Apple has won against the HTC in a lawsuit where ITC has identified that HTC had infringed two of its patents. It was found to have infringed two of 10 Apple patents originally asserted in the case. However, HTC will “vigorously fight these two remaining patents through an appeal before the ITC commissioners who make the final decision,”

However, the point worth noting here is that this brings almost whole of android platform into trouble as Patents appear to be at the core of Android and are likely infringed by all Android devices.

The Patents:

The 2 patents are:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data” (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of “phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates” and the ability to perform “related actions with that data”; one example is that “the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user’s interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number”)
• U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data” (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent “relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications”)

Ground Reality

All of the patents are actually ridiculous. Where Open source encourages an innovative way, these patents are actually granted for ridiculously small and easy things in software engineering. e.g. If you see a phone number, automatic hyperlinking has a patent. Its ridiculous! Come on Apple.

But violating patent is a serious offense, at the end of the day either Google or all hardware OEMs will end up paying royalty to Apple for using their patented technology.

The whole software patent system needs to be rethought to suit modern world. Open Source projects like Linux and Android contribute a lot to world but actually endup being sued over stupid little patents of something that has been done before several times, unknowingly.

What happens Next

In worst-case there would be a import ban against many or even all Android-based HTC products in the U.S. market. Alternatively, HTC might have to remove certain functionality from its products, and that could result in a significant degradation of the quality of those devices.

Since those patents actually don’t relate to HTC’s own extensions of Android but to Android itself, they may affect all of the other makers of Android-based devices. Apple could soon be in a strong position to obtain import bans against dozens of device makers including Samsung, motorola, and all other big players of android.

Apple can grant HTC a license just like Microsoft did and let HTC pay royalty on every android phone they sell, but Apple might claim damages claim and ban imports.

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The real fight is ON between Apple and Google. No brand has left any chance and that is why we’ve seen a numerous number of lawsuits from a number of manufacturers/OEMs within last 2 years. Microsoft sues Motorola for Android, Apple sues HTC over android, gets sued by Nokia, which is counter-sued and bla bla.

Here is a demographic of Who is suing Whom in Telecom/Mobile Industry:

image credit: informationisbeautiful

Stay tuned for more  on Windows Phone, Android, iPhone, Programming and Tech news via @taranfx on Twitter or:

Apple claims that HTC has infringed 20 of its patents that it had acquired for iPhone.

Apple, as always, has not included Google in the suit, many of the named patents but in reality, most are related to operating system processes. Which brings a clear indication that Apple is targeting Android.

Before even HTC responds, Google has publically supported HTC in the case:

“We are not a party to this lawsuit,” said a Google spokesperson. “However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

So the question is Why HTC? The fact is HTC was the first manufacturer to leverage Google’s OS and the market leader in Android, and recently Google branded Nexus One. Others have said that Apple’s action may be an opening salvo against Google.

“I think this is kind of an indirect lawsuit against Google,” analyst Shaw Wu of Kaufman Brothers told Reuters. “Simply because Apple has focused on HTC now doesn’t mean it won’t take action against other manufacturers later”

Among the written disputes, apple highlights that “This case could have implications for all other phone manufacturers which have just announced their phones at Mobile World Congress.”

This means manufactures including Sony Ericcson, LG, Samsung and HTC could fall under the same umbrella.

Steve Jobs said: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. “We’ve decided to do something about it.”

The Lawsuit has been filed with the US ITC and a district court in Delaware. With this, Apple is seeking to effectively bar HTC from selling phones that use the disputed technology in the US.

Earlier, Nokia sued Apple for patent infringement in October 2009, alleging it had stolen patented technology. In response, Apple countersued in December 2009, followed by a second round of legal action from Nokia.

All this could have some serious implications on Google Android. I hope Google would back all OHA partners with solid justifications, else it’s hard to see a future for Android. Android is a great OS, may it live forever.

