Patent Lawsuits Galore

eldavojohn writes "Guess who owns the patent on the touch-screen keyboard. Not Apple — SP Technologies has filed a suit based on just that. Ars brings out the intriguing detail that the founder of the patent troll company is serving prison time for health-care fraud." Read on for four more patent developments in the day's news.
Today the news broke that Aloft is suing Microsoft and Adobe for deliberately violating the patent entitled 'Network Browser Window with Adjacent Identifier Selector.' Qualcomm had a bad day as the US Trade Representative advised the President not to intervene in the patent beef it is losing against Broadcom. Today we found out Sharp is suing Samsung for an LCD infringement. Ending an eventful day on a note of sanity, a judge today threw out the jury verdict on Alcatel-Lucent vs. Microsoft and Microsoft no longer has to pony up $1.5 billion.

Comments

Re:Apple should be happy.

[gnasher719]

'' Apple should be rejoicing, since they claim that the patent system is running perfectly. ''

Just shows that you didn't read properly. In that recent discussion, Google said that the patent system itself is broken. Apple said the patent system is fine, the related litigation system is broken. And clearly it is.

The other example mentioned was Microsoft being ordered to pay $1.5bn over two MP3 related patents. We all know that MP3 is covered by a few hundred patents, and Microsoft paid a few million for a license for all those patents, so one or two patents they missed could never be worth $1.5bn.

Re:Apple should be happy.

[Goffee71]

And, funnily enough, the Judge in the MS case has just overturned the original decision. Leaving Alcatel hopping mad at the whole patent madness http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6934363.stm?

SP Tech's patent

[Al_Lapalme]

For those who haven't bothered reading the SP tech. patent on touchscreen keyboards - it's basically an "improvement" on existing touchscreen keyboards. The "improvement" is that the keyboard is not resizable, movable, minimizable, etc. It appears on the screen in one location and cannot be removed or hidden (until it is no longer needed, at which point it could disappear). The patent includes sample Visual Basic code - also absolutely horrible!! Read on for brief entertainment. 1. choose patent at random 2. remove some functionality 3. patent "improvement" 4. sue 5. Profit?? Shit.. that didn't work.

Re:Not "the" but one of many "a"s

[yfarren]

Ok. I don't mean to sound snarky. But, a simple web browser is not prior art for the patent 7,117,443. Now, you refer to the title of the patent. A title, will, most of the time, be more general than the specifics that are claimed by the patent. When you start talking about the specific monopoly rights claimed by the patent, and what you need to find prior art for, to invalidate the patent, you need to look at the claims.

In general, the claims of a patent are structured with 1-4 (although sometimes many more) primary (independent) claims, identifiable (usually) by the phrase "What is claimed is a method..." or "what is claimed is an apparatus" or a description of the apparatus. Then there are subordinate (dependent) claims. Those are characterized by the phrase "the method of claim x" or "the apparatus of claim x" or a description of a method or apparatus of claim x, where x is the number of some claim.

The Independent claims are ussually worded to be as broad as possible, to cover as much IP space as possible. Then, the dependent claims get more and more specific. To find prior art for a patent, is essentially, to invalidate the claims of the patent.

Invalidating a claim, by prior art, means you have to find something which has, or some description of something which has, all the elements of that claim. If something has MOST of the elements of the claim, or something has some of the elements of that claim, or 2 things have all of the elements of the claim, but neither alone has all the elements of the claim, then you haven't invalidated the claim, by prior art (if you find 2 things which independently have all the elements of a claim, you may be able to argue obviousness, but that is an uphill battle once the patent has been issued. Not unwinnable, just harder.).

Now, in the case of patent 7,117,443, lets look at the first independent claim:

A graphical user interface for use in association with a network browser, comprising: a network browser window associated with a network browser for displaying Internet content associated with uniform resource locators (URLs) during network browsing; a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed; wherein a user is allowed to pre-select one of the identifiers which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs; wherein, after the pre-selection, selected content associated with at least one of the URLs displayed during use of the network browser is correlated with the pre-selected identifier in a manner that is dependent on a selection of the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs, and stored; wherein the user is allowed to manually enter the pre-selected identifier which is non-inclusive of any portion of the URLs.

So, what are the elements of this claim?
1. A gui to be used in network browsing that has:
a. A window for displaying network content associated with a URL (so far, just a web-browser)
b.a plurality of identifiers adjacent to the window in which the content is displayed
(one or more identifired, NEXT to the web browser) these identifiers allowing the user to:
i. select the identifier, and change the information in the browser in some manner, based on which identifier was chosen

now, why is this identifier interesteting, and what value is added (what is the USEFULNESS of the added identifier and its associated functionality?) does the identifier give, and how does that identifier, and pre-selecting it, thereby altering the content of the web browser in some manner prove useful? I don't really know I haven't bothered to read the whole patent. But a simple web browser doesn't have the added functionality of the pre-selectable, url independent identifiers which alter the presentation. So a simple web browser is NOT prior art.

Now, to invalidate the patent completely, you would have to go through all t

Re:It's up to you, unless I don't agree

[Torodung]

The idea behind a jury trial is that you are tried by a jury of your peers. The problem with the current implementation of the system is that you are actually tried by a load of random, often uninformed, people. In cases hinged on domain-specific information, there should be an understanding that your peers must be people who understand the subject matter. That's an interesting thought, but the Bill of Rights only mentions a "jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." "Peers" is the traditional paraphrase of that, but it really only refers to people who are geographically near you. The Constitution says nothing of "competent jurors," or "equals," which is what you seem to wish (me too!).

The basic (and antiquated) concept is that you should be judged by people who know you, which is about the exact opposite of what modern voir dire jury selections produce. A "jury of peers," as I read the intent, is pretty much dead law. You now get a bunch of folks from your rough geographic area (if no venue games are being played!), which meets the letter, but not the intent, IHMO.

I think expert juries make a lot of sense too, especially in civil cases, and especially one's that would have power to instruct the judge when the judge was not himself a competent expert, but that would require new law. It might require a new system altogether, in fact.

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Toro