Bodhammer shares a report from Popular Mechanics: The U.S. Navy has jumped into the game by filing a patent for a compact fusion reactor, according to exclusive reporting by The War Zone. The success of the device, developed by researcher Salvatore Cezar Pais of the Naval Air Warfare Center -- Aircraft Division, relies on a part called a dynamic fusor. According to the patent, Pais' plasma chamber contains several pairs of these dynamic fusors, which rapidly spin and vibrate within the chamber in order to create a "concentrated magnetic energy flux" that can squish the gases together.

Coated with an electrical charge, the cone-shaped fusors pump fuel gases like Deuterium or Deuterium-Xenon into the chamber, which are then put under intense heat and pressure to create the nuclei-fusing reaction. Current technology at reactors around the world use superconductors to create a magnetic field. The War Zone reports that the device could potentially produce more than a terawatt of energy while only taking in power in the kilowatt to megawatt range.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a bid by the University of Wisconsin's patent licensing arm to reinstate its legal victory against Apple in a fight over computer processor technology that the school claimed the company used without permission in certain iPhones and iPads. From a report: The justices, on the first day of their new term, declined to review a lower court's 2018 decision to throw out the $506 million in damages that Apple was ordered to pay after a jury in 2015 decided the company infringed the university's patent. The licensing body, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), filed suit in 2014, alleging infringement of a 1998 patent on a "predictor circuit" to help speed the way processors carry out computer program instructions. The patent was developed by computer science professor Gurindar Sohi and three of his students at the university, located in Madison, Wisconsin. WARF, which helps patent and commercialize the university's inventions, claimed that Apple incorporated the technology in its A7, A8 and A8X processors, found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad tablet. Apple disputed the claims, saying its processor worked differently based on the specific language spelled out in WARF's patent.

AmiMoJo quotes ZDNet: Semiconductor manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd (TSMC) has filed multiple lawsuits against its competitor GlobalFoundries, saying the US company allegedly infringed upon 25 patents related to its node processes. TSMC said on Monday that the lawsuits are seeking injunctions to stop GlobalFoundries from manufacturing and selling semiconductor products that allegedly infringe upon the patents in question...

The 25 TSMC patents in the complaints relate to technologies such as FinFET designs, shallow trench isolation techniques, double patterning methods, advanced seal rings and gate structures, and innovative contact etch stop layer designs, TSMC said. These technologies are used to create TSMC's 40nm, 28nm, 22nm, 14nm, and 12nm node processes.

JustAnotherOldGuy quotes ItsFOSS: The GNOME Foundation is facing a lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, LLC. Rothschild allege that Shotwell, a free and open source personal photo manager infringes its patent.

Neil McGovern, Executive Director for the GNOME Foundation says "We have retained legal counsel and intend to vigorously defend against this baseless suit. Due to the ongoing litigation, we unfortunately cannot make any further comments at this time."

While Neil cannot make any further comments on this issue, let me throw some lights on this matter. The patent in the question deals with wireless image distribution. The patent is ridiculous because it could mean any software that transfers images from one device to another could be violating this patent.
BoingBoing adds: Rothschild was only recently awarded a patent relating to wifi image transfers, but he has a long history taking companies like Apple and Samsung to court. His LLC was named in 2015 as the single largest nonpracticing entity by defendant count; a NPE is a company or person who holds patents but makes no products, instead pursuing companies that do for settlements. One website counts 30 lawsuits filed since June involving Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC, with more than 100 ongoing.
ZDNet argues the suit " doesn't make much sense. But when has that ever stopped a patent troll?"

Apple has applied for a patent to use the logo on the back of its phones as a notification light. The patent application, which was first spotted by Apple Insider, outlines how the "adjustable decoration" could respond to events such as "incoming communication" or "a calendar reminder" by changing its appearance or flashing to attract your attention. The Verge reports: The feature makes sense for Apple's products. After all, the company has a history of illuminating its logo on its older MacBooks, even if it dropped the design feature with the laptop's 2015 redesign. It wouldn't be a massive leap for it to bring back its illuminated logo with a little practical functionality added. The application makes frequent references to "cellular telephone" calls as part of its description, which heavily suggests that Apple is considering using the feature on a future iPhone. However, the patent also includes images showing a series of "illustrative electronic devices" including a laptop, a tablet, and what appears to be an iMac.