If you wish to see all the patents, here’s the List:

Patent #7,362,331: Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States
Patent #7,479,949: Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics
Patent #7,657,849: Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image
Patent #7,469,381: List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display
Patent #5,920,726: System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device
Patent #7,633,076: Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices
Patent #5,848,105: GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality
Patent #7,383,453: Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor
Patent #5,455,599: Object-Oriented Graphic System
Patent #6,424,354: Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods

Patent #5,481,721: Method for providing automatic and dynamic translation of object oriented programming language-based message passing into operation system message passing using proxy objects

Patents #5,519,867 and #6,275,983: Object Oriented Multitasking System and Object-Oriented Operating System
Patent #5,566,337: Method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system
Patent #5,929,852: Encapsulated network entity reference of a network component system
Patent 5,946,647: System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data
Patent #5,969,705: Message protocol for controlling a user interface from an inactive application program
Patent #6,343,263: Real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data
Patent #5,915,131: Method and apparatus for handling I/O requests utilizing separate programming interfaces to access separate I/O service
Patent #RE39,486: Extensible, replaceable network component system

[via BBC, all Patents via Google Patents]

We write about Latest in tech: Android, iPhone, Tablets, Gadgets, Open Source, Programming. Grab them @taranfx or below:

The story doesn’t stop there, Psystar is also denied from providing any tools that enable users to bypass the OS X kernel encryption, and / or intentionally aiding anyone else from infringing Apple‘s OS X copyrights in any way. We were expecting that, but date was unknown.

The only open questions were whether the court would include Snow Leopard and Psytar’s Rebel EFI software in the ban, since the lawsuit was specifically about Leopard and Rebel EFI wasn’t the subject of any proceedings. Seems like everything has favored Apple

Psystar has few days left (till December 31st) to comply

“Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance; thus, if compliance can be achieved within one hour after this order is filed, defendant shall reasonably see it done.”

Psystar can still appeal, obviously, but it’s already got its own hefty legal bills and a $2.67m fine to pay to Apple. There’s no hope now.

For Hackintoshers: As Rebel EFI dies, our Snow Leopard guide that leveraged it, dies! But other guides found here still hold good.

Today, Apple decided to respond back with strong statements. They have filed counterclaim the U.S. District Court of Delaware, Apple  denies infringement and stresses that Nokia attempted to copy the iPhone and infringed 13 Apple patents in the process.

The key takeaway on the counter fight was:

“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s SVP.

Apple’s counterclaim makes thing more clear:

In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone a ground-breaking device that allowed users access to the functionality of the already popular iPod on a revolutionary mobile phone and Internet device. The iPhone is a converged device that allows users to access and ever expanding set of software features to take and send pictures, play music, play games do research, serve as a GPS device and much more…The iPhone platform has caused a revolutionary change in the mobile phone category.

In contrast, Nokia made a different business decision and remained focused on traditional mobile wireless handsets with conventional user interfaces. As a result, Nokia has rapidly lost share in the market for high-end mobile phones. Nokia has admitted that, as a result of the iPhone launch, “the market changed suddenly and [Nokia was] not fast enough changing with it.

In response, Nokia chose to copy the iPhone, especially its enormously popular and patented design and user interface….

As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia’s GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia’s new offerings to the already released iPhone: “if there is something good in the world, we copy with pride.” [proof] True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple’s iPhone ideas as well as Apple’s basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia’s purported standards essential patent. Apple seeks redress for this behavior.

[via allthingsd ]

In the begining, Psystar played a trick and before Apple could file a case against them, they throwed the ball in Apple’s court by suing them with a Lawsuit which claimed: “Apple’s terms violate U.S. monopoly laws”.

Psystar believes Apple’s terms violate U.S. monopoly laws. “What if Microsoft said you could only install Windows on Dell computers?” said a Psystar employee. Apple grossly overcharges for the hardware on which its operating systems, including Leopard, come preinstalled. “They’re charging an 80% markup on hardware. What if Honda said that, after you buy their car, you could only drive it on the roads they said you could?”

Mac-Clone Psystar loses Heavily to Apple

In reply to it, Apple fired the first shot in the long-running case by suing Psystar in July 2008, accusing it of violating its copyright and software license. Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave Apple a huge win when he ruled that Psystar had violated Apple’s copyright as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when it installed Apple’s operating system on its Intel-based computers.

“This case is a transparent attempt by Psystar Corp. to relitigate the same issues that Psystar and Apple have been contesting before the Honorable William Alsup on the Northern District of California for almost a year and a half,” Apple argued in its motion for dismissal, which was filed with Hoeveler on Nov. 24.

