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Patent Lawsuits Galore

Posted by kdawson on from the becoming-a-typical-monday dept.

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.

5 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Palm together with every PDA out there by klingens · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why are they suing now, when Palm had devices with touchscreen keyboards only 11 years now. However they kinda hit the right company at least: the Apple Newton was before Palm and had a on screen keyboard on its touchscreen too. Too bad for the patent troll the Newton lived (and died) even before the patent was filed in 2000.

    1. Re:Palm together with every PDA out there by sam1am · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Has SP technologies even tried out an iPhone? Their claim is for an immutable keyboard. I can make the keyboard on an iPhone disappear quite easily...

  2. Great by JamesRose · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Another great call for slashdot

    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. another judge overruled the jury, doesn't democracy give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

    If you keep bailing out the patent system by having judges rescue the companies with the power you are gonna get stupid hypocrites like Apple's recent statement that the system is fine and no one will change it.

  3. It's up to you, unless I don't agree by Joebert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What the hell's the point of a Jury verdict if the Judge can just throw it out ?

    --
    Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
  4. morse code by apodyopsis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    slightly off topic, I apologize.

    ..but does anybody know what happened to the "morse code" mobile texting input people were discussing a few years ago? after all it is well proven that morse code is a lot faster then texting.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4

    ..and on topic I know there are some patents in this area..

    http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/12/nokia-files-pat ent-for-morse-code-generating-cellphone/