The US spends more per capita on medication than anywhere else in the world. It's a key electoral issue. From a report on Financial Times (paywalled): All over the world, drugmakers are granted time-limited monopolies -- in the form of patents -- to encourage innovation. But America is one of the only countries that does not combine this carrot with the stick of price controls. The US government's refusal to negotiate prices has contributed to spiralling healthcare costs which, said billionaire investor Warren Buffett last year, act "as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy." Medical bills are the primary reason why Americans go bankrupt. Employers foot much of the bill for the majority of health-insurance plans for working-age adults, creating a huge cost for business.

In February, Congress called in executives from seven of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and asked them: why do drugs here cost so much? The drugmakers' answer is that America is carrying the cost of research and development for the rest of the world. They argue that if Americans stopped paying such high prices for drugs, investment in innovative treatments would fall. President Trump agrees with this argument, in line with his "America first" narrative, which sees other countries as guilty of freeloading. For the patients on the trip, the notion is galling: insulin was discovered 100 years ago, by scientists in Canada who sold the patent to the University of Toronto for just $1. The medication has been improved since then but there seems to have been no major innovation to justify tripling the list price for insulin, as happened in the US between 2002 and 2013.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Huawei's chief executive has proposed selling its current 5G know-how to a Western firm as a way to address security concerns voiced by the U.S. and others about its business. Ren Zhengfei said the buyer would be free to "change the software code." That would allow any flaws or supposed backdoors to be addressed without Huawei's involvement. Huawei has repeatedly denied claims that it would help the Chinese government spy on or disrupt other countries' telecoms systems, and says it is a private enterprise owned by its workers.

Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei made the proposal in interviews with the Economist and the New York Times. It would include ongoing access to the firm's existing 5G patents, licenses, code, technical blueprints and production engineering knowledge. "[Huawei is] open to sharing our 5G technologies and techniques with U.S. companies, so that they can build up their own 5G industry," the NYT quoted Ren as saying. "This would create a balanced situation between China, the U.S. and Europe." Speaking to the Economist he added: "A balanced distribution of interests is conducive to Huawei's survival." A spokesman for Huawei has confirmed the quotes are accurate and the idea represents a "genuine proposal." South Korea's Samsung and China's ZTE are other alternatives. "Huawei misunderstands the underlying problem," Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, from the European Centre for International Political Economy, told the BBC. "The issue is not the trustworthiness of Huawei as a vendor but the legal obligations that the Chinese government imposes on it.

"China's National Intelligence Law requires Chinese businesses and citizens to surrender any data or 'communication tools' they may have access to, under strict punitive sanctions," said Lee-Makiyama. "Any equipment or software that Huawei licenses to an U.S. entity would still fall under this obligation, and there is no way that the licensing entity or the intelligence agencies could scrutinize millions of lines of code for potential backdoors."

PatentlyApple has spotted several patents that suggest Apple is playing with the idea of making the Apple Watch's band identify users via their wrist's skin texture and arm hair. TechCrunch reports: The first patent describes a sensor built into the Watch or the watch's band that could use infrared to build a thermal image of your wrist and its identifying traits (like skin texture/arm hair) to identify who is wearing it -- sort of like a fingerprint, but from your wrist. Unlike most of Apple's other devices, the Apple Watch doesn't currently have any sort of built-in biometrics for unlocking -- there's no thumbprint sensor for Touch ID, or camera for Face ID. Unlocking your Apple Watch means poking at the screen to punch in a PIN (or, if you've configured it to unlock when you unlock your phone, doing that). A sensor setup like this could make the unlocking process automatic without the need to unlock your phone.

The second granted patent describes a Watch band that can adjust itself on the fly -- think Nike's self-tightening shoes, but on your wrist. If the Watch detects that it's sliding while you're running (or if the aforementioned thermal sensors need a closer look at your wrist skin) tensioners in the device could tighten or loosen the band on command. Finally, a third granted patent tinkers with the idea of a Watch band with built-in light-up indicators -- like, say, a notification light for incoming texts, or a meter that fills up to tell you at-a-glance how much distance you've got left on your run, or a stripe that glows yellow when you've got something on your calendar in the next hour. All of this can already be done on the Watch's screen, of course -- this would just allow for it without having to power up the entire display.