Last week, Apple also asked Alsup to shut down Psystar’s Mac clone business and make the Florida firm pay $2.1 million in damages. Alsup has not yet ruled on that motion.

Apple also said that the technology it uses to lock Snow Leopard to its own hardware was the same as that used to tie Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to Macs. Alsup said that Psystar illegally circumvented that technology in Leopard in order to install the operating system, which was replaced by Snow Leopard three months ago.

“There is no reason why these legal determinations [by Alsup] should be revisited in another court, and Psystar should not be permitted to seize upon Apple’s release of a new version of Mac OS X as an opportunity to forum shop,” Apple said in its motion.

Apple asked Hoeveler to dismiss Psystar’s Florida complaint, which Psystar could then refile with Alsup’s California court, or to transfer the case to Alsup.

In September, Alsup denied Apple’s motion to stop the Florida case, and took the opportunity to chide Apple over the timing of Snow Leopard’s release.

“The true purpose behind Psystar’s attempt to move the parties’ dispute to Florida is to forum shop and to buy Psystar more time to continue its ongoing acts of infringement. Given the seriousness of Psystar’s continuing unlawful conduct, it is essential for Apple to stop that from happening and obtain a final, fast and comprehensive resolution of all of the parties’ claims. The Northern District of California is best positioned to provide that determination.”

The next one,  California case, is scheduled for trial in Jan 2010. On Dec. 14, however, Alsup will hear oral arguments on Apple’s request for an injunction that would halt Psystar’s Mac clone sales.

Apple has huge investments in it’s Mac division, no matter they seem to have a monoply at this, they are bound to win, as they always have.

Today is an important day in the history of Mininova. From now on, we are limiting Mininova.org to our Content Distribution service. By doing so, we comply with the ruling of the Court of Utrecht of last August. Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service.

The Lawsuits had been going worldwide to hunt Pirates down.  Mininova had been warned by the Court and seems like they accepted the defeat for the good of the industry.

PirateBay, the leader of all pirates, has been able to survive all attempts for shutdown. PirateBay, proved that Pirates are more powerful than a government can reach-out to. Recently, they stopped their Torrent trackers and encourage the use of DHT which make them more anonymous and almost impossible to stop.

They’re best known for frequently getting into legal hot water with Apple over everything from trademarks to copyrights to selling Apple’s OS X operating on non-Apple computers. Apple just took Psystar back to basics on that last issue, winning summary judgment in a California court on copyright violations and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Violations.

How to Install Snow Leopard on PC Dual Boot or Install Mac OS X Leopard on PC [OSx86] or Install Snow Leopard on PC [Rebel EFI]

The exact story: Psystar bought one copy of OS X and loaded it onto a Mac Mini. They then transferred it from the Mini to a non-Apple computer, where they modified the kernel so it would run on the computers they sell. Psystar argued that they were allowed to sell their (legally-purchased) copy of OS X, but, Unfortunately, the court recognized that the copies made from the Mini and the second, non-Apple machine weren’t made legally. Advantage goes to Apple.

Judgment in Apple’s favor means Psystar will likely have to pay damages at minimum. This could easily sink them to negative numbers. What do you learn from this ? Don’t mess around with licensing agreements, especially Apple’s.

[via groklaw]

The moment of joy was expressed by AMD CEO Dirk Meyer. He  said the settlement leads both companies will bring a  “new era”  in the chip industry.

The two companies also sealed a five-year cross license deal and said they would give up any claims of breach from their previous license agreement.

“While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development,” AMD and Intel said in a joint statement.

Under the terms of the settlement, Intel will pay AMD $1.25 billion. Also:

• AMD and Intel both get patent rights in a cross-licensing pact;
• Intel will give up any patent claims against AMD;
• Intel will agree to adhere to business practice provisions;
• And AMD drops all pending litigation against Intel.

Today marks the beginning of a new era… one that confirms that the game has changed for AMD. It is an important milestone for us, for our customers, our partners, and most important – for consumers and businesses worldwide. In addition, it represents the culmination many years of litigation and regulatory engagement. And we are optimistic that it will usher a new era for our industry.

We look forward to healthy competition with the mutual respect one would expect between world-class competitors.

It remains to be seen if this settlement marks a new chip era, but the “healthy competition” Meyer refers to will determine AMD’s fate.

