Microsoft has signed a cross-licensing deal with another major Android phone manufacturer, Samsung. That means Samsung will now be paying Microsoft royalties for each Android phone and tablet that uses those patents. This deal makes Samsung the seventh manufacturer to enter a licensing deal with Microsoft in just the past three months. Paired with HTC’s more »

Google shocked us all yesterday when it announced it was acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. We certainly didn’t see that coming, but we could have just as easily replaced Google with Microsoft. According to GigaOM, Microsoft had eyes for Motorola Mobility as well.

Unless you’re a patent holder it seems that nobody is particularly fond of the patent system in the US, especially not Google. Yestderay, David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Google posted to the Official Google Blog talking about the company’s issues with patents. The general idea of Drummond’s post is that more »

Following the International Trade Commission judgment that declared HTC is in violation of two patents belonging to Apple, HTC has decided fight the decision. HTC will appeal those claims in an effort to stop Apple from possibly asking for a ban of HTC Android smartphones in the United States.

Microsoft and Amazon have announced an agreement that would give the companies access to each other’s patents. The deal includes both the popular Kindle and Amazon’s use of Linux based servers, and Microsoft’s FAT, ClearType, and other technologies. “Microsoft’s patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the software industry, and this agreement demonstrates our more »

Tsera is suing 23 companies including both Apple and Microsoft over a patent regarding interfacing with a touchpad. In plain English, if a touchpad tries to make sense of your gesture-based input, Tsera may have the patent on that. The patent looks like it is broad enough to cover the scroll wheel of an iPod and the Zune’s touchpad. Tsera is suing Apple, Microsoft, Bang & Olufson, Philips, LG, and more. Will the collective might of their lawyers be able to get Tsera to go away? I would expect some kind of out of court settlement to put this matter to bed.

Patents are a big issue and there is a lot of money to be won if you can win your case. In today’s global money which company wouldn’t like to win a case against a competitor? Recently, Samsung submitted a complaint against Kodak over mobile phone camera technology.

Cameras in cell phones have become increasingly big, so a patent over this is not really a surprise. Samsung went to the U.S. International Trade Commission with the intention of blocking Kodak from importing digital cameras into the U.S. The reasoning? Samsung claims that they are violating a patent Samsung holds.

Well despite the fact that HD DVD is now a dead format, Toshiba is not yet willing to part with those patents. A recent report coming from the Economic Daily News, a Chinese-language newspaper is claiming that the Taiwan Information Storage Association’s (TISA) has contacted Toshiba in an effort to acquire the HD DVD patents. more »

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy. The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.” Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

$899 million euros or $1.4 billion is definitely a huge sum of money and it seems like Microsoft would not just want to lose that amount over an anti-trust ruling that the EU has slapped Microsoft in February 2007. The fine was a result of a case filed against Microsoft for failing to comply with a 2004 ruling. So, Microsoft is appealing the EU ruling and hoping against all hopes that the EU would heed its plea to overturn the ruling or at least reduce the fine.

If you recall, sometime in 2004, the EU slapped Microsoft with a $768 million fine after it failed to comply with an anti-trust ruling that ordered Microsoft to provide rival companies with data that would allow their servers to connect to the Windows platform which was the predominantly used operating systems in majority of the PCs in 2004. In return, Microsoft is allowed to charge reasonable royalties for giving rival companies access to its Windows Platform.