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HDTV company Vizio is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to lower patent fees for digital TVs, claiming they are excessive, unregulated and costing consumers more than $1 billion and counting. “This is the great untold story of the transition to digital television,” said Amos Snead, spokesman for the Coalition to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transmission, or CUT FATT, which Vizio is backing. “Since 2007, American consumers have been paying more than 20 to 30 times what consumers in Europe and Japan pay in royalties for basically the same technologies.
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VIZIO, America's HDTV Company, announced its support of the Coalition to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transmission. VIZIO is petitioning and urging the FCC to take action and protect American consumers from excessive patent charges for DTV that have already exceeded $1 Billion. The coalition, also known as CUT FATT, was formed to protect American consumers purchasing televisions from the excessive unregulated patent fees, charged by companies claiming to own the patents needed to comply with FCC standards for digital televisions (DTV). "At VIZIO we support the American consumer, it is our duty to offer them more for their money, therefore we support the efforts of the CUT FATT coalition," said Laynie Newsome, VIZIO VP, Sales & Marketing Communications and Co-Founder. Formed in mid-2008, CUT FATT's mission is to raise awareness among Members of Congress and the FCC about the uncontrolled price gouging of these patent holders.
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Coupled together, these statements could be argued to exclude entire fields of computer science that focus on the design of algorithms independent of their application to specific data, such as cryptography, computer languages, compression, and database design, just to name a few. Finally, the exclusion of "public and private legal obligations" seems particularly shortsighted. All financial transactions and their constituent elements -- price, asset value, bid, offer, exercise price, etc. -- rest upon a framework that makes the transactions enforceable legal obligations. The court's statement here unnecessarily jeopardizes protection of legitimate innovation in fields such as ecommerce, financial engineering, and computational finance.
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Will 2009 finally be the year in which Europe starts to make real progress towards a Community patent and a unitary court system? Some think there is still hope, most of the rest of us are rather less optimistic. In the end, it seems, Europe is far more comfortable talking a good fight than fighting one. When it comes down to it, national self-interest will usually trump any initiative that may leave some national patent offices out of pocket and some countries feeling linguistically diminished. Things are not helped by a Commission that often seems to hold contradictory views on IP (although Commissioners are set t be replaced in June 2009). What could change things is if European leaders get the bit between their teeth, as the seemed to in 2007. With so many other things to worry about, however, you have to wonder whether there will be time for patents in 2009.
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The US patent system is sick for any rational person to see. It doesn't fulfill it's original purpose to protect small inventors. It is a shame that this model is trying to be foisted on the rest of the world through back-door dealings such as the ACTA trade agreement. Thank goodness the Europeans have been sensible enough to reject software patents so far (but it is a matter of time before the insatiable corporate interests get their way).
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For the third year running the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has ranked companies in different sectors to estimate the power that these companies have, based upon their patent portfolio. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft came top in the "Computer Software" category and IBM tops the "Computer Systems" chart.
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Microsoft views its future direction as one that’s centralised around software patents, probably with moneyflows that are based on “compensation” (welfare), not sales. As indication of it, watch this Google results page for the search phrase “cross licensing patents”. 6 out of 10 top results are about Microsoft. No kidding.
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Working as a NASA intern, grad student Erez Lieberman had a eureka moment, resulting in an algorithm that detects whether a person is standing correctly or is off balance. Unfortunately, MIT liked it so much they decided to patent it. Seeking permission to use his own idea for his iShoe startup, which develops products like insoles to address the problems of seniors, Lieberman was told no problem — as long as he promised a hefty royalty and forked over a $75,000 upfront payment. Whether or not students are aware of it, the NYTimes reports that most universities own inventions created by students that were developed using a 'significant' amount of schools resources.
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Change the Courts 2006: Consultation BSA-EICTA: central caselaw 2006: EPLA Remove National Courts Replace by Central Court / Central Caselaw “We must moreover continue to attempt to harmonise the practise of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions at the European level. This is to be attempted by a common European patent court system (EPLA) in which the member states can voluntarily participate. Thereby a unified procedure and legal certainty are achieved.” --German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology / Central Caselaw “Baumann added that the new court was not intended to \"codify software patents\", but it was hoped it would provide better intellectual property protection for inventions with embedded software, such as mobile phones and satellite navigation systems.” -- James Murray, IT Week
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We must moreover continue to attempt to harmonise the practise of granting patents for computer-implemented inventions at the European level. This is to be attempted by a common European patent court system (EPLA) in which the
member states can voluntarily participate. Thereby a unified procedure and legal certainty are achieved. --German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology / 2009 must be the year for the negotiations in Brussels a breakthrough in the creation of the Community patent and a European patent court --Brigitte Zypries, German Ministry of Justice
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Microsoft's patent application does acknowledge that a per-use model of computing would probably increase the cost of ownership over the PC's lifetime. The company argues in its application, however, that "the payments can be deferred and the user can extend the useful life of the computer beyond that of the one-time purchase machine".