Shares of AMD jumped 23 per cent to $6.55 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon. Intel shares were halted. Intel now expects spending in the quarter to be $4.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion.

So the “new Era” is about to begin where chip manufacturers respect the competition? What do you think?

Subscribe to Twitter updates, or RSS, join Facebook fanpage for more Snow Leopard, iPhone updates.

People are not convinced with what Microsoft does. A group of Linux players will purchase patents formerly held by Microsoft in an effort to defend distributors of the open-source OS against the ongoing threat of patent litigation from the software giant, this tuesday.

The group is called Open Invention Network (OIN). The Group includes members like IBM, Red Hat, Sony, NEC, Novell and Phillips. OIN plans to buy set of 22 patents once held by Microsoft from Allied Security Trust, (AST). Why? These patents are said to pertain to technologies found in Linux.

AST is a company established to help purchase of patents to protect interested parties from patent litigation. Its members include HP, IBM and Verizon.

OIN is expected to release a statement and more details about the purchase Tuesday afternoon

Facts

Microsoft has been quietly striking deals with companies that distribute Linux or components of it to license technology in the OS for which Microsoft claims to hold patents. Microsoft executives have said that Linux violates more than 235 patents the company holds. Though open-source proponents have disagreed on the number.

Microsoft usually strikes patent deals with companies before bringing cases to court, but a case earlier this year against GPS navigation device vendor TomTom, which uses Linux in its devices, was a notable exception. TomTom eventually agreed to pay Microsoft to settle the case, which Microsoft insisted was a mere patent disagreement rather than an attack against Linux.

“If they get access to these [patents] they would then go about suing, which creates a perceptual issue around Linux that’s highly inaccurate. It represents a potential source of antagonism and source of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) for the community.”

Not all Linux and open-source proponents felt the same way about it, however, though most open-source companies — which are much smaller players than Microsoft — would rather pay the proprietary software company to protect themselves against litigation than try to fight its deep pockets in court.

“With the current patent system in place, it is to be expected that various parties with competing interests will continue to acquire patents and patent portfolios for defensive purposes, if nothing else,” said Stephen O’Grady, an analyst with Red Monk.

However, if the group is going through the trouble to acquire them, experts say,  presumably they at least believe they will be useful to Linux, either offensively or defensively.

source: Osnews, Computerworld

We know that it’s hard to get PirateBay down, or rather it’s impossible.

Now, just because the board has approved the purchase doesn’t mean that it will happen that easily. There continue to be questions about the company’s ability to raise money to complete the deal, and the Swedish government is investigating the company.

So does this change anything? Theoretically, maybe, but in reality, the Pirate Bay as it was once known is still gone, if it does come back it won’t be the same service, and users have already migrated out to other BitTorrent sites for their file sharing needs. What’s next?

PirateBay Clone Threatened with LegaAction

Mininova, possibly the world’s largest torrent listing site, started in early 2005 after the entertainment cartels-initiated demise of the famed Suprnova.org, yesterday chalked up another milestone.

It had already reached three billion torrent downloads and now, “Torrent number 1,000,000 was uploaded yesterday by an anonymous user,” says Torrentfreak, going on;

“Unfortunately, the memorable torrent has no seeds, which makes it likely that it won’t be around much longer.”

Anyway, this time, the lawsuit focussed on Mininova, a bitorrent search engine similar to The Pirate Bay. Like The Pirate Bay case, this one was also started by BREIN, the Dutch variant of the RIAA/MPAA, and again, just like the previous suite, BREIN won. However, it’s easy to misread the actual verdict.

The judge in the case actually makes it quite clear that Mininova itself is not doing anything illegal, that it’s not breaking the law. The judge sentenced Mininova not because it is performing an illegal act, but because Mininova is not doing enough to stop the illegal act. Since downloading copyrighted content in The Netherlands is legal, said ‘illegal act’ is not downloading, but uploading.

More specifically, the judge said that Mininova made it possible for people to breach Dutch copyright law, Mininova promoted these acts, and profited from these acts. Currently, Mininova employs the “Notice and Take Down-procedure”, in which rightsholders can contact Mininova so that they can then remove offending content. This procedure is not enough, the court states.