An anonymous reader writes: For years, Microsoft used its patents as a way to profit from open-source products. The poster-child for Microsoft's intellectual property aggression were the File Allocation Table (FAT) patents. But the Microsoft of then is not the Microsoft of now. First, Microsoft open-sourced its entire patent portfolio and now Microsoft is explicitly making its last remaining FAT intellectual property, the exFAT patents, available to Linux and open source via the Open Invention Network (OIN). Microsoft announced that it now loves Linux and "we say that a lot, and we mean it! Today we're pleased to announce that Microsoft is supporting the addition of Microsoft's exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) technology to the Linux kernel." ExFAT is based on FAT, one of the first floppy disk file systems. Over time, FAT became Microsoft's files ystem of choice for MS-DOS and Windows. It would become the default file system for many applications. Microsoft extended FAT to flash memory storage devices such as USB drives and SD cards in 2006 with exFAT. While FAT isn't commonly used today, exFAT is used in hundreds of millions of storage device. Indeed, exFAT is the official file system for SD Card Association's standard large capacity SD cards.

Now, Microsoft states: "It's important to us that the Linux community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with confidence. To this end, we will be making Microsoft's technical specification for exFAT publicly available to facilitate the development of conformant, interoperable implementations. We also support the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network's Linux System Definition, where, once accepted, the code will benefit from the defensive patent commitments of OIN's 3040+ members and licensees." Specifically, according to a Microsoft representative, "Microsoft is supporting the addition of the exFAT file system to the Linux kernel and the eventual inclusion of a Linux kernel with exFAT support in a future revision of the Open Invention Network's Linux System Definition."

Companies are constantly patenting strange things they have no intention of developing. From a report: Amazon is putting humans in cages to protect them from machines! Facebook is selling your face to advertisers so it can CGI you into ads! Sony has a system where you can skip ads if you stand up and yell the brand's name! None of these things are technically true -- they're headlines driven by patents filed by these companies. In each case, the company has not developed these technologies. And it's likely that they never will. And yet, head-scratching and sometimes hilarious patents continue to populate the patent office and generate headlines. So why are there so many strange, somewhat terrifying patents that companies will likely never act on?

There are lots of reasons to patent something. The most obvious one is that you've come up with a brilliant invention, and you want to protect your idea so that nobody can steal it from you. But that's just the tip of the patent strategy iceberg. It turns out there is a whole host of strategies that lead to "zany" or "weird" patent filings, and understanding them offers a window not just into the labyrinthine world of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and its potential failings, but also into how companies think about the future. And while it might be fun to gawk at, say, Motorola patenting a lie-detecting throat tattoo, it's also important to see through the eye-catching headlines and to the bigger issue here: Patents can be weapons and signals. They can spur innovation, as well as crush it.

A Texas-based, father/son team raised $4.5 million in seed funding to build "a remarkable electric motor technology," reports New Atlas.

Long-time Slashdot reader Namarrgon writes: Linear Labs' impressive new circumferential flux motor design (video) uses four rotors [where other motors typically run one or two] and a software-reconfigurable, multi-coil stator, enclosed in a 3D magnetic "torque tunnel" to maximize efficiency even at high speeds. The stator can be configured on the fly by regrouping coils to use a variable number of overlapping phases simultaneously, producing full torque smoothly at low rpms without torque pulsing, or changing speeds with no change to frequency, current, or voltage, like an electronic transmission. An innovative approach to field weakening by gradually misaligning permanent magnets allows efficiencies to actually climb as speeds increase.

These features produce a highly compact motor with two to five times the torque density, at least three times the power density and at least twice the total output of any conventional permanent magnet motor of the same size. This also eliminates the need for gearing in many applications, reducing costs and weight while gaining 10-20% more range from a given battery pack.

Linear Labs has received 21 patents so far, with another 29 pending, and their prototypes have been verified by independent expert tests. Recently they received $4.5 million in seed funding, and are planning to build them into car and scooter prototypes over the next couple of years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC An artificial intelligence system should be recognized as the inventor of two ideas in patents filed on its behalf, a team of academics says. The AI has designed interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and a warning light that flashes in a rhythm that is hard to ignore. Patents offices insist innovations are attributed to humans -- to avoid legal complications that would arise if corporate inventorship were recognized. The academics say this is "outdated." And it could see patent offices refusing to assign any intellectual property rights for AI-generated creations. As a result, two professors from the University of Surrey have teamed up with the Missouri-based inventor of Dabus AI to file patents in the system's name with the relevant authorities in the UK, Europe and US. Dabus is designed to develop new ideas, which is "traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act," according to creator Stephen Thaler.

