An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Qualcomm is urging U.S. trade regulators to reverse a judge's ruling and ban the import of some Apple iPhones in a long-running patent fight between the two companies. Qualcomm is seeking the ban in hopes of dealing Apple a blow before the two begin a major trial in mid-April in San Diego over Qualcomm's patent licensing practices. Qualcomm has sought to apply pressure to Apple with smaller legal challenges ahead of that trial and has won partial iPhone sales bans in China and Germany against Apple, forcing the iPhone maker to ship only phones with Qualcomm chips to some markets. Any possible ban on iPhone imports to the United States could be short-lived because Apple last week for the first time disclosed that it has found a software fix to avoid infringing on one of Qualcomm's patents. Apple asked regulators to give it as much as six months to prove that the fix works.

Qualcomm brought a case against Apple at the U.S. International Trade Commission in 2017 alleging that some iPhones violated Qualcomm patents to help smart phones run well without draining their batteries. Qualcomm asked for an import ban on some older iPhone models containing Intel chips. In September, Thomas Pender, an administrative law judge at the ITC, found that Apple violated one of the patents in the case but declined to issue a ban. Pender reasoned that imposing a ban on Intel-chipped iPhones would hand Qualcomm an effective monopoly on the U.S. market for modem chips, which connect smart phones to wireless data networks. Pender's ruling said that preserving competition in the modem chip market was in the public interest as speedier 5G networks come online in the next few years.

New submitter bluekloud shares a report: Mitch Hungerpiller thought he had a first-class solution for mail that gets returned as undeliverable, a common problem for businesses that send lots of letters. But the process he helped develop and built his small Alabama technology company around has resulted in a more than decade-long fight with the U.S. Postal Service, which says his solution shouldn't have been patentable. The David vs. Goliath dispute has now arrived at the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the justices will hear Hungerpiller's case, which involves parsing the meaning of a 2011 patent law.

"All I want is a fair shake," said Hungerpiller, who lives in Birmingham and is a father of three. Hungerpiller, 56, started thinking seriously about returned mail in 1999 when he was doing computer consulting work. While visiting clients he kept seeing huge trays of returned mail. He read that every year, billions pieces of mail are returned as undeliverable, costing companies and the Postal Service time and money. So he decided to try to solve the problem. He developed a system that uses barcodes, scanning equipment and computer databases to process returned mail almost entirely automatically. His clients, from financial services companies to marketing companies, generally direct their returned mail to Hungerpiller's company, Return Mail Inc., for processing. Clients can get information about whether the mail was actually correctly addressed and whether there's a more current address.

China and the United States are ahead of the global competition to dominate artificial intelligence (AI), according to a study by the U.N. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published on Thursday. From a report: The study found U.S. tech giant IBM had by far the biggest AI patent portfolio, with 8,920 patents, ahead of Microsoft with 5,930 and a group of mainly Japanese tech conglomerates. China accounted for 17 of the top 20 academic institutions involved in patenting AI and was particularly strong in the fast growing area of "deep learning" - a machine-learning technique that includes speech recognition systems.

"The U.S. and China obviously have stolen a lead. They're out in front in this area, in terms of numbers of applications, and in scientific publications," WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry told a news conference. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused China of stealing American innovations and technology and has slapped trade tariffs on $234 billion of Chinese goods to punish Beijing.

A reader shares a report from Business Insider: Arthur Ashkin, the world's oldest Nobel Prize winner, [...] has turned the bottom floor of his house into a kind of laboratory where he's developing a solar-energy-harnessing device. Ashkin's new invention uses geometry to capture and funnel light. Essentially, it relies on reflective concentrator tubes that intensify solar reflections, which could make existing solar panels more efficient or perhaps even replace them altogether with something cheaper and simpler. The tubes are "dirt cheap," Ashkin says -- they cost just pennies to create -- which is why he thinks they "will save the world." He's even got his eye on a second Nobel Prize.

Ashkin's lifelong fascination with light has already saved countless lives. He shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics for his role in inventing a tiny object-levitating technology called optical tweezers, which is essentially a powerful laser beam that can "catch very small things," as Ashkin describes it. Optical tweezers can hold and stretch DNA, thereby helping us probe some of the biggest mysteries of life. [...] Ashkin has already filed the necessary patent paperwork (he holds at least 47 patents to date) for his new invention, but said he isn't ready to share photos of the concentrators with the public just yet. Soon, he hopes to publish his results in the journal Science.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it may have to cease patent operations in the second week of February if the partial government shutdown continues, though it has money for trademark work through mid-April. Any furlough of staff could mean significant delays in reviewing the tens of thousands of applications on inventions for things like telecommunications hardware and the next cutting-edge medical treatments. Now it takes on average 15.8 months before a patent applicant can expect a preliminary response from an examiner. More than 640,000 patent applications were filed in fiscal 2018.