The verdict, therefore, reads that Mininova must remove all offending torrents from their website, and from here on out, they must actively prevent such torrents from being uploaded to the website. The fine for not complying within three months of this verdict is as follows: Mininova will have to pay 1000 EUR per offending torrent to BREIN, with a maximum of 5000000 EUR.

Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer isn’t particularly pleased with the verdict, obviously. “We are obviously not happy with the verdict,” he said in a statement. Mininova will most likely appeal the decision, for which they have three months’ time.

“The court believes it’s generally known that commercially made films, games, music and TV series are copyrighted and that these works are only copyright-free in exceptional cases,” it ruled.

Mininova said it was mulling an appeal.

“We are obviously not satisfied with this ruling,” said Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer.

“The result of this ruling for Mininova is that we have to re-evaluate our business operations. At this time, we cannot determine what this will actually entail or imply. We will have to examine the verdict thoroughly first.”

You’re fighting the tides, and sooner or later you’ll have to face the new reality of the modern, 21st century entertainment industry. While it may not seem so today, it is still the case that laws should exist to serve the people – not the other way around.

Elsewhere in the land of the freeloaders, The Pirate Bay sale – which has faced fierce opposition and accusations of insider trading since the Global Gaming Factory first stepped in to buy the BitTorrent tracker earlier this summer – is meant to complete tomorrow.

Google translation For Mininova verdict from Dutch to English is here.

After the years of Lawsuits held against the Piracy Giant, today Swedish district court has ordered the Internet service provider(ISP) that used to power PirateBay, to stop servicing The Pirate Bay immediately or the ISP could face heavy fines of 500,000 Kroner ($70,600 US) a day. The Pirate Bay’s ISP had no choice but to comply and disconnect the website from the Internet.

If you are Torrent fan, no doubt you love PirateBay. It’s indeed a sad day in the history of P2P and File-sharing. The most popular BitTorrent tracker in the world appeared to be inaccessible to many in the U.S. on Monday morning but the blog TorrentFreak reported that the site had found a new connection to the Web and there were reports from readers that they were able to log on to the site. Citing a source close to The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak said that the tracker was still down but would be back up on Tuesday.

The take down of The Pirate Bay comes 3 days earlier than expected, as the site was going offline on August 27 or legalize the site before then, which was unlikely to happen. Black Internet, The Pirate Bay’s largest bandwidth supplier is not the only connection to the Internet the website has, technically the website could go back online until other ISP’s are sent cease and desist orders.

“This is absolutely ridiculous. The Court seems to consider themselves above the Constitution”, said the leader of The Pirate Party, Rich Falkvinge.

As one of the world’s largest torrent trackers goes offline, dozens more will surface in its place. The Pirate Bay had over 25 million unique peers and 3.6 million registered users downloading from its website.

The future of The Pirate Bay is uncertain as the owners will face one year in prison and a fine of $2.4 million US.

A Mysterious Update: A Pirate Bay insider has told sources they have “got a new connection to the net” for their website. The owners of the website were prepared for take down actions such as today’s and have secured another Internet connection for the website, with minimal down time. The Pirate Bay should return by tomorrow morning for almost all users.

The Pirate Bay team added this, “The MAFIAA has spent millions of dollars and endless amounts of time to get this ban in order. Our guess is that they also bribed a bit to get it since it violates so many laws not only in Sweden but also in the EU, not to mention violations against human rights. And what do they have to show for it? 3 hours of partial downtime.”

An executive with Black Internet told Swedish newspaper SvD that the court informed the company that it would either shut off The Pirate Bay or face penalties. The founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright violations last April.

The executive told the newspaper that Black Internet is not the only ISP servicing The Pirate Bay but is probably the largest. He said none of the other ISPs were affected by the decision. He added that the company is considering options.

It’s unclear how long Black Internet will be forced to stop service for The Pirate Bay. The company may not be able to resume service until the appeal filed by The Pirate Bay founders is settled, SvD reported.

The news comes on the heels of a victory for the founders of The Pirate Bay.

Sweden’s government run debt-collection agency, commonly referred to as the bailiff, said it could find no attachable assets belonging to three of the four founders of the site. A group of media companies had asked the bailiff to collect the $4 million a court had awarded them after finding the four Pirate Bay founders guilty of copyright violations.