Law professor Ryan Abbott told BBC News: "These days, you commonly have AIs writing books and taking pictures - but if you don't have a traditional author, you cannot get copyright protection in the US. So with patents, a patent office might say, 'If you don't have someone who traditionally meets human-inventorship criteria, there is nothing you can get a patent on.' In which case, if AI is going to be how we're inventing things in the future, the whole intellectual property system will fail to work." He suggested an AI should be recognized as being the inventor and whoever the AI belonged to should be the patent's owner, unless they sold it on.

The University of California is suing five major retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, IKEA, and Bed Bath & Beyond, for infringing on four patents related to "filament" LED light bulbs. Reuters reports: These patents relate to what the university called the "reinvention of the light bulb" by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara led by professor Shuji Nakamura, who won the 2014 Nobel prize for physics. The university is seeking unspecified damages, including royalties, in lawsuits filed with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, and wants the retailers to enter license agreements. It has also asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to open a probe into the retailers' conduct, saying the retailers have failed to require their suppliers to honor the university's patents.

Filament LED light bulbs are sometimes called "Edison" or "vintage" bulbs because they resemble light bulbs created by Thomas Edison that have glowing filaments visible inside. According to the university's lawyers at Nixon Peabody, the litigation is the first-of-its-kind "direct patent enforcement" campaign against an entire industry. The university said it was intended "to spearhead a broader, national response to the existential threat" posed by the "widespread disregard" for the patent rights of universities, including when schools encourage the private sector to develop commercial products containing their research.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is in advanced talks to buy Intel's smartphone-modem chip business (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), "a move that would jump-start the iPhone maker's push to take control of developing the critical components powering its devices." From the report: A deal, covering a portfolio of patents and staff valued at $1 billion or more, could be reached in the next week, the people said -- assuming the talks don't fall apart. Though the purchase price is a rounding error for companies valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the transaction would be important strategically and financially. It would give Apple access to engineering work and talent behind Intel's yearslong push to develop modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work.

For Intel's part, a deal would allow the company to shed a business that had been weighing on its bottom line: The smartphone operation had been losing about $1 billion annually, a person familiar with its performance has said, and has generally failed to live up to expectations. Though it would exit the smartphone business, Intel plans to continue to work on 5G technology for other connected devices. Earlier this year, it was reported that Apple began discussing plans to acquire parts of Intel's smartphone modem chip business last summer, around the time former Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich resigned. "Mr. Krzanich championed the modem business and touted 5G technology as a big future revenue stream," reports The Wall Street Journal. "When Bob Swan was named to that job in January, analysts said the odds of a deal rose because his focus on cleaning up Intel would require addressing the losses in the modem business."

In what looks set to become one of the highest profile patent sales in years, Intel has put its IP relating to cellular wireless connectivity on the auction block. The company is seeking to divest around 8,500 assets from its massive portfolio. From a report: The news comes as the chip giant searches for a buyer for its 5G smartphone modem business having announced in April that it was pulling out of the market. That was after as it had become increasingly clear that the company, which has been the supplier of 4G modem chips to Apple for the last few years, was struggling to release a 5G product even though the rollout of the next generation of mobile technology is well underway. The auction offering is comprised of two parts: the cellular portfolio and a connected device portfolio. The former includes approximately 6,000 patent assets related to 3G, 4G and 5G cellular standards and an additional 1,700 assets that read on wireless implementation technologies. The latter is made up of 500 patents with broad applicability across the semiconductor and electronics industries. Although that represents a large portion of Intel's cellular IP it is understood that it will retain significant wireless assets.

"Some businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, still spend enormous amounts of time and money on intellectual property (IP) fights," reports ZDNet. But "thanks to the Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, Linux and related open-source technologies have become mostly free of these expensive entanglements."

And now they're reporting that the OIN's membership has grown to over 3,000 licensees: OIN's mission is to enable Linux, its related software, and its programmers to develop and monetize without being hogtied by patent fights. In Linux's early years, this was a constant threat. Now, thanks largely to the OIN's efforts to get everyone to agree on the basic open-source principle -- that's it's better and more profitable to share than to cling to proprietary property -- open-source software has taken off in the marketplace... The OIN, which has grown by 50% in the last two years, has turned patent non-aggression into policy for thousands of companies. By agreeing to the OIN license, members gain access to patented inventions worth hundreds of millions of dollars while promoting a favorable environment for Linux and related open source software.

The license works by everyone agreeing to patent non-aggression in core open-source technologies by cross-licensing Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. OIN-owned patents are similarly licensed royalty-free to any organization that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. While it started out just covering the Linux operating system the Linux System has evolved to address Linux and adjacent Linux-related open-source technologies. It now covers open-source programs covering mobile communications, mobile payments, computing, blockchain, cloud, Internet of Things, and embedded and automotive technologies.