The patent office, part of the Commerce Department, is funded entirely by user fees and gets no tax dollars, but it requires an appropriation from Congress to spend the money it collects. In fiscal 2018, it had a budget of $3.3 billion and has asked for $3.5 billion for fiscal 2019. The patent office sets aside authorized money in what's called an operating reserve to account for "temporary changes in our cash flow" and that's what it has been using to stay open since the partial shutdown began Dec. 22. At the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it said it had 1.3 months of operating expenses for patent operations and 4.9 months of expenses for trademark operations.

Apple's operating chief said on Monday that Qualcomm refused to sell its 4G LTE processors to the company due to the companies' licensing dispute. According to CNET, that decision "had a ripple effect on how quickly Apple can make the shift to 5G." From the report: Qualcomm continues to provide Apple with chips for its older iPhones, including the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, Apple COO Jeff Williams testified Monday during the US Federal Trade Commission's trial against Qualcomm. But it won't provide Apple with processors for the newest iPhones, designed since the two began fighting over patents, he said. And Williams believes the royalty rate Apple paid for using Qualcomm patents -- $7.50 per iPhone -- is too high.

The FTC has accused Qualcomm of operating a monopoly in wireless chips, forcing customers like Apple to work with it exclusively and charging excessive licensing fees for its technology. The FTC has said that Qualcomm forced Apple to pay licensing fees for its technology in exchange for using its chips in iPhones. The trial kicked off Jan. 4 in US District Court in San Jose, California. Testimony covers negotiations and events that occurred before March 2018 and can't encompass anything after that date. Apple is expected to only use Intel chips in its next iPhones, something that will make Apple late to the market for 5G phones. "By the 2019 holiday season, every major Android vendor in the U.S. will have a 5G phone available," reports CNET. "But Intel's 5G modem isn't expected to hit phones until 2020."

Ben Klemens writes via Ars Technica: A landmark 2014 ruling by the Supreme Court called into question the validity of many software patents. In the wake of that ruling, countless broad software patents became invalid, dealing a blow to litigation-happy patent trolls nationwide. But this week the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) proposed new rules that would make it easier to patent software. If those rules take effect, it could take us back to the bad old days when it was easy to get broad software patents -- and to sue companies that accidentally infringe them.

The Federal Circuit Appeals Court is the nation's highest patent court below the Supreme Court, and it is notoriously patent friendly. Ever since the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling, known as Alice v. CLS Bank, the Federal Circuit has worked to blunt the ruling's impact. In a 2016 ruling called Enfish, the Federal Circuit ruling took a single sentence from the Supreme Court's 2014 ruling and used it as the legal foundation for approving more software patents. This legal theory, known as the "technical effects doctrine," holds that software that improves the functioning of a computer should be eligible for a patent. A version of this rule has long held sway in Europe, but it has only recently started to have an impact in U.S. law.

This week, the Patent Office published a new draft of the section on examining software and other potentially abstract ideas in its Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP). This is the official document that helps patent examiners understand and interpret relevant legal principles. The latest version, drawing on recent Federal Circuit rulings, includes far tighter restrictions on what may be excluded from patentability. This matters because there's significant evidence that the proliferation of software patents during the 1990s and 2000s had a detrimental impact on innovation -- precisely the opposite of how patents are supposed to work.

IBM earned a record 9,100 U.S. patents in 2018, marking the 26th year in a row the Armonk, New York-based company has been the top recipient. From a report: Samsung was second with 5,850 patents while tech giants Apple and Microsoft also appeared in the top ten, according to a list compiled by research service IFI Claims. IBM's latest patent haul, which topped the 9,043 it received last year, includes a growing number of inventions related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which many people see as critical technologies of the future.

Qualcomm is enforcing a court order banning the sale of some iPhones in Germany that violate its patents on power-saving technology. As a result, Apple is likely going to pull some iPhone models from its German stores. Reuters reports: The chipmaker posted the [security] bonds of 1.34 billion euros ($1.52 billion) as part of a legal requirement by a German court, which found on Dec. 20 that Apple had infringed Qualcomm patents on power-saving technology used in smartphones. The iPhone maker had earlier said it would pull iPhone 7 and 8 models from its 15 stores in Germany when the order came into force. The order took effect when Qualcomm posted the bond. According to the court order, Apple has to stop the sale, offer for sale and importation for sale of all infringing iPhones in Germany. Apple had said it was appealing the decision. The court also ordered Apple to recall the affected iPhones from third-party resellers in Germany, according to a statement by Qualcomm.

MikeChino writes: Is Apple branching out into clever clothing? On January 1, 2019, the tech giant was awarded an original design patent for "Fabric." First filed for in September 2016, the "Fabric" patent shows a swatch of a ridged material in gray, dark gray, and white to represent contrasting appearances. Apple has filed for several patents in the last few years related to combining technology with fabric, but this is the first glimpse we've had at what that fabric might look like. The "smart" fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events, and/or respond to pressure and touch.

As Dwell notes, "Apple's other fabric-related patents have involved a jacket that sends tactile or audible signals to visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog -- and a force-sensing fabric with interwoven circuits that could be used in a glove to track a wearer's vital signs and control devices wirelessly."

The creator of the year's biggest game is facing a slew of lawsuits over its alleged use of famous dance moves. But will courts tap to the same tune? From a report: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro alleges that Fornite used his Carlton Dance, devised for a memorable episode of the hit US sitcom, without permission or credit. And earlier this week, Russell Horning, AKA the Backpack Kid, launched his own lawsuit claiming Epic breached copyright laws for including his signature dance move "The Floss." So while the copyright disco fills up and solicitors perform their (wallet) stretching exercises, the big question is: can you realistically copyright a dance move? The answer is yes. Kind of. It's complicated.

"A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."

"Qualcomm was granted a second injunction against Apple on Thursday, banning it from selling some iPhone models in Germany that use chips from Intel and parts from another supplier, Qorvo," reports CNBC. This is the second major win for Qualcomm against Apple after a Chinese court granted an injunction against Apple for an alleged patent violation on Dec. 10." From the report: In a statement, Apple said it plans to appeal the ruling. Under this condition, Judge Matthias Zigann told the court earlier Thursday, the ruling would not go into immediate effect. However, Apple said that throughout the appeal process, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models will not be sold in its 15 retail stores in Germany. Its newest models, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR, will still be sold in those stores, Apple said in the statement. All iPhone models will still be sold through carriers and other third-party retailers in Germany, Apple said. But Qualcomm said in a press release that the injunction will be in effect as soon as it posts the required bonds. It said it would complete the process "within a few days."

In an official statement Thursday, Intel called out Qualcomm for allegedly continuing to pursue its use of patent lawsuits and threatening lawsuits against its own customers and competitors even as multiple antitrust agencies have found Qualcomm to be violating competition laws with these tactics. From a report: The statement from Steven Rodgers, Intel EVP and general counsel, said that despite Qualcomm being fined by multiple governments around the world over its abuse of patents against other companies, the company continues the same aggressive legal strategy against its partners and competitors. This, Intel said, will only lead to higher prices for consumers and less innovation.

According to Intel, Qualcomm's goal is not to vindicate its IP rights, but to drive competition out of the market completely. Intel pointed out that Qualcomm has been fined almost a billion dollars in China, $850 million in Korea, $1.2 billion in the European Union and $773 million in Taiwan over the company's anti-competitive practices. Intel also encouraged everyone to pay attention to FTC's lawsuit against Qualcomm in the United States. The FTC will begin its opening arguments in court on January 4. Intel, who is a competitor of Qualcomm in the wireless modem space, said that it hopes the actions taken by global authorities against Qualcomm will preserve competition in the 5G market.

Apple released a tiny update to iOS this week designed to avoid a sales ban in China. iOS version 12.1.2 contains software changes exclusive to China that are designed to circumvent Apple's patent dispute with Qualcomm, which won an initial sales ban over claims that Apple violated a pair of its patents. The Verge reports: The update changes the animation for when an app is forced to close, according to MacRumors, seemingly avoiding a Qualcomm patent around app management. Previously a closed app would slide off the top of the screen, but it now shrinks and disappears into the middle of the screen. Last month, Qualcomm won a court injunction that banned Apple from selling iPhone models including the 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X. iOS 12.1.2 The patents related to how software resizes pictures and manages applications. This fix appears to change application management, but it's currently unclear what, if anything, has changed about the process of resizing pictures.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Apple said it would update the software of iPhones in China (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) to try to resolve a legal dispute that threatens to stop the company from selling older iPhones in the country. Apple and its longtime chip supplier, Qualcomm, have been fighting in court over Apple's use of Qualcomm's technology. On Nov. 30, a Chinese court ruled Apple must immediately stop selling seven older iPhone models in China because it infringed on two Qualcomm patents. But Apple has not stopped selling those iPhones there. The company has argued the phones are not subject to the ruling because they are running new software that was not discussed at trial. On Friday, Apple said in a statement that it would update its iPhones in China early next week "to address any possible concern about our compliance with the order." Apple said its update would change the iPhones' software so it did not infringe on Qualcomm patents, which relate to switching between apps and changing the size and appearance of photographs.

