Internet.

The jury delivered a mixed verdict on U.S. Patent 8,046,721, which is the slide-to-unlock motion on phone home screens. A fifth patent, on autocomplete while typing, had already been found to infringe, and the jury was only to calculate a damages award for that one.

Equally stinging for Apple will be a decision by the jury that the company's iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 models and the fourth- and fifth-generation iPads infringed a Samsung patent on organizing a mixed gallery of images and video in a digital camera.

On this patent, Samsung was awarded just $158,400 in damages from Apple. It had only been fighting for just over $6 million—part of the company's attempt to persuade the jury that patent-infringement awards shouldn't reach into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

The case is the second major patent-infringement action between the two dominant smartphone makers. In a previous case, two juries in the same Silicon Valley court awarded Apple a total of $929 million in damages.

Samsung is expected to appeal the verdict.

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Jury finds Samsung infringed some Apple patents, must pay $120M in damages

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just US$119.65 million for Samsung's infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages.

The decision by the eight-person jury came at the end of the third full day of deliberations.

Apple had said nine Samsung smartphones and one Samsung tablet computer infringed five of its patents. The patents covered the slide-to-unlock motion on home screens, background syncing of data, autocompletion of words being typed, quick links that add contextual menus to items like phone numbers and email addresses, and search that pulls in results from the phone and Internet.

The case is the second major patent-infringement action between the two dominant smartphone makers. In a previous case, two juries in the same Silicon Valley court awarded Apple a total of $929 million in damages.

Samsung is expected to appeal the verdict.

Martyn Williams , IDG News Service

Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service.
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Twitter tests out mute feature, may soon let you silence annoying tweets

If you use a third-party Twitter client like Tweetbot, you might already be familiar with the idea of muting Twitter accounts. It's a useful feature if you're sick of seeing a specific topic show up in your timeline but don't want to block or unfollow someone, and it looks like Twitter might finally be catching on to the idea.

As pointed out by The Verge, on Friday Twitter user @missamber tweeted a screenshot from Twitter's official mobile app that shows an option to allow users to mute an account. Apparently, the new mute feature is still in a limited-rollout testing phase and not all users are seeing it—I sure don't see it, and I'm running the latest version of Twitter's iOS app.

Also, it's unclear at the moment whether the mute function is only for muting accounts, or whether you'll also be able to mute certain keywords too. It's also unclear whether we'll see this feature appear in Twitter for Mac and the service's Web interface.

Twitter does periodically test new features with a subset of its userbase before rolling it out to the rest of us. For example, back in March, Twitter tested a new feature that would tell you how many people viewed your tweets, and prior to that, it let a group of users get an early look at a website redesign, according to TheNextWeb.

As of right now, though, there's no indication on whether the rest of us will get this new mute feature, much less when.

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How to organize your browser by using pinned tabs

If you find yourself with 10 or more tabs open in your browser when you're working or doing research online, there's an easy way to organize them by using pinned tabs.

Right-click on an open browser tab and select Pin Tab to shrink that tab in size and move it to the left of your browser window.

The steps are the same for Chrome and for Firefox. First, open a tab in your browser and go to whatever website you want to keep open. Once you've got your tab open to the website you need, right-click on the tab and select Pin Tab. Your tab will shrink in size and move to the left side of your browser window.

Keep in mind that pinned tabs don't have an "x" option, so you can't easily close them. To do so, you'll have to right-click and select "close tab." They're also smaller than normal tabs, showing only an icon, so you won't see alert counts for websites like Twitter or Facebook. Still, pinned tabs will help you stay a little more organized by taking up less space and keeping your most important tabs on the far left side of your browser.

Melissa Aparicio , IDG News Service

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Jury finds Samsung infringed some Apple patents, must pay $120M in damages

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just $119.65 million for Samsung's infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages for what it alleged was massive infringement of five of its patents by nine models of Samsung smartphones and a single model of tablet computer.

But Apple's arguments don't appear to have convinced the jury.

It was only for U.S. Patent 5,946,647, which covers quick links that add contextual menus to items like phone numbers and email addresses, that it found all Samsung products infringed. None of the Samsung devices was found to have infringed Apple's patents on background synchronization of app data and on universal search that pulls in results from the phone and Internet.

The jury delivered a mixed verdict on U.S. Patent 8,046,721, which is the slide-to-unlock motion on phone home screens. A fifth patent, on autocomplete while typing, had already been found to infringe, and the jury was only to calculate a damages award for that one.