"For innovation and invention, open source and Linux are unmatched in the modern world. The open-source community's success is powered by the fact that shared innovation acts as a force multiplier -- where one plus one equals orders of magnitude more than two," said Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO. "OIN's remarkable growth has been driven by heightened recognition of the importance of open source and a broad-based recognition of patent non-aggression as a cultural norm in the Linux and greater open source community. Joining OIN is viewed by many as a litmus test of authenticity in the open-source community."
The Linux Foundation's executive director says their group's success "has been directly enabled by the patent risk mitigation platform that the OIN has provided.

"Absent the now 3,000 strong member community of patent non-aggression that Keith Bergelt and his team at OIN have painstakingly built over the last dozen or so years, the level of open-source software innovation and unprecedented adoption rates could simply not have been achieved."

Amazon's delivery drones may also be used to offer "surveillance as a service." According to The Verge, "Amazon was recently granted a patent that outlines how its UAVs could keep an eye on customers' property between deliveries while supposedly maintaining their privacy." From the report: The patent was originally filed in June 2015 and became public earlier this month. It describes how the company's drones could be hired to look out for open garage doors, broken windows, graffiti, or even a fire, before alerting the owner of the property. The patent was originally filed in June 2015 and became public earlier this month. It describes how the company's drones could be hired to look out for open garage doors, broken windows, graffiti, or even a fire, before alerting the owner of the property.

hackingbear writes: While intellectual property violation is a major accusation against China in the on-going US-China trade war, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio filed legislation on Monday that would prevent Huawei from seeking damages in U.S. patent courts, after the Chinese firm demanded that Verizon Communications pay $1 billion to license the rights to patented technology. Under the amendment -- seen by Reuters -- companies on certain U.S. government watch lists, which would include Huawei, would not be allowed to seek relief under U.S. law with respect to U.S. patents, including bringing legal action over patent infringement.

The Amazon panopticon may soon be getting a few new eyes. From a report: In February 2018, Amazon paid $1 billion to acquire Ring, the connected-camera doorbell company whose founder was once rejected on Shark Tank. Since then, Ring has been integrated with other Amazon services, allowing live feeds from its devices on Amazon Echo Shows and leading to new products such smart floodlights. Ring has also helped Amazon to flesh out its rather creepy Key service, where users with Ring doorbells (and other connected products) can choose to let people and deliveries into their homes remotely. Ring has also been building up its Neighbors app, which allows Ring users to share their camera footage with people who live nearby, allowing them to see if they believe any crimes have been committed nearby.

Ring has also forged partnerships with more than 50 police departments, leading to communities that are effectively surveilled by the police, through the camera company owned by the US's largest e-commerce company. Amazon is apparently not stopping there with its one-stop viewing. The company recently received trademarks, uncovered by Quartz, for multiple products that bear the Ring name, including Ring Beams, Ring Halo, and Ring Net. All three trademarks are listed as covering a range of uses, many matching what Ring products currently offer, including internet-connected security cameras, alarm systems, lighting, and cloud video storage.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The 2D wonder-material graphene could greatly benefit from the widespread experimentation of open-source use. In its current state, graphene is primarily researched by scientists in universities and labs, but by making graphene a material that is open to be improved upon by anyone, we might see the fulfillment of the potential that graphene has been hailed for since its discovery. Graphene's capabilities are staggering -- it is essentially 2D, flexible, 200 times stronger than steel, conducts heat 10 times better than copper and conducts electricity 250 times better than silicon. Its abilities are far-reaching and extremely potent, making graphene applications nearly endless. As it stands, graphene research is limited to a select few technology companies -- Samsung, for instance, has the most graphene patents to date. Otherwise, most graphene research is done in university labs. In the same way that open-sourcing has built up software and related technologies, open-sourcing could also viably allow a wider range of individuals and communities to help unlock graphene's unrealized potential.

Graphene is fundamentally different from software in that it is a physical resource. Since the material's discovery, quantity has been a serious issue, preventing the material from seeing widespread use. Natural reserves of graphene are few and far between, and while scientists have discovered ways of producing graphene, the methods have proved unscalable. In addition, graphene would need a way to be experimented with by the average user. For those who don't have the same equipment researchers do, how can they go about tinkering with graphene? In order for graphene to become an open-source material, a solution for these two problems must be found.