At this point, the future of the site, at least in name, appears to rest with the software maker Global Gaming Factory X, the software maker and operator of Internet cafes. The company said in June it would pay $8 million to acquire The Pirate Bay and the deal is supposed to close on Thursday. But Swedish regulators halted trading in Global Gaming on Friday over questions about the company’s financial readiness to complete the transaction.

At the very least, the launch of a new Pirate Bay, one with authorized film and music copies, is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

But there is a good news for Pirates and Bad news for Authorities -

PirateBay backup exists - Several Terabytes of Torrent tracker data – and It’s not hard to bring it up again. It could be up anytime soon. As per Torrentfreek.com -

The Piratebay moved their servers to the Netherlands and is (almost) fully functional. They changed the title of the BitTorrent tracker to “The Police Bay”.

Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas recently proved that Microsoft had impinged on a patent of i4i covering,

“A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations.”

In addition, the judge issued a ban that “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.” The ban goes into effect on October 12.

It’s a clear example of a patent that should never have been issued because the technology it describes is far too broad, and covers far too much ground. No matter what you think about Microsoft, it’s bad for the development of technology.

InformationWeek reports that two other companies have crawled out of the woodwork to sue Microsoft, sensing that they’ve got a judge on their side. The newspaper reports that:

“Allvoice Developments US, a provider of speech recognition systems, and mobile software developer EMG Technology both filed suits against Microsoft in recent days in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, where judge Leonard Davis a week ago ruled in favor of Toronto-based i4i in its action against Microsoft.

“llvoice claims that speech recognition support built into Windows XP and Windows Vista violates its patent on the technology. Allvoice also alleges that Microsoft discussed using its technology in Windows but later rejected it. Allvoice is seeking unspecified damages against Microsoft.

“EMG, meanwhile, contends that Microsoft’s Windows CE, PocketPC, and Windows Mobile products infringe its patent for viewing Web content on a mobile device. EMG also lists investment broker Scottrade and Southwest Airlines in its complaint.”

The newspaper also reports that a 2006 article in the New York Times found that the town where the suits are being filed has become known as the nation’s patent lawsuit capital. According to the Times:

“Marshall, Tex., population 25,000, is arguably the patent lawsuit capital of the nation, where plaintiffs know they are more likely to get a favorable judgment. The odds against defendants are so daunting that many settle before ever setting foot in Marshall.”

Texas has already exported more than its share of woes to the rest of the United States. With its friendliness to patent trolls, it’s continuing in that grand tradition.

Are all companies ready to click and sue Microsoft?

TechRadium has sued Twitter for patent infringement.

The company says it didn’t care about Twitter when it was watching the tweets of generic social media like Celebs, musicians, politicians and news outlets. But then TechRadium began seeing promotional materials and news accounts of companies, school districts and local governments using, or considering adopting, the microblogging service as their emergency notification system – muscling into TechRadium’s wheelhouse.

“Honestly, that’s what got us the attention of Twitter,” said Shawn Staples, TechRadium’s attorney. “We don’t really give a damn about social networking. TechRadium is concerned that it developed these patents by extending a lot of time and money and is protecting its market.”

Now the lawsuit, filed August 5 in a Texas federal court, could become a financial thorn in Twitter’s side that endangers killing it. Heavily venture-funded, the free 3year-old microblogging service is working to find a business model.

Here is the Patent from TechRadium -

Patent law is complex, and legal experts interviewed by Threat Level declined to predict the outcome of the lawsuit, but they agreed it’s not a frivolous claim. TechRadium appears to have some legal legs to stand on in the nation’s first lawsuit attacking Twitter’s tweeting protocol.

In fact, TechRadium has already used its patents to win a licensing agreement in a separate infringement case.

That case, also in Texas, targeted rival mass-notification company Blackboard of California. The lawsuit was dropped after Blackboard agreed to license the same three patents (.pdf) at issue in the Twitter case.

Blackboard at first claimed that the patents, dating to 2006, were invalid. But Blackboard did not produce evidence of “prior art,” or demonstrate that the patents were obvious. Now, experts say, the Blackboard settlement bolsters TechRadium’s case against Twitter. (.pdf)

“That settlement becomes evidence of some weight of the non-obviousness of the patent,” said Jordan Sigale, a patent attorney and partner with Loeb & Loeb in Chicago.