Facebook has filed several patent applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for technology that uses your location data to predict where you're going and when you're going to be offline. BuzzFeed News reports: A May 30, 2017, Facebook application titled "Offline Trajectories" describes a method to predict where you'll go next based on your location data. The technology described in the patent would calculate a "transition probability based at least in part on previously logged location data associated with a plurality of users who were at the current location." In other words, the technology could also use the data of other people you know, as well as that of strangers, to make predictions. If the company could predict when you are about to be in an offline area, Facebook content "may be prefetched so that the user may have access to content during the period where there is a lack of connectivity."

Another Facebook patent application titled "Location Prediction Using Wireless Signals on Online Social Networks" describes how tracking the strength of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and near-field communication (NFC) signals could be used to estimate your current location, in order to anticipate where you will go next. This "background signal" information is used as an alternative to GPS because, as the patent describes, it may provide "the advantage of more accurately or precisely determining a geographic location of a user." The technology could learn the category of your current location (e.g., bar or gym), the time of your visit to the location, the hours that entity is open, and the popular hours of the entity.

Yet another Facebook patent application, "Predicting Locations and Movements of Users Based on Historical Locations for Users of an Online System," further details how location data from multiple people would be used to glean location and movement trends and to model location chains. According to the patent application, these could be used for a "variety of applications," including "advertising to users based on locations and for providing insights into the movements of users." The technology could even differentiate movement trends among people who live in a city and who are just visiting a city. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement: "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patent applications -- such as this one -- should not be taken as an indication of future plans."

Qualcomm says it has won a ruling in China against Apple that bans the sale of some iPhone models in that country. From a report: The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Apple is infringing two Qualcomm patents and issued injunctions against the sale of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, the San Diego, California-based chipmaker said in a statement Monday. The most recent models introduced in September, the iPhone XS, XR and XS Max, are not covered by the ban.

Ford has filed a patent for a method of eliminating the new car smell after a vehicle has been purchased. In the U.S., "new car smell" is beloved, but in China, customers find the odor disgusting. From a report: While the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office hasn't issued a ruling on the "vehicle odor remediation" patent application, and Ford hasn't committed to moving forward with the project, the paperwork explains what creates the odor so many Americans like: That new car smell is caused by volatile organic compounds given off by leather, plastic and vinyl. Chemicals used to attach and seal car parts may also contribute to the odor. People notice odors when compounds are released, which occurs when a car sits in high temperatures.

Ford scientists describe baking the car until the odor disappears, which happens after compounds are released. The process described in the patent involves parking the car in the sun, opening the windows slightly, and optionally turning the engine, heater and fan on.The system includes special software and various air quality sensors, and works only when fitted to a driverless or semi-autonomous vehicle. A lot of technology is involved in the patent application. The car would determine whether conditions are right to expel compounds, and the car would drive itself to a place in the sun and bake away the offensive odor.

Google has patented motorized, omnidirectional virtual-reality sneakers that may solve the "limited space" problem associated with the interactive computer-generated experience. Ars Technica reports: Google's patent describes what are essentially motorized VR roller skates that will let the user walk normally while the motors and wheels work to negate your natural locomotion and keep you inside the VR safe zone. As the patent puts it, Google's new kicks will let you walk "seemingly endlessly in the virtual environment" while keeping you in one spot in real life. Google's shoe solution would track the user's feet, just like how VR controllers are tracked today. The tracking would know when you're too close to the virtual walls of your VR area, and the system would wheel you back into place.

Patents are always written to give the broadest possible coverage of an idea, but Google's patent shows normal wheels, tracks, and even omnidirectional mecanum wheels as possible wheels for the VR shoe bottoms. Omnidirectional wheels would be great, as they would allow you to do things like sidestep, while still having your position corrected by the shoes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Facebook has submitted a patent application for technology that would predict who your family and other household members are, based on images and captions posted to Facebook, as well as your device information, like shared IP addresses. The application, titled "Predicting household demographics based on image data," was originally filed May 10, 2017, and made public today. The system Facebook proposes in its patent application would use facial recognition and learning models trained to understand text to help Facebook better understand whom you live with and interact with most. The technology described in the patent looks for clues in your profile pictures on Facebook and Instagram, as well as photos of you that you or your friends post.

It would note the people identified in a photo, and how frequently the people are included in your pictures. Then, it would assess information from comments on the photos, captions, or tags (#family, #mom, #kids) -- anything that indicates whether someone is a husband, daughter, cousin, etc. -- to predict what your family/household actually looks like. According to the patent application, Facebook's prediction models would also analyze "messaging history, past tagging history, [and] web browsing history" to see if multiple people share IP addresses (a unique identifier for every internet network). A Facebook spokesperson said in response to the story, "We often seek patents for technology we never implement, and patents should not be taken as an indication of future plans."