Equally stinging for Apple will be a decision by the jury that the company's iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 models and the fourth- and fifth-generation iPads infringed a Samsung patent on organizing a mixed gallery of images and video in a digital camera.

On this patent, Samsung was awarded just $158,400 in damages from Apple. It had only been fighting for just over $6 million—part of the company's attempt to persuade the jury that patent-infringement awards shouldn't reach into the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

The case is the second major patent-infringement action between the two dominant smartphone makers. In a previous case, two juries in the same Silicon Valley court awarded Apple a total of $929 million in damages.

Samsung is expected to appeal the verdict.

16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

Jury finds Samsung infringed some Apple patents, must pay $120M in damages

Apple was dealt a blow in its second major patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung when a Silicon Valley jury awarded the iPhone maker damages of just US$119.65 million for Samsung's infringement of several of its smartphone patents.

Apple had requested $2.2 billion in damages.

The decision by the eight-person jury came at the end of the third full day of deliberations.

Apple had said nine Samsung smartphones and one Samsung tablet computer infringed five of its patents. The patents covered the slide-to-unlock motion on home screens, background syncing of data, autocompletion of words being typed, quick links that add contextual menus to items like phone numbers and email addresses, and search that pulls in results from the phone and Internet.

The case is the second major patent-infringement action between the two dominant smartphone makers. In a previous case, two juries in the same Silicon Valley court awarded Apple a total of $929 million in damages.

Samsung is expected to appeal the verdict.

Martyn Williams , IDG News Service

Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service.
More by Martyn Williams

Subscribe to the Best of PCWorld Newsletter

Thank you for sharing this page.

Sorry! There was an error emailing this page

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Robocoin ATMs will send bitcoins to phone numbers

Leading Bitcoin ATM manufacturer Robocoin is upgrading its network of machines with bank-style features, including the ability to send funds to phone numbers.

The Las Vegas-based company, which launched the world's first Bitcoin ATM in Canada last October, said its ATMs in 13 countries will allow users to buy bitcoin or get cash in 12 currencies easily.

It's billing the new Robocoin Bank as "the fastest way to send cash worldwide."

The ATM services, which will launch this summer, will include the ability to store, access and send bitcoins from any ATM, or "branch," as the company is now calling them. They can also transfer bitcoin instantly without users having to wait for confirmation on the blockchain, the public ledger of transactions in the cryptocurrency.

The machines will also let customers withdraw cash from their bitcoin holdings.

In a move the company believes will disrupt the remittance industry, users will be able to send money to people by addressing it to a phone number instead of a Bitcoin address. If recipients don't have Bitcoin accounts yet, the funds will wait for them at their local machine.

For security against fraud, the ATMs will use three ways to authenticate users: a phone number that acts as a username, a PIN and palm-vein scans.

The manufacturer is hoping its revamped approach, as well as use of banking terms like "deposits" and "withdrawals," will broaden the appeal of Bitcoin beyond early adapters.

"The new Robocoin Bank removes the pain and the barrier to entry," Robocoin CEO Jordan Kelley wrote in an email.

"No longer do customers have to worry about private keys and public addresses. With the Robocoin Bank, customers deposit into their Robocoin Account and send money between phone numbers, not public keys, which will yield incredible network effects."

Bitcoin transfers have relied on public-key cryptography, which uses secret codes to verify a user's ownership of bitcoins. Private keys are matched to Bitcoin addresses, unique identifiers that allow users to receive the digital currency.

The Robocoin Bank will enable faster and easier transactions than before, Kelley added.

Robocoin did not immediately respond to a request for information about the bank's fee structure.

Japan become one of the latest countries to receive a Robocoin ATM when importing company Raimu unveiled in April the first of three it ordered from the U.S.

The machine is expected to be set up in the busy Shibuya district of Tokyo this month, according to Raimu.

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Google deals made Android phones more expensive, lawsuit claims

A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Google of strong-arming device manufacturers into making its search engine the default on Android devices, driving up the cost of those devices and hurting consumers.

The consumer class-action complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Google does that by making secret agreements with manufacturers that also require applications such as YouTube and Google Play store to occupy prime real estate on the devices' screens.

It argues device manufacturers enter such secret pacts with Google, called Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADA), because they know consumers expect to see a full suite of Google apps when they buy a device.

The suit does not argue that device manufacturers entered MADAs involuntarily, but that the market power of Google compels them to.

"Because consumers want access to Google's products, and due to Google's power in the U.S. market for general handheld search, Google has unrivaled market power over smartphone and tablet manufacturers," says the suit, brought by Gary Feitelson of Louisville, Kentucky, and Daniel McKee of Des Moines, Iowa.

Android devices would be cheaper if Google's rivals could compete for the same status on devices by paying device manufacturers for such positioning, the lawsuit argues.

The lawsuit includes two exhibits of MADAs, one with Samsung Electronics and the other with HTC, both dated as effective Jan. 1, 2011. Both documents were trial exhibits made public during litigation between Oracle and Google, the lawsuit says.

In an emailed statement, a Google spokesman said "Anyone can use Android without Google and anyone can use Google without Android. Since Androids introduction, greater competition in smartphones has given consumers more choices at lower prices."

The suit, which seeks class-action status, argues that the two consumers overpaid for both an HTC EVO 3D mobile phone and a Samsung Galaxy SIII device because of MADAs.

It also says the plaintiffs would have experienced better search options without such agreements. Consumers, the lawsuit contends, "do not know how to switch, nor will they go to the trouble of switching, the default search engine on their devices."

Google has faced scrutiny from regulators in the European Union and United States over how it promotes its own services.

In February, Google settled an antitrust case with the European Commission, agreeing to give greater visibility to search results of services that rival its own and make images associated with rival links more prominent.

In January 2013, Google resolved an antitrust complaint filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Google agreed to make some changes to how advertisers could manage their campaigns across competing platforms. It also agreed to refrain from misappropriating content from vertical services, such as shopping and travel, that compete with its own offerings.

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Australian customs seizes fake iPhones that deliver a shock

Australia's customs service seized on Thursday more than 6,000 weapons that arrived in the country from China, including a batch of fake iPhones that deliver electric shocks.

A photo published by the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service showed one of the devices with an instruction sheet describing it as the "iPhone 4 super ultra electronic thin riot."

A spokeswoman for the agency didn't have immediate information on whether police had tested the devices or where the items were intended to be sold.

The device looks similar to an older iPhone. Another photo published by customs showed the shocking mechanism on the top of the phone opposite the headphone jack.

The fake iPhones were among other weapons in the shipment, including brass knuckles, extendable batons and other shock devices, according to a press release.

A member of the public tipped off police in the state of Victoria to the shipment, which was then seized under a warrant by the customs agency. A 43-year-old man from Thomastown, Victoria—a suburb of Melbourne—was arrested.

The man could face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of AU$425,000 (US$394,000), the customs agency said.

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With ban lifted, Microsoft plans Xbox One launch in China

Microsoft is bringing its Xbox One to China this September after the nation recently ended a ban on foreign-made video game consoles.

Microsoft, which announced the move on Wednesday, is targeting a market with over a half billion gamers, according to the company.

In preparation, Microsoft has established a joint venture with Shanghai-based BesTV, a provider of Internet television services, to help develop its Xbox business.

So far, the company is the first foreign console maker to announce a launch for China. Government restrictions on the systems had kept Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo out of the market for 13 years.

But last September, China effectively lifted the ban, allowing foreign-funded companies located in a new trade zone in Shanghai to sell consoles nationwide.

On Wednesday, Microsoft called the Xbox's upcoming launch in China a "historic milestone" for the industry. But the company could still face some challenges in selling the system.

All Xbox games brought to China will still need to receive approval from local authorities before they can be sold. This could mean that more violent games won't arrive in the market.

Local Chinese companies, including ZTE, Huawei and TCL, are also releasing cheaper consoles for around $100 that can play Android games. In addition, many Chinese gamers are accustomed to playing on PCs at Internet cafes or on their smartphones.

But Microsoft's partner BesTV is confident the Xbox One can still sell well as a high-end gaming device.

In addition, Microsoft also wants local Chinese developers to build games for the console.

The Xbox already has some popularity in China. For years, local consumers have bought video game consoles from unofficial dealers at Chinese electronic markets. These grey market dealers specialize in buying consoles from Japan or Hong Kong, and then shipping them to China for sale.

In the case of Xbox 360, grey market dealers have been able to reconfigure the system to play pirated games, helping gamers save on costs.

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