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On Christmas Eve, South Korean game developer NCSoft received a lawsuit in its stocking from a Massachusetts firm that claims to hold an extremely broad patent for developing online virtual worlds. The legal complaint from Worlds.com alleges NCsoft infringed on its patent for a "system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." The lawsuit fingers nearly all of NCsoft's catalog of massive multiplayer games sold in the US, including City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa , Lineage, and Lineage II.
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On March 18th, a company called Cygnus Systems was granted a slightly dull-sounding patent for "System and Method for Iconic Software Environment Management." Now, the development's looking more significant, as Cygnus has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Microsoft, and Apple. [...] If necessary, Google, Microsoft, and Apple will surely fight all of this tooth and nail. Whether even a smallish effort is necessary remains to be seen, however, since examples of prior art are abundant.
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It has filed a lawsuit against Google over chrome, Apple over iPhone and Microsoft over Vista and Internet Explorer 8. Cygnus System said it had acquired exclusive patent for this, which was granted in March 2008. It has demanded 'reasonable royalty' from the three IT majors, as well has requested a court injunction for preventing any further violation on patent.
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The Ambassadors of the Year are high-profile figures who are committed to, and share, the aims of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. The Ambassadors lend their support to making the Year a success. The official EU ambassadors of the Year are: [...] * Esko Tapani Aho (FIN), statesman and former Prime Minister of Finland, author of report on innovation, Nokia's Head of Corporate Relations and Responsibility and Executive Vice-President * Karlheinz Brandenburg (DE), researcher in information and communication technology * Jean-Philippe Courtois (FR), President, Microsoft International
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The patent Modernization strengthens the patent in Germany sustainably. The trial can now proceed more quickly, the registration of patents will be simplified. Workers in the invention legal procedures will be modernized and unnecessary or inappropriate regulations repealed. The bill has the Federal Council on 28.11.2008 and is expected to happen from January 2009 to advise the German Bundestag. The German government will continue its commitment to a European patent system is strengthened, less cost, more cross-border legal certainty and quality ensures rights. Therefore, it must be 2009 for the negotiations in Brussels a breakthrough in the creation of the Community patent and a European patent court give.
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Suing the Software Giants: In 1998 three central-Indiana inventors filed for patent protection iconic software. The claims – finally issued in 2008 – cover a method of using icons that look like the content of the files they represent. The first named inventor – Greg Swartz – moved to Arizona and has recently filed an infringement complaint in that state. Defendants include Google (Chrome Browser), Microsoft (Vista), and Apple (iPhone). (U.S. Patent No. 7,346,850; ArsTechnica). The Niro firm is representing the patent holder – Cygnus Systems. An additional continuation is pending. The complaint can be found through Stanford's LexMachina Database.
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14 January 2009: One-day conference on the economic and legal issues in granting patents on abstract subject matter. Falk Auditorium, Brookings Institution, Washington from 9 to 5. Organised by Brookings, CCIA and Duke Law School. Details here. Admission FREE but rsvp to Gina Steinhauser.
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The tech giants in the Coalition for Patent Fairness are joined by a strange assortment of others, most notably prominent banks such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, HSBC North America, Capital One and others. The reason for what appears to be a strange assortment of collaborators is the fact that tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Apple and others are facing what they characterize as a huge patent troll problem, and this so-called patent troll problem comes disproportionately from business method patents and software patents. So it is easy to see why the banks and tech giants have formed an alliance to go after these types of patents that impact technology, communication and software. The Coalition for Patent Fairness is waging an all out assault on those that invent in the high-tech areas that will define the future of the US economy.
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Frontier Communications Corporation (NYSE:FTR) and Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P., headquartered in Los Angeles, announced today the settlement of patent litigation between the parties. As part of the settlement, Frontier Communications Corporation has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum for a nonexclusive license under a comprehensive portfolio of patents that Katz owns relating to interactive voice applications. The patents held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, L.P. cover a wide range of interactive technology including automated forms of: customer service, prescription refill services, securities trading, merchandising, prepaid services, telephone conferences, registration, home shopping, as well as functions involved in securing information from databases by telephone, interactive cable transactions, and various other uses of toll free and local numbers.
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