Blackboard’s general counsel, Matthew Small, confirmed that the company licensed TechRadium’s patents as part of a June out-of-court settlement. He added that TechRadium also licensed a patent (.pdf) from Blackboard. “We cross-licensed one another,” he said.

Because of a confidentiality agreement, terms were not disclosed. The case was settled in the Eastern District of Texas, a patent-friendly court and magnet for patent infringement cases.

That said, patent attorneys caution that, sometimes, patents become invalidated, even after their owners have received licensing fees from them. So even with the licensing agreement with Blackboard, TechRadium’s patents could still be attacked. And it’s unsettled whether they even apply to Twitter.

The stakes are high, not just for Twitter, but for its vast and growing user base.

Twitter Today

Twitter has about 20 million users, and to true fans, a world without the 140-character microblogging service is akin to a world without oxygen. And while Twitter may not be making money, it has given rise to a cottage industry around it — from URL shorteners and makers of background skins, to iPhone apps that can feed a Twitter junkie’s habit on the go. This fledgling industry piggybacks on Twitter’s allegedly infringing protocol.

Twitter did not respond to repeated e-mail and phone messages for comment. It must respond to TechRadium’s complaint by month’s end.

Patent attorney Sigale says he thinks TechRadium isn’t seeking to put the unprofitable Twitter out of business. He said the lawsuit amounts to “asking for a license agreement.”

Win or lose, Twitter has an expensive legal battle ahead of it. But its popularity could give it an edge that Blackboard didn’t have; the company has already obtained some free, outside counsel of sorts. Two weeks ago, Article One Partners of New York, an online community of lawyers, scholars, scientists and others, began scouring for evidence that TechRadium’s intellectual property was not as unique as the Sugar Land, Texas company claims.

Cheryl Milone, Article One’s chief executive, said its community has forwarded more than 100 submissions in the study’s first week alone — all in an effort to debunk the patents. The submissions have yet to be reviewed.

“We select studies that we think will be of interest to our community,” Milone said. “Because we are a crowd-sourcing community, there’s a clear synergy between the Article One community and the Twitter community,”.

TechRadium’s patents concern its emergency notification system IRIS, the Immediate Response Information System, which has dozens of paying clients. The system, TechRadium clams, “simultaneously delivers uniform, reliable and verifiable emergency messages to an unlimited number of contacts within seconds, across all means and devices of communication.”

Its customers include the military, schools, utilities and local governments. Among them are the U.S. Army,  Littleton Police Department, QWest Communications, Lincoln University, San Antonio School District, American Red Cross, United Way and others.

Twitter breaches the patents, according to TechRadium, because Twitter’s messaging system also is carried across various “means and devices of communication” – including texting, websites, cellphones and RSS feeds.

At first glance, the similarities between IRIS and Twitter are clear:

They each allow a messenger to send a single message to a select group via multiple technological platforms. But that also seems like a ridiculously obvious use of modern technology. Apparently it was novel when TechRadium began applying for its patents ahead of its first one granted in 2006 — novel enough for patent examiners, anyway.

Some of the specific claims in TechRadium’s patents are less Twitter-like. According to TechRadium’s patents, message recipients prioritize where their messages should be sent, so an alert might first be sent as a mobile text message, and then, if unacknowledged, transmitted in a voice phone call.

The patents also describe the chosen device sending a response back automatically to the sender to confirm that a message was received.

None of that squarely applies to Twitter.

“That’s going to be a big deal as to whether or not there’s infringement,” Sigale said. “Who’s side would I rather have here? Boy. I think there’s arguments to be made on both sides.”

Staples, TechRadium’s lawyer, countered that the company must prove that one of the elements in its patents apply to Twitter.

“Every claim in a patent stands on its own. To infringe the patent, you only have to infringe one claim.”

George Borkowski, chairman of the intellectual property practice at Venable LLP in Los Angeles, suspects TechRadium has plenty of other litigation targets in its sights.

That’s because mass-notification companies now number in the dozens. Their ranks began increasing in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, which left the student gunman and 32 others dead in 2007.

“It’s part of the patent-enforcement strategy: You see who is possibly infringing and you make a list of people to go after,” Borkowski said. “I’m sure they’ve made an assessment.”

Staples, when asked if more companies are likely to fall into TechRadium’s legal crosshair, replied: “I think there are some out there.”

source: wired