Proxim, Symbol settle in patent case
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The two companies reach a settlement and sign a cross-licensing agreement, ending years of litigation over patent infringement.
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Vonage Holdings Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp. have settled their patent litigation, allowing for cross-licensing of the telecom companies' technology.
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The German semiconductor maker Infineon has settled a technology transfer dispute with former Taiwanese partner ProMOS Technologies, Infineon revealed.
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By JORDAN ROBERTSON SAN JOSE, Calif. - Cisco Systems Inc. and Apple Inc. said Wednesday they have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit that threatened to derail Apple's use of the &quot;iPhone&quot; name for its much-hyped new iPod-cellular phone gadget.
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AMSTERDAM (AFX) - ASML Holding NV and Nikon Corp said they reached a tentative agreement on settlement terms for Nikon&#39;s case of alleged patent infringement against ASML.
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XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc said on Monday it has settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group and hopes to reach deals with the other music companies.
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(InfoWorld) - AzulÂ and SunÂ have settled aÂ patent infringement suit Sun filed, the companies said Tuesday. The suit had been pending in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California since May 2006, said Scott Sellers, COO and co-founder of Azul. Sun alleged that Azul violated trade secrets and patent laws. Azul, founded in 2002, makes high-capacity computing appliances. The company had hired some former Sun employees, including Stephen DeWitt, its CEO. "We're very pleased to disclose this [settlement]. This has been in the works for some time. Both sides realize they're spending a lot of money, and this would have taken another year," said Sellers. U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, had made some pretrial rulings on motions that were adverse to Sun, which prompted the company to agree to settlement talks, Sellers said. Sun tells a different story. In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, Sun spokeswoman Kristi Rawlinson said Azul agreed to settle because Sun was building a stronger case against Azul as the lawsuit went on. "The patent infringement and trade secret claims against Azul grew larger during the pendency of the case," Rawlinson stated. "Azul came to the realization it would be better to return to negotiations and settle the claims rather than continue with the lawsuit they initiated." The case relates to technology for improving the performance of microprocessors through the use of chip multithreading, which Azul is now using in its products. Sun claims Azul infringed patents related to Sun's prior research in the field, and that it abused trade secrets by poaching about a dozen Sun employees familiar with the technology. In a blog posting, Michael Dillon, Sun's chief legal counsel, declined to discuss terms of the settlement, as did Azul's Sellers.
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Intel agreed on Wednesday to settle a dispute with Transmeta&#160;for $250 million, ending patent litigation between both companies.Under the agreement, Intel will pay Transmeta $150 million initially and $20 million in each of the next five years. In exchange, Intel will be granted a right to license Transmeta patents for use in future products. It will also end pending patent litigation between both companies and release all claims between them.Transmeta, based in Santa Clara, California, sued Intel&#160;in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in October last year, claiming some Intel processors violated 10 Transmeta patents covering processor design and power-efficiency techniques. Nine patents covered basic processor functions like scheduling and addressing instructions on a chip, and the tenth related to Transmeta&#39;s LongRun technology, used to adjust a processor&#39;s voltage based on its workload.In January,&#160;Intel countersued Transmeta&#160;for infringing seven patents, also alleging Transmeta withheld and mischaracterized information about other patents and technologies in its patent applications.Under the agreement, Intel will be in a binding agreement not to sue Transmeta for the development and licensing of LongRun technology to third parties, Transmeta said in a statement.Transmeta, founded in 1995, tried to break Intel&#39;s dominance in the notebook PC market with its Crusoe processor, which allowed PCs to run longer by reducing power consumption. Consumers responded poorly to the processor, leading to Transmeta changing its business model to licensing its technology.The settlement pumped life into Transmeta&#39;s stock (TMTA), which rose 253.11 percent to $14.76 on the Nasdaq stock exchange Wednesday.&#160;The company faced delisting in March&#160;when its stock price dropped to under $1.Transmeta reported a net loss of $11.5 million and revenue of $171,000 for the most recent quarter ending June 30. Earlier this year, Intel&#39;s rival,&#160;AMD, invested $7.5 million in the cash-strapped Transmeta.Intel&#39;s settlement agreement will realize immediate financial value for Transmeta&#39;s intellectual-property rights and will support the company&#39;s technology development and licensing business, said Les Crudele, the president and CEO of Transmeta, in a statement.Intel could not be reached for comment.
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Three days after a jury found Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart) had infringed on Eastman Kodak patents, the two parties settled their lawsuit out of court.
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In lieu of facing a court judgment of possibly more than US$1 billion, Sun Microsystems has agreed to pay $92 million to settle a long-running patent infringement case with Eastman Kodak.
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Apple Inc. and The Beatles settled their long-running trademark dispute over the use of &quot;Apple&quot; as a name and logo, raising hopes that songs by the Fab Four might soon be available as legal downloads.
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Cell phone maker Motorola Inc   and Metrologic Instruments Inc have settled all outstanding  patent infringement disputes, the two companies said in a joint  statement on Monday.
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Sun on Thursday announced that it settled the lawsuit Eastman Kodak had brought against it, but the charge that Sunâs Java violated software patents held by Kodak brought to light the major impact patents can have on software techniques.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could make it harder to obtain patents, with technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. supporting a change. The case, involving a patent on gas pedals for vehicles, has the Supreme Court examining how lower courts arrive at a decision that an invention was obvious, and therefore not patentable. In the case, Teleflex Inc. and Technology Holding Co., holders of the electronic gas pedal patent, sued KSR International Co. for patent infringement, but the defendant argued the courts should invalidate the gas pedal invention for obviousness. After oral arguments Tuesday, some patent lawyers said they expected the Supreme Court to overturn a 4-decade-old approach to deciding obviousness often called the teaching-suggestion-motivation test. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has used this test, saying that there must be some proven teaching, suggestion or motivation to lead a person of ordinary skill to combine "prior art" products into a new invention for that invention to be declared obvious. Other patent lawyers said they expect little movement from the Supreme Court, although any change would have a huge impact on patent holders. If the Supreme Court throws out the motivation test, all current patents could be suspect, said Paul Andre, an intellectual property lawyer with Perkins Coie LLP, in an interview. A change in the motivation test could mean fewer patent infringement cases brought by patent holders, because they would fear that courts would rule their patents invalid, he said. "The alleged infringer would have an easier time challenging a patent," he added. But most patent lawyers seem to believe the Supreme Court won't change the law, with the court last acting on the obvious standard in a 1966 ruling, he said. "If the Supreme Court wanted to do it, they'd have changed it by now," he said. But justices asked several questions about the obviousness standard, with Chief Justice John Roberts suggesting courts needed more flexibility to determine obviousness. The court will likely require the Federal Circuit to come up with a new standard, said Sharon Barner, an intellectual property lawyer with Foley and Lardner LLP, in an interview apart from the court hearing. Cisco and Microsoft, joined by three other companies, filed a brief in the case saying the motivation standard makes it too hard to prove obviousness, leading to bad patents. Microsoft and Cisco have been sued for "allegedly infringing dozens of questionable patents," wrote their attorney Peter Sullivan, of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed LLP. The motivation test "establishes too lenient a standard for patentability, and it has had a stifling effect on true innovation because it encumbers ideas well beyond the limits imposed by Congress for patentable inventions," Sullivan wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court. But a group of patent lawyers filed a brief opposing a change in the law, saying a change in the obviousness standard could make it difficult to get a patent on any invention that combines old products. The current standard is established and well-thought, wrote lawyers for the American Intellectual Property Law Association. Without the motivation test, there's no standard to determine obviousness, said Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance, in an interview. "Things are often obvious in hindsight when they weren't that obvious," he said. "Big un-innovative ... are trying to make the invention game a king's sport because they hate having to compensate inventors."
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Research In Motion Ltd.    and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.  have  settled a lawsuit in which RIM alleged the South Korean  electronics giant had infringed on its well-known BlackBerry  trademark with its competing BlackJack smartphone.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft won a round in its battle with patent licensing company Timeline. On May 29, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed Timeline's accusations of patent infringement, ruling that Microsoft's patent licensing agreement with Timeline is valid. The case dates back to 2005 when Timeline sued ProClarity for patent infringement. A few months later, Microsoft acquired ProClarity, and shortly after that, Timeline added Microsoft to the ProClarity suit. In the suit, Timeline claimed to have terminated its contract with Microsoft based on breach of contract and charged the software giant with patent infringement. In the May 29 ruling, the judge decided that Timeline couldn't terminate the licensing agreement based on its breach of contract claims. As a result, the court ruled that the licensing agreement was valid and thus Microsoft wasn't infringing on any patents. Since the ruling, Timeline filed a breach of contract suit against Microsoft in Washington State Superior Court, it said in a June 4 press release. It also may appeal the district court ruling. Microsoft lost an earlier separate battle against Timeline. In 2002, an appeals court ruled that Microsoft couldn't allow its customers to combine their own code with Microsoft products if the added code resulted in a process that infringed Timeline's patent. The Timeline patents relate to technology used in database software, and Microsoft used them in its Small Business Financial Manager product. Timeline recently changed its focus from a developer of software applications to a company dedicated to licensing its intellectual property. Timeline did not return calls seeking comment. Microsoft also has not replied to requests for comment.
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Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) shareholders have one less headache to medicate thanks to management&#39;s wise decision to settle its patent infringement litigation with crusty